Who Are The Digital Natives?

There’s a new book out that Taylor pointed me to a few weeks ago called Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. The book’s website describes the phenomenon in question and the purpose of the book:

The first generation of “Digital Natives” – children who were born into and raised in the digital world – are coming of age, and soon our world will be reshaped in their image. Our economy, our politics, our culture and even the shape of our family life will be forever transformed.

But who are these Digital Natives? How are they different from older generations – or “Digital Immigrants” – and what is the world they’re creating going to look like? In Born Digital, leading Internet and technology experts John Palfrey and Urs Gasser offer a sociological portrait of these young people who can seem, even to those merely a generation older, both extraordinarily sophisticated and strangely narrow.

A book about the impact of technology on an entire generation, written by two law professors?  Consider it Kindled, my friends.  But wait, there’s more!  Make the jump!

Beyond the lovely perks of free food, no dress code, and getting to use a Mac for work, another plus of working for Google is the access we get to excellent speakers.  Just recently, for example, I got to listen to Matt Harding talk about his all-expenses-paid trips around the world to produce amazing videos like this one (and yes, we made a dancing video at the end).

On Monday, John Palfrey — one of the authors of Born Digital, as well as a Professor of Law, Vice Dean, and Faculty Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School — will speak at Google about his book.  Legal Googlers (Legalooglers?  Lawglers?) were invited to have lunch with him beforehand, and I jumped on board.  His talk will apparently also be broadcast to the several dozen people who watch C-SPAN.

Check out Palfrey’s bio.  He looks like he’s barely over 30, and he’s a lawyer, professor, dean, author, venture capitalist, former bureaucrat, non-profit board member, and Lessig disciple.  If I was at Harvard Law (HAHAHAhahaha, ahaha.. ahah… ha) I would take every one of his classes.  And to top it all off, he has a freakin’ style feed on his Harvard-hosted blog and the back of his laptop looks like this.  I have a new hero.

Assuming he doesn’t read this before his arrival and have me pre-emptively blacklisted from the lunch and talk…. do you have any suggestions for questions I should ask?  I’m going to try to read as much of his book as possible this weekend… but from the general description of the book, what would you be interested in hearing about his research?  I’ll be sure to make a full report next week.

By the way, you can take a quiz to see if you’re a digital native.  To my surprise, I’m only 60% native.  How do you score?