Comments on: "Us" vs. "Them"

By: nm45

nm45 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:58:20 +0000

Ironically, the “digital native” manages to reverse his/her position in global capital as the inheritor of colonial and post-colonial domination and become once again the innocent indigene, oppressed by…who exactly? it’s an odd choice of name if you’re used to post-colonial studies.

By: jbj

jbj — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:39:20 +0000

A related problem–which I think we occasionally picked up in the iPod class–is that of students who imagine (some aspects of) digital culture to be their pool, and who don’t want The Man paddling around in it.

By: Alxjrvs

Alxjrvs — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:25:29 +0000

Thanks for the Comment!

In regards to privilege: I am actually considering the same questions. I spend a lot of time with a group of people in boston who work for the One Laptop per Child Non-profit, as well as T.A.-ing a Pilot class at my university where the entire class was given iPod Touches to use. It is a broad spectrum, but there are some very keen similarities between shallow and deep digital divides.

Arguably, this whole thing is about the digital Divide, where you have a sort of X/Y graph: on the X, you have Availability (low to high) and the Y, you have Interest, Low to high. The “Digital Natives” I lamented about previously would have a High X, low Y value, and so on.

By: Arden Kirkland

Arden Kirkland — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:59:22 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about the “us vs. them” perspective while following this blog for the last few weeks. I appreciate the way you’ve articulated some of the assumptions about the generational aspect of this. The range of comfort with technology is very wide not only among professors, but also among students!

The other aspect that I haven’t seen articulated yet has to do with privilege. What about students who don’t have iphones or ebooks, and barely even have access to a computer? One of the great features of many digital humanities projects is open access – but you can’t visit an online resource if you don’t have decent access to a computer, or enough familiarity to be comfortable navigating it.

If we are moving into an age where the Digital Humanities are the Humanities, how can we make sure that we’re not leaving less privileged students (and less privileged schools) behind?