Don Tapscott
McGraw-Hill (2008)
For the last couple of years the term “Web 2.0” has been floating around and it has finally become ubiquitous–everyone is talking about or getting involved in the new collaborative, user-created Internet. I visited the library recently and stumbled upon Don Tapscott’s new book, “Grown Up Digital.” Tapscott is a Toronto-based writer/marketer who has written about technology and its influence on business and society.
In “Grown Up Digital,” Tapscott focuses his attention on key concepts that are a product of or exist parallel to “Web 2.0″ – i.e. social networking sites (Facebook/MySpace), the notion of “digital literacy” and the generation that has “grown up digital,” a group he terms “the Net Generation.” Following in the footsteps of the Baby boomers and Generation X, the Net Genners are the first generation that have grown up with computers, the Internet and an endless myriad of hi-tech devices and gadgets.
The book is well-referenced and full of useful information graphics and data. Tapscott relies on a combination of research and anecdotal evidence to back his arguments. He also pads his book with quotes from his kids. All of that is fine and makes for a breezy down-to-earth read but it does lead to a couple weak spots. He provides the example of “a day in a life” of a young Toronto new media strategist. She bills “fifty hours a week” but her digital day as described doesn’t show much real work, just lots of Google alerts, RSS feeds, Skyping and podcasts. Tapscott portrays the Net Generation as not just a new generation of consumers but prosumers–people who take an active role as “producers” of content. This is where I have a doubt. I take issue with the notion that making a Facebook page and littering it with applications is a creative act. (A blog on the other hand…).
Tapscott’s previous book was called “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything,” and he carries on here in the same vein – some of the ideas which are central to the book include: collaboration, user-created content, accessibility/ transparency, democratization and digital literacy.
As a professional marketer Tapscott relies on the plethora of interviews he’s done with young people – and while maintaining a dispassionate tone he comes off here as largely a cheerleader, rarely wavering from a position which eagerly embraces technologies such as video games as positive platforms for learning and growth. He tackles the broadly accepted and propagated notions that teenagers have short attention spans – that the world is “dumbing down” – arguing that teenagers are developing new kinds of literacy as they while the hours absorbed in new online worlds. To those who would proclaim that youth have lost critical thinking skills and have short attention-spans, Tapscott writes: “A young person today doesn’t just sit and watch TV, as we have seen. He or she uses TV as a background music while surfing the web…the Net Genner must remember hundreds, perhaps, hundreds, of applications…A video game may have dozens or hundreds or characters…Then there are your one hundred to seven hundred Facebook friends…not to mention learning new language of acronym, like OMG and LOL…”. Not exactly heavy-weight logic here, but for the most part I agree with his arguments and support his stance. We all have to become Net Genners to some degree or another.
In the new economy the idea of digital literacy is something everyone has to deal with. Older folks will have to come out from behind the “Generational Firewall.” Tapscott says that schools have not essentially changed in the last two hundred years and need to move from lecture-based to student-centered. In the workplace meritocracy will replace hierarchy. Bestbuy, for example, created a social networking tech group for their staff called “Blue Shirt Nation.” Creating an atmosphere of employee satisfaction has become paramount in what Tapscott refers to as a future “War for Talent”. Companies must change to accommodate Net Genners. Facebook cannot be banned from work when it provides harmless distraction. He argues that in the old days workers routinely left the office for fifteen minute coffee and cigarette breaks. Even the use of email and the internet was once feared by management for its time-sucking potential.
We are living in the age of a “Brave New World Wide Web” and Tapscott represents the cutting edge of thinkers and doers in the new milieu. Anyone, from educators to marketers to the layman interested in leading-edge thought on technology and economy, would benefit from reading this thoughtful and timely book.
