Essay: How has the internet changed our notion and collective identity?

Its a fact that the digital world has grown immensly over the years and now thrives with the younger generation. This means that our culture and our identity has changed due to the popularity of digital forms, such as the internet. The internet is a powerful source that people use everyday; they have become so reliant upon it, that if they were unable to access the internet they would struggle with their work duties, social contacting and boredom.

'Digital natives' is a term used for the younger generation who have been immersed in the digital age. It refers to them being the 'native speakers' of the digital language. It comes naturally to them and they are dependent on media such as, computers, mobile phones and music players. In contrast to the natives are the immigrants. 'Digital immigrants' are people who process and think differently to the natives. They are generally the older generation who socialised differently when they were younger and are now learning about the digital aspects around them. 'Digital immigrants' have a different language to the natives. For example the accent of an immigrant is printing out an email so that they can read it like a letter or physically bringing a person to their computer so that they can see a website instead of emailling the url or page to them. This automatically creates two identities in today's society.

These two identities also mean that they don't always communicate easily or understand each other. A debate has arose about whether or not the educational system is still designed to teach today's students. The teachers (digital immigrants) don't believe that their students (digital natives) can learn from TV or the internet. The assumption that the same methods that worked for the teachers will work for their students is no longer valid. This is because our identity is so enhanced and developed now that peoples brains learn in different ways to how they used to 10 years ago. The argument leads to whether the digital natives should learn the old ways or whether digital immigrants should learn the new? Some digitial immigrants accept that their world has changed and they know nothing about it, whereas other digital immigrants are complacent and don't like the idea of a digital world. Marc Prensky invites teachers and professors to change their way of teaching so that digital natives can make the most of learning. He get them to a subject or topic and he attempts to invent a game or another digital native way of learning it. Prensky thinks it is lazy for educators to believe that the digital immigrant way is the only way to teach and that they are capable of learning the natives language as their own. He believes that digital immgrants will have to change.

The notion of todays society is more fast-paced and people tend to want things instantly. This has been caused from modern technology which allows us to access things quickly and not have to put a lot of effort into getting results. For example, instead of using a dictionary or a book to research a word or term people can access google.com which gives a fast, straight-forward result in a language that 'digital natives' understand. Statistics show that today's kids have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, whereas they spent 20,000 hours watching TV. This shows how much people rely on the internet and as a collective identity would more likely be seen on the computer than being 'active.' This links to the internet creating a lazy society and having a less active notion of fitness and health.

People use social networking sites to create part of their identity. Sites such as, Facebook or Myspace allows you to upload photos of yourself, upload music that you like or talk about your favourite things in life. These factors create our idenitity and by accessing these sites we can share them with other users. Sites such as Twitter and again, Facebook allows people to write a mini blog or a 'status' describing what they did that day or how they feel about a certain situation. This seems natural and fine for digital natives, as they have become used to naturally sharing our personal lives on the internet. Whereas, with digital immigrants sharing these parts of our identity is something that they used to do in an occasional letter. Both, letters and social networking sites are updates of peoples lives that they naturally want to share, but our collective identity has changed in terms of how they do it. By using sites such as facebook these updates are regular or everyday, this shows how our notion and collective identity is more digitalised.

The internet is so widely popular because there are no limits to what you can access. Even if there is an age restriction on a specific webpage it can be easily worked around as there is no physical confrontation. From the power of the internet people can watch, listen or organize anything they like, which makes it so appealing. The internet also has to keep up with the changing times. The internet has been updated in the past from Web 1.0 to now what we know as Web 2.0. The internet and computer became more advanced and Web 2.0 offers a lot more choice that Web 1.0 lacked.

There is no doubt that the internet has changed our notion and collective identity. It has changed the education system and the way teachers have to learn again in order to communicate clearly and accuratly to their students. I think it is right for the teachers to learn again, rarther than the students learning the old ways as the world will keep developing digitally, which means there is no point fighting it and learning in past ways when the future identity is still moving on. Without the internet people will struggle to function with their daily routines and the level of communication will decrease. Computers and the internet are now part of our collective identity. I don't think that there will be a time when the internet doesn't exist, but that it will just advance to satisfy and benefit peoples needs. It could also mean that the current 'digital natives' could one day become the 'new digital immigrants' if technology gets that advanced it could become harder as they get older to understand; causing a constant cycle of a changing identity.