Digital immigrant

I very much consider my lifestyle connected, but a post by Shane Richmond at the Daily Telegraph blog got me thinking.

But while the younger generation struggles with numeracy, the older generation stands accused of technical illiteracy.
…
Brilliantly, Kirah divides society into "digital immigrants", who weren't born into a digital lifestyle and have found themselves struggling to assimilate, and "digital natives", to whom a connected lifestyle comes naturally.

I was about 9 or 10 the first time I touched a computer. My best friend’s big brother had borrowed one from school from school during Christmas break. An old ABC80 which we where just barely allowed to touch. It was a computer after all! Then came the Commodore 64 and the same story. Don’t touch it! It’s a computer! My first real contact at a user came about 10 years later as a freshman in Texas. My old Computer Science Professor actually drilled me (retired army captain) so hard that I ended up with I a degree in Computer Science. So here I am using my third computer in 10 years and looking into buying a new one pretty soon. But I am still a digital immigrant.

Right before the summer I was doing interviews at work for a new Webmaster position. In the end we had narrowed it down to two very bright and suitable persons. One was n around 35 with a lot of experience and the other one 25 and right of out school. When I asked the older one what he thought about the Internet his answer was "To get information". The young one said, "Everything is possible. There are no limits". Just the answer I wanted to hear as head of Internet and E-commerce… He has been with us for a month now, and what can I say – He doesn’t know anything else then the Internet. It has been a natural part of his upbringing and youth. A digital native who smiles at us oldies and immigrants as we try hard to be connected.