By: Ben Robinson, IntoMobile Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 12:45 PM
My fave tech-lingo site, NetLingo, has come along with another classic phrase:
digital native
as opposed to a digital immigrant
A “digital native” refers to a person who is born after 1984 and uses computers. As opposed to a “digital immigrant” –one who had to learn their way around the Internet– digital natives have always been surrounded by the culture of online technology.
Crumbs! That means I am a digital immigrant – and in fact when I think about it, there were walkmans when I grew up, PCs ran on Command Line Interface, and Mobiles ran on an analogue network – getting older is a terrible thing
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career
when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has
now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the
next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas!
He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently
became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years
when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to
'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make
your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device)
isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question
of why you continue to use it...
His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and
infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the
occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience
in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with
regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
J05H
By that definition some “digital immigrants” have been working online longer than the so-called “natives” have been alive. It makes no sense.