Digital Native and Digital Immigrant. Have you heard about these terms? Lately, we are starting to hear about it more and more. Our familiarity with technologies is different. This is not only a result of our professional interest, but also something in our roots and… age. Navigate to Wikipedia’s article about Digital Native. I captured few definitions there:
A digital native is a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technologies and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts. Alternatively, this term can describe people born during or after the latter 1960s, as the Digital Age began at that time; but in most cases, the term focuses on people who grew up with the technology that became prevalent in the latter part of the 20th century and continues to evolve today. Other discourse identifies a digital native as a person who understands the value of digital technology and uses this to seek out opportunities for implementing it with a view to make an impact.
The same article provides us with a definition of "digital immigrants". As you can imaging, these are people that need to accommodate to the changes digital environment brings to our life and work. Here is the passage from the same Wikipedia article, which explains also the term as well as some additional aspect of relations between generations and different communities of people.
A digital immigrant is an individual who was born before the existence of digital technology and adopted it to some extent later in life… Due to the obvious divide set between digital natives and digital immigrants, sometimes both generations are forced to meet which commonly results in conflicting ideologies of digital technology. The everyday regime of worklife is becoming more technologically advanced with improved computers in offices, more complicated machinery in industry etc. With technology moving so fast it is hard for digital immigrants to keep up… This creates conflicts among older supervisors and managers with the increasingly younger workforce. Similarly, parents clash with their children at home over gaming, texting, YouTube, Facebook and other Internet technology issues. The Pluralist Generation, with birthdates between 1998-2012, is made up of digital natives.
I’ve been reading and observing different aspects of digital immigrants and digital natives, including the way they are interacting. It made me think how we build products and communicate these days. Clearly, the majority of manufacturing companies and engineering firms are run by people born before 1960s. As we move forward, I can see many questions arise. Some of them are related to existing product and working methods. However, it is also important to analyze and see how modern software products and eco-system will influence a product-development process.
The following Instagram photo caught my attention. It provides a quote from Facebook’s S-1. I found this passage interesting and connected to PLM and product development – We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services.
Another example that came to my attention is related to the company taking their roots in Facebook, the internet and "digital native" paradigm – GrabCAD. The company grew up fast as "facebook for engineers". Recently, GrabCAD announced their new strategy to develop "collaboration platform and products for engineers". Navigate to the following GrabCAD blog by Hardi Meybaum speaking about the future of GrabCAD engineering collaboration with Jon Stevenson (VP Technology). This passage caught my attention:
Having built the world’s largest active community of mechanical design professionals, GrabCAD will change the way products are designed and manufactured. GrabCAD is changing the way engineers and companies collaborate to build better products.
Another passage from GrabCAD blog related to human interaction and collaboration (now between engineers and sales people)
GrabCAD was started by mechanical engineers to build tools for mechanical engineers. We are not going to make overly complicated, difficult to use PLM/PDM/ERP tools for enterprises. We will not sell our product through middle men who cause higher prices and prevent direct feedback from customers. Instead we are going to build a product engineers enjoy using, something that solves engineers’ problems. Everything we build is distributed through GrabCAD.com, so we can work to create an amazing experience from start to finish. Everyone in the GrabCAD team responds to customer questions and needs, so we know your pain and can act quickly to resolve issues.
What is my conclusion? Human interaction. It is something that different between digital natives and digital immigrants. What is the difference? Here is my take for digital native – open, online and the internet. Opposite to that, this is how I can summarize it for digital immigrants – close, offline and email. It will create a big difference during the next few years. Companies are going to build a new experience of designing product, engineering and manufacturing stuff. Interesting time. Just my thoughts…
Image courtesy of [watcharakun] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net