In their 2008 book “Born Digital: Understanding the first generation of Digital Natives,” John Palfrey and Urs Gasser define discuss the Digital X group of people.
These are all people who dip their hands into digital technology in one form or another and to a lesser or greater extent. In other words these definitions start in the Real World and reach out to the digital world -
Digital Settler: “Some older people were there at the start [of the digital era] and these … though not native to the digital environment, because they grew up in an analog-only world – have helped to shape its contours.”
Digital Immigrant: “Others less familiar with this environment … learned how to to e-mail and use social networks late in life. You know them by the lame jokes and warnings about urban myths that they still forward to large cc: lists.”
Digital Native: “They were all born after 1980, when social technologies such as Usenet and bulletin board systems, came online.”
Let’s start with Digital Native. My 89ers are fixed to a specific event and are not generational – you are either an 89er or you are not. If you are not, you are a prewebber. In time everyone will be an 89er and then the definition will fade away.
The definitions of Digital Settlers and Digital Immigrants are, I supppose, what they are and there we are. I’d like to define the term Digital Inhabitant and define it like this:
Digital Inhabitant: someone who has established a web presence, in a social utility like Facebook or MySpace, or via a website or blog or twitter or any medium hereafter ever invented, with their real name and contact information and photograph, for more than x months (choose your own x – I choose 6).
[Here's the current definition of "Digital Inhabitant" (5/09/09):
Digital Inhabitant: A person who has had a personal web presence for more than x days (choose your own x – me, I choose 30).
A personal web presence is an individual space on the web which can be updated at any time (like twitter or Facebook or a blog), coupled and completed, at a minimum, with the person’s real name, photograph, contact information and About Me section.
original version 3/27/09
this version 5/09/09
-- added definition to post 03/05/10]
And then Digital Settlers and Digital Immigrants can be Digital Inhabitants or not, without recourse to age, which is not really relevant in the digital world, although, of course, very relevant in the Real World.
So, to sum up, you are either an 89er or a prewebber and you are either a Digital Inhabitant or not. If you are a Digital Inhabitant you may be a “Digital Settler” or a “Digital Immigrant” or something else.
So there we are. Nice and clean.
But what about online identies, anonymous or not? Each online identity must have a Digital Personality and so each 89er or prewebber can have one or more DPs. Or not.
It might that be a Digital Inhabitant’s DP will correspond to their RWP (Real World Personality), but who knows?
Next up – the “expert-centric universe” – which nobody seems to have claimed to date (as far as Google is concerned), so I do.
february 18 2010 – should have been “discuss,” not “define.” Oh well.
