“At what point does an accent cease to define whether one is an immigrant or native, and be considered just another voice within the nation it speaks from?”
I was born into the classification of digital native by definition. Being born in 1991, in the dawn of the widespread use of web browsing and popular internet use, I was young when I first used video games for learning, email, and web searches alongside encyclopedias on the library desks of my elementary school. I am as young as the internet age itself, and we’ve grown up together.
I would not, though, describe myself as having “spent [my] entire [life] surrounded by and using
computers, video-games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age.”(Prensky 1.1) A statement as such doesn’t take into account the amount of time in this country that the individuals growing up as digital natives spend on these devices versus, for example, climbing a tree while the Gameboy is saved for 10,000 hours for car rides and bed times, or knocking on the neighbor’s door to play tag in the schoolyard while the Playstation is saved for a rainy day. I get the sense from Prensky’s analysis, and the WBUR pod cast by Isis Adler, that the digital native is sadly generalized as spending too much time invested in technology.
I know I did not spend my entire life using a computer: only every now and then for hours on end. I can look people in the eyes when I’m talking to them, and I have the ability to empithize. There are natives, by means of texting, who never did have to knock on their neighbor’s door to get their friend outside: but I am not one to avoid the phone call to announce an arrival, and I believe instant messages and texting have their time and place.
I consider myself to have grown up at a privileged time where technology in my life was split between when Pokemon became play, so did the Gameboy Color; where while I became of the age of wanting to IM my friends, is the same time IM was at its height; when, while trying to find my place in the more complicated social structures of a seventh grade classroom, I was also finding friends to fill my Myspace top eight. Growing up alongside the rise of these technologies, I could recognize when a technology overlaps the traditional, immigrant styles of using technology, and I now have the ability to try to hide my native accent in times of life I would prefer to live disconnected. That’s not to deny that I still feel the draw and power of living connected, and the gravity of taking the road of least resistance by sending that “im here” text.
At home with my parents I used wireless connection when the course began. I have since moved and will soon have wireless internet installed. At a local café where I work, we offer free wifi so I’ve been able to work there, and plan to occasionally, especially during this transitional period. I also have 4G networking on my smart phone, so I am able to access the course only at the expense of data.