GROWING UP DIGITAL: The Rise of the Net Generation.

Tapscott, Don.

ISBN 10: 0070633614 / ISBN 13: 9780070633612

Published by McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1997

About this Item

Tapscott is the author of six books, including THE DIGITAL ECONOMY, and is co-author of PARADIGM SHIFT. He is chairman of the Alliance for Converging Technologies, a research think tank funded by many of the world's leading technology, manufacturing, retail, financial, and government organizations. New, unread copy in fine, mylar-protected dust jacket. T. Seller Inventory # 3043

Bibliographic Details

Title: GROWING UP DIGITAL: The Rise of the Net ...

Publisher: McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, U.S.A.

Publication Date: 1997

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: New

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Edition: First Edition, First Printing

About this title

Synopsis:

The first generation to grow up digital has arrived, and they are transforming the way we work, play, and communicate. In Growing Up Digital, bestselling author Don Tapscott profiles this net generation and how its use of digital technology reshaping the way society and individuals interact. Unlike the Baby Boomers who grew up with the passive medium of television, children today, in ever-growing numbers, are embracing interactive media such as the Internet, CD-ROM, and video games. Growing Up Digital highlights how young people-empowered by digital media-learn, work, play, communicate, and shop differently than their boomer parents. It examines what this means for the whole spectrum of society, including our education system, the government, and economy. Taken together, Growing Up Digital offers an overview of the Net Generation's fearless overhaul of our culture; and it gives the members of this generation-and everyone affected by their use of new media-a chance to anticipate and act on what lies ahead.

Review:

With the help of about 300 members of the Net Generation, or N-Gen, Don Tapscott explores what the Internet and other digital interactive technology is doing to and for our children. Despite fears that new technology is making kids more antisocial and less intellectual, Tapscott shows that kids are using it to play, build relationships and explore their world. And while the digital world has dangers, it also has greater opportunities.

Tapscott shows the role technology plays in how N-Genners learn, socialize among themselves, and interact with friends and family--often through insightful quotes from the kids themselves. Tapscott demonstrates how many clear truths, for instance that learning is social, have led to false conclusions, such as that computer use, being an individual activity, hampers social learning. And, with his N-Gen helpers, he puts the hype about Net porn in perspective. As one 15-year-old puts it, "I have never 'stumbled' into a site I didn't want to see. Not like on TV where I have occasionally flicked the channel only to 'stumble' into some gruesome murder scene." Yet the author also acknowledges that every new development has its problems and offers commonsense caution, quoting Alan Kay: "We don't have natural defenses against fat, sugar, salt, alcohol, alkaloids--or media. Television should be the last mass-communications medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon general's warning."