Are you a Digital Native or a Digital Immigrant?

Some of us are natives of the digital age...and some of us are immigrants here in the digital world, maintaining our "accents" that mark us as being from somewhere else. Not sure which one you are? Take this simple test:

• Do you sometimes print out a document to read it or edit it?
• Would you rather walk across the hall to talk to a colleague than send an email?
• Do you regularly read the newspaper?
• Do you bring people physically into your office to show them an interesting web site?
• Are you able to walk out of the house without your cell phone?

If you answered "yes" to all or most of the questions, you're a digital immigrant - someone who is probably pretty competent with text messaging or iPhone apps or internet searching, but also needs to disconnect from the digital universe every now and then and reconnect to the physical world. The immigrant's digital "accent" just means you may turn to other forms of information at times rather than always using the internet.

Author Marc Prensky, who coined the terms, claims that digital natives are different from digital immigrants, because the natives have been digitally hardwired since birth. He has calculated that the typical college grad today has, on average, exchanged 250,000 emails, IMs and mobile text messages and spent more than 10,000 hours on their cell phones. They've spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading - but over 10,000 hours playing video games and another 20,000 hours watching TV.

Good news is, Digital Immigrants and Natives can coexist peacefully and even work pretty well together. Technology like HubCentrix can help bridge the gap, allowing each group to work in ways that are comfortable for them. One might draft copy in a word program first, then cut and paste into an HTML file for web, while the other will probably just write directly into HTML. The Hub allows both. One might use the Hub primarily to move business and projects along, while the other will use it to also connect socially. One might keep a hard copy of a warranty after scanning it into the Hub, while the other will toss it.

The Hub is an equal opportunity tool, no matter how fluent - or not - you might be. For immigrants, the more you use the Hub, the more you might feel at home here in digital land. Welcome!

Free at Last! If everyone were working and thinking while connect to some large portal spread out on a global range....

From infotoxication to cybernetization, Naseem Javed of E-Commerce Times makes some observations and predictions about the coming new world order. Fun and fascinating reading! Read it here: http://www/ecommercetimes.com/story/69252.html