A trebuit sa citesc prezentarea lui John Naughton la Society of Editors Annual Conference, Glasgow, pentru a intelege ca sunt un emigrant. De fapt un imigrant. Un imigrant digital. Asta pentru ca am crescut in perioada de final a culturii tiparului. Am citit, ascultat radio pe unde scurte si m-am uitat la televizor maxim 2 ore pe zi tot liceul.

Sebastian insa, care e nascut in 2003, e un nativ in lumea digitala. Se joaca cu racing cars, incarca environments in YM, scrie in Word si deseneaza in paint. Si stie exact ce trebuie sa scriu in browser: mickeymouse.com. Doar ca inca nu stie sa scrie decat “sebi”.

Povestea cu nativii si imigrantii digitali nu e noua. A spus-o si Rupert Murdoch in 2005, vorbind despre cum ar trebui sa se schimbe ziarele si mai ales, prezenta lor pe web:

But our internet site will have to do still more to be competitive. For some, it may have to become the place for conversation. The digital native doesn’t send a letter to the editor anymore. She goes online, and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers. We need to encourage readers to think of the web as the place to go to engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions about the way a particular story was reported or researched or presented.

Insa parca tot Naughton le zice mai cu foc, cu o eleganta intelectuala ce vine din libertatea de a nu avea un trust de presa:

These kids have been socially conditioned in a universe that runs parallel to the one inhabited by most folks in the media business. They’ve been playing computer games of mind-blowing complexity forever. They’re resourceful, knowledgeable and natural users of computer and communications technology. They’re Digital Natives – accustomed to creating content of their own – and publishing it. (Remember the motto of YouTube: ‘Broadcast yourself!’)

They buy music from the iTunes store – but continue to download tracks illicitly as well. They use BitTorrent to get US editions of Lost. They think ‘Google’ is a synonym for ‘research’ and regard it as quite normal to maintain and read blogs (55 million as of last night), use Skype to talk to their mates and upload photos to Flickr. Some even write entries on Wikipedia. And they know how to use iMovie or Adobe Premiere to edit videos and upload them to YouTube.

Now look round the average British newsroom. How many hacks have a Flickr account or a MySpace profile? How many sub-editors have ever uploaded a video to YouTube? How many editors have used BitTorrent? (How many know what BitTorrent is?)

And while some of our teenagers’ interests coincide with ours, many do not. Here, for example, are the top blog tags on Technorati last night: Bush, careers, college, comedy, Congress, death, Democrats, elections, Flickr, gay, Halloween, Iraq, Microsoft, money, Republicans, Saddam, Ted Haggard, vote, war, breaking-news, tagshare, YouTube. Some you’ll recognise. But you won’t see much about many of these in the papers.

Scuze pentru lipsa traducerii, insa sunt sigur ca cei mai multi intelegeti limba lui Mr. Bean. Cei mai multi, imigranti sau nativi.