Digital divide

Microsoft has come out in defence of workers’ rights. Well, make that workers’ rights to access the Internet from their desks.

Of course the cynical response is that vendors stand to profit from the increased traffic, but there are many who argue the next generation won’t be able to function without a constant drip-feed of online palliatives.

Microsoft’s resident anthropologist spoke at the company’s TechEd gabfest for nerds and geeks and drew a line in the silicon between “digital immigrants” and “digital natives”.

She described the immigrants as those who grew up without the Internet, while the natives can’t believe there was ever a time when there was no Internet.

How would you find anything without Google? How would you know what was cool without MySpace? How would you know if your friends are about without SMS and IM?

Without YouTube you’d have to watch television. Blech. If you think these statements are not just true but self-evident, you are a digital native.

If you think them errant nonsense you are a digital immigrant. And it’s the immigrants who are being blamed for blocking access to the Internet in the workplace.

According to research coming out of Norway “taking a mobile phone away from a teenage girl is the same as child abuse.”

Rabid’s not sure if that’s really the case, but he knows from experience that it makes them howl as though they’ve been hit. Have you abused any teenagers lately?