When I give talks about the digital and education I usually make my case by presenting facts about the Millennial generation and their technology use to justify that educators really need to begin paying attention to the changes that are upon us. I present stats from Pew, Gartner, Forrester, and other research groups to set the stage for the conversation but I have to acknowledge that the numbers really don’t create a full picture of what’s happening. I, after all, am not in the group traditionally termed as “natives” and yet I exhibit all the traits. I am my own proof that the difference between native and immigrant isn’t age related. Acclimation and adoption of technology is not generational. I understand though, how looking back, Prensky might have thought that a new generation was bringing about the change. His terms give us something to scaffold conversation from and, for that, we should be appreciative. But I think we all know that there is more to these technology-adoption shifts than an age group growing up with access to computers.

I narrow the phenomenon, the difference between those who readily adopt and include technology in their lives and those who are hesitant or resistant to technology, down to two causes: 1) exigency and 2) lack of medial hauntings. Let me explain.

Exigency Creates Digital Lives

I do not know how to drive a race car, parachute from a plane, or play piano. These are all skills that I’ve never needed to know or had adequate motivation to learn. Now, if someone told me tomorrow that the plane I’ll be boarding on Friday will have engine trouble and that I’ll need to parachute to safety you can bet I’d be researching it today. I’d have an exigency to learn the new skill. For many people who are termed immigrants, or techno-hesitant, this exigency to adopt a digital lifestyle isn’t there. I learned to use email when I found out that I could communicate with friends who lived far away without incurring phone charges. I learned to create web pages when I realized that I really wanted to have an online presence to use for job applications (and I learned to code HTML in Notepad, thank you very much!). My mother learned to use a computer, and then to blog, when she became basically house bound due to illness and realized that using the internet would allow her to travel virtually and still keep in touch with the outside world. My soon-to-be-mother-in-law (who is in her late 60s) began adopting technology to keep in touch with her children, who are spread from coast to coast. In all cases, there was an exigency. A pressing reason to adopt the skill, to let the technology invade our lives.

Many people we term as “immigrants” are simply folks who didn’t have an exigency to adopt a technology until later than others. Perhaps their career didn’t require it or their social network was very local and face to face. “Natives” are simply people who have a somewhat innate exigency or who have adopted so much that their lives before adoption are a blur of lack of connectedness.

Lack of Medial Hauntings Creates Natives

In an essay in Hawisher and Selfe’s Passions and Pedagogies for the 21^st Century, Sarah J. Sloane writes about a student who has “medial haunting,” conceptions of a new technology based on how an older similar technology worked. If we’re old enough, we all have medial haunting. If you ever used a manual typewriter than moved on to a word processor you can probably remember that you sometimes forgot that the word processor had functions that the typewriter didn’t. If you then bought your first personal computer, you, no doubt , made sure that there was a word processing program installed before exploring the computer’s other functions. When I moved to Office 2007 from Office 2000 I was endlessly frustrated by looking for familiar buttons that were suddenly gone or moved. I was using the new software with a strong medial haunting of the old software. Those of us who are old enough, or fortunate enough, to have had experience with earlier technologies are sometimes limited by their use when we move on to a newer one.

However, the group we call “natives”, today’s kids, are not haunted by earlier similar technologies. Their use of a cell phone is not hindered by their functional assumptions carried over from using a party line at home, for example. They aren’t intimidated by a 16 button console controller because they never played Atari with two buttons and a joystick. They adopt technologies easier because, for lack of a better phrase, they don’t know any better. They have no reason to be afraid of a new tool or to be fearful of a new gadget. I watch my 6 year old triplets pick up gadgets, poke at them, test them, and then use them much faster than I ever would simply because they aren’t afraid of them (probably because they didn’t pay for them, as I remind them when they play with my iPhone).

It’s important, though, to remember that you don’t have to be young to lack medial hauntings. You simply need to be someone who hasn’t had experience with a previous similar technology. And, on the converse, I think we can begin to understand the difficulties created by the digital divide. In addition to access, we must also consider perceptions and fears of technology that inhibit adoption.

Finally, I’d like to note that we should be careful of the assumption that being a native is somehow superior to being an immigrant. Immigrating to technology implies choice, reflection, and a critical approach. Natives, whether to a land or a technology, aren’t often able to fully step outside their culture to see it for what it is. In addition, I think we immigrants need to be careful how we treat the natives. Every time I speak to an educator who is determined to take away cell phones, shut down Wikipedia, or ban Facebook from campus I’m reminded of historical subjugation of natives. We ought to be very careful about imposing our immigrant, and I dare even say Conquistador, attitudes when dealing with native culture. There’s a whole lot we can learn from the natives.

“Email you receive that isn’t spam… And isn’t personal mail. It’s the middle class of email. It’s notifications of a new post to your Facebook wall or a new follower on Twitter. It’s the Google alert for your name and the newsletter from your favorite company.”

The term came about last week and has already spread across the webosphere. Here are just a few links to follow to learn more:

• The Official Bacn2 Blog
• Bacn on BuzzFeed
• Technorati hits on Bacn
• IJustine’s video of the original Podcamp discussion that spawned the term

Beyond the amazing meme-speed of the internet, there are other important implications of the Bacn fad. First, it’s a symptom of info overload created by “pull.” All of the updates, notices, and feeds that we love and laud as being time savers might just be overwhelming us. I get about 30 emails a day from a couple of mailing lists I’m a member of, about 5 Facebook notices, about 10 Twitter notices, and a few other random updates from Slideshare, Google alerts etc. All in all this adds up to about 80+ emails a day that I don’t have to open but might not want to delete either. We all knew what Bacn was before the meme started because we’ve all shuffled emails into a “read later” folder or somehow marked them to be worth saving but not worth reading right away. It seems we’re working toward a balance between “push” and “pull” that will be important to watch as new kinds of info filtering apps come along.

Second, Bacn is interesting as a phenomenon because once a problem/issue is given a name there are sure to be apps developed to help us all deal with it. I, for one, use labels on my gmail to help me know which emails are vital and which can be shuffled into the “later” pile but I’m sure it won’t be a week before there is a “Bacn filter” or a “KrspyBacn” app to help us stratify bacn into different types. Will there be “Canadian Bacn”, “Turkey Bacn”, “FaknBacn”?

What’s really new about this? It’s meant to advertise a free service: Gmail. A service which only makes money using sidebar ads, which I have NEVER clicked in the year+ that I’ve been using gmail but that’s beyond the point. Google understands that you can advertise the attitude of a service/product just as well as you can advertise the actual product. They understand that getting current users involved in the process increases their devotion to the product and that having thousands of people shoot 10 second videos is more financially smart that spending $1million on one commercial. Cheaper actually equals better!

I think it goes back to the old toothpaste ad adage. What does a toothpaste ad really sell?

Take this one, for example. It might have info about how the toothpaste can keep your teeth healthy (toothpaste = health) but what it’s really saying is Toothpaste = healthy teeth = beauty and success. It’s that leap from product to perceived impact that is critical to understand. But enough about toothpaste; let’s go back to Gmail.

So what the Gmail Behind the Scenes campaign is really telling us is gmail = fun with smart people. So not only can we use a great email service but we’ll be in the company of smart people (who doesn’t want that, right?) who do fun things (we all want to be fun!). Meanwhile, the campaign itself becomes another Google product because people are excited to submit something and watch what others have added. Oh, and to top it all off, the videos are all hosted on YouTube so Google gets to advertise another company they own at the same time. Brilliant!