I have to say that many of my students seem to be similar to Rhiannon's students. They like using IM, their phones, and email to stay in touch with people they know, most of them geographically close by. However, when I try to tell them about online communities and identity issues in MUDS, Katie.com, etc., they have the most difficult time understanding why anyone would ever do something like that, or get so involved in establishing online relationships with people they don't even know. As a matter of fact, many of my students seem to think Turkle, Markham, Baym, and others are nuts and some sort of mega nerds. I have to really establish context for them before they begin to see why people would want to spend so much time "online" (because to them, IM is not online), and grow relationships there. Interesting, isn't it? Our students are a different generation, one who grew up with technologies (and social acceptance of those), rather than having to appropriate and explore them, as we did. Ulla ************************** Ulla Bunz Assistant Professor Department of Communication Rutgers University 4 Huntington Street New Brunswick, NJ 08901 **************************

Please pardon the typos in the message I just posted. One problem with the internet for me is that my tendency not to have my brain and hands fully engaged with each other when typing can be quickly made evident to hundreds of people when I send messages without proofreading! Holly

The following item is relevant to this discussion, as is Don Tapscott's "Growing Up Digital" (1998), despite its biased sampling of rather affluent young people (http://www.growingupdigital.com )......Alex Kuskis http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/releases/2003/03mindsetlist.html BELOIT COLLEGE RELEASES THE MINDSET LIST FOR THE CLASS OF 2007 Beloit, Wis.-Across the nation, students are entering colleges and universities with their own perspectives on the times in which they live. Most of them were born in 1985. For the sixth year, Beloit College has developed and distributed to the faculty and staff the "Beloit College Mindset List." According to co-editor Tom McBride, Keefer Professor of the Humanities at the Wisconsin liberal arts college, the list helps to slow the rapid onset of "hardening of the references," in the classroom. McBride notes that "These entering students were born into a world that had developed a screening test for AIDS and where managed healthcare was gaining its first foothold. The Middle East had replaced the USSR and Eastern Europe as our greatest challenge to security. It is a generation which believes in technological innovations and solutions and where digital devices, pin numbers and calling cards are an integral part of their lives. Despite the fears associated with AIDS and divorce, we should remember that this is a generation that has grown up in a largely successful, prosperous society . . . I believe they are fascinated and vexed by the results of the world they have made," says Prof. McBride. "The Mindset List, among other things, is a reminder of that world-a world that makes education a tougher yet more fascinating job than ever. In saying hello to the new generation, which they labor mightily to understand, but with mixed results, they are saying good-bye to themselves. There is something of wicked and addictive interest in that. I myself am part of that very generation. There is, for me, a bittersweet pleasure in knowing that Cherry Cokes didn't always come in cans and there are millions of first-year students who will never know how delicious it was when it didn't." In April of the year the class of 2007 was born, Joseph Lelyveld complained in The New York Times that "conversations with some young people around the country about the war in Vietnam will find their impressions of it to be remarkably dim." High school juniors and seniors, could not identify Ho Chi Minh, Robert McNamara or the Chicago Seven. In The New Yorker that year, it was noted that "Each generation brings a clean slate into the world. But the world itself is not a clean slate, and what happened before needs to be learned and remembered." With the help of hundreds of people who have made contributions and after months of preparation, Beloit College is now pleased to present the Mindset List for the entering class. THE BELOIT COLLEGE MINDSET LIST FOR THE CLASS OF 2007® Most students entering college this fall were born in 1985: 1. Ricky Nelson, Richard Burton, Samantha Smith, Laura Ashley, Orson Welles, Karen Ann Quinlin, Benigno Aquino, and the U.S. Football League have always been dead. 2. They are not familiar with the source of that "Giant Sucking Sound." 3. Iraq has always been a problem. 4. "Ctrl + Alt + Del" is as basic as "ABC." 5. Paul Newman has always made salad dressing. 6. Pete Rose has always been a gambler. 7. Bert and Ernie are old enough to be their parents. 8. An automatic is a weapon, not a transmission. 9. Russian leaders have always looked like leaders everyplace else. 10. The snail darter has never been endangered. 11. There has always been a screening test for AIDS. 12. Gas has always been unleaded. 13. They never heard Howard Cosell call a game on ABC. 14. The United States has always had a Poet Laureate. 15. Garrison Keillor has always been live on public radio and Lawrence Welk has always been dead on public television. 16. Their families drove SUVs without "being fuelish." 17. There has always been some association between fried eggs and your brain. 18. They would never leave their calling card on someone's desk. 19. They have never been able to find the "return" key. 20. Computers have always fit in their backpacks. 21. Datsuns have never been made. 22. They have never gotten excited over a telegram, a long distance call, or a fax. 23. The Osmonds are just talk show hosts. 24. Undergraduate college athletes have always been a part of the NBA and NFL draft. 25. They have always "grazed" for food. 26. Three-point shots from "downtown" have always been a part of basketball. 27. Test tube babies are now having their own babies. 28. Stores have always had scanners at the checkout. 29. The Army has always driven Humvees. 30. Adam and PC Junior computers had vanished from the market before this generation went online. 31. The Statue of Liberty has always had a gleaming torch. 32. They have always had a pin number. 33. Banana Republic has always been a store, not a puppet government in Latin America. 34. Car detailing has always been available. 35. Directory assistance has never been free. 36. The Jaycees have always welcomed women as members. 37. There has always been Lean Cuisine. 38. They have always been able to fly Virgin Atlantic. 39. There have never been dress codes in restaurants. 40. Doctors have always had to deal with "reasonable and customary fees" and patients have always had controls placed on the number of days they could stay in a hospital. 41. They have always been able to make photocopies at home. 42. Michael Eisner has always been in charge of Disney. 43. They have always been able to make phone calls from planes. 44. Yuppies are almost as old as hippies. 45. Rupert Murdoch has always been an American citizen. 46. Strawberry Fields have always been in New York. 47. Rock and Roll has always been a force for social good. 48. Killer bees have always been swarming in the U.S. 49. They have never seen a First Lady in a fur coat. 50. Don Imus has always been offending someone in his national audience. In all fairness it should be understood that students entering college this fall do have a few items on their own lists that will separate them from many of their mentors: 1. For many of them today, it's all about the "bling, bling." 2. They know who the "Heroes in a half shell" are. 3. Peeps are not a candy, they are your friends. 4. They have been "dissing"and "burning" things all their lives. 5. They can expect to get a ticket for "ricing out their wheels." 6. They knew how to pop a Popple and trade a Pog. 7. They can still sing the rap chorus to the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and the theme song from "Duck Tales." © 2002 Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/releases/2003/03mindsetlist.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "Holly Kruse" <holly-kruse@utulsa.edu> To: <air-l@aoir.org> Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 7:59 PM Subject: Re: [Air-l] The Internet Is Changing The Way Canadians Socialize

Ulla wrote:

...

Our students are a different generation, one who grew up with technologies (and social acceptance of those), rather than having to appropriate and explore them, as we did.

I wonder how much of this is generational, and how much of it is a function of college life in the U.S. and perhaps beyond: a life in which a lot of them are living in dorms (or fraternities or sororities, or apartments or houses with friends), there may be a fair number of activities and social events on campus and of, there's a push to have internships and be involved in community groups to build resumes, and many have part-time or even full-time jobs. Some or all of these factors may make involvement in online groups, lists, and so on seem irrelevant, unnecessary, and/or too time-consuming, so the students haven't explored online groups too much.

When I taught an undergraduate seminar on wired technology and society last spring, my students confessed to be heavy users of email and seemed quite facile at exploring places and ways to download music from the net. They also used ecommerce serves frequently. I think maybe students are using the applications that seem most important or relevant to them while they're in college. For a few, online communities are part of it and for many they're not. Once students leave college, are perhaps in more anomic settings (not that college can't be very anomic, of course!) in which they don't have access to campus life and have a different set of demands imposed upon them and are developing new interest or are cultivating pre-existing ones, then involvement in discussion groups may become more salient. Holly -- Holly Kruse Faculty of Communication University of Tulsa 600 S. College Ave. Tulsa, OK 74104 918-631-3845 holly-kruse@utulsa.edu

On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, Holly Kruse wrote:

I wonder how much of this is generational

I heard an early report from Melora Zaner (a researcher at Microsoft) about the NetGen and their use of technology. She hasn't formally published her findings yet, but i'm guessing she's one to pay attention to. Communication tool choice is a generational thing. Her early findings showed that, when possible, top channel was SMS. Next is IM (AOL's only), then phone. Next is LiveJournal/Xanga/Diaryland. Finally, email comes to play. Email is seen as a way of talking with "old" people. There are a lot of good reasons for this shift, starting with the fact that most of the NetGen went on email via Hotmail and thus was spammed out of participation. Furthermore, their parents had access to their email accounts... Even on LJ, kids put up a different set of posts for their parents than their friends. On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, Barry Wellman wrote:

I think the reason that immersive virtual communities have been so prominent in the media and in analysts' eyes is that they are so imageable and so amenable to study by qualitative means.

Furthermore, i think that what made immersive worlds a good story was that it got closer to the sci-fi phenomenon of technology creating entirely new possibilities (such as freeing oneself from the constraints of what is written on the body). It was (and still is) a utopian fantasy. Most of what i'm seeing with younger folks is a tight integration of RL and virtual communication channels. For youth, it's no longer like there is the PHONE and the INTERNET; there are lots of possible ways to communicate with people you know (and at most, their friends) via a variety of different channels. Rather than meeting in chatrooms, groups of people who know Bob comment on Bob's LJ and connections form, just as if Bob through a non-alcoholic cocktail party. Also, methodologically, the younger folks' use of technology is seen as peculiar, not enlightening. When MUDs, MOOs, Usenet, etc. came out, everyone who participated was an immigrant from the physical. For teens, their use of IM is just natural. Thus, teasing out what is really going on is much harder because there isn't this reflection about how this is sooo much different than what we used to do... danah -- - - - - - - - - - - d a n a h ( d o t ) o r g - - - - - - - - - - taken out of context i must seem so strange (ani difranco | danah.org/ani) .. musings .. (zephoria.org/thoughts) v-season: events.vday.org (misbehaving.net)

I'm Massimiliano Burani, i'm a student at Tor Vergata University in Rome. I'm writing my guaduating thesis on "Shakespeare and his connection with the internet world". I'm looking for all kind of material (books, reviews, links etc. ) about it. Whatever. Also articles, opinions, methods, way of looking forward this new "science", a possibity to underline a specific way to analyze the production of this author. Especially on evaluation of internet resources and humanities computing. I'm finding to present the internet resources to do that. I hope that someone can help me as well.