However, CEPE 2011 will be in Milwaukee, WI! (Love it.)

“There are always two parties; the establishment and the movement”

Raina: I think you are right on about the mythical “digital natives” and the challenges facing us scholars who sit precariously between the young and those writing about the young.

Philosoraptor: I think you are correct to ask if there is something worthwhile to be taken away from this perceived gap between generations with regard to technology. If there is anything worth talking about, I would suggest it is in each group’s relationship to technology. What I mean by that is: many of the most brilliant and established scholars watched today’s powerful information technologies (and I usually focus my attention on the Internet) come into being. Young people have never lived in a time where these powerful ICTs did not exist. I would insist that there has to be something worthwhile in discussing what the impact of growing up alongside (or not growing up alongside) a tool like the Internet has developmentally. (I think this line of thinking has application beyond a generational one – it also speaks to digital divide issues).

Regarding privacy, I see it like this: an older generation grew up and generally formed their sense of identity apart from the Internet. So, when the Internet comes along it looks like a sort-of revelatory tool, depending on how much information one feeds it and allows it to reveal. Young people that have grown up with consistent access to the Internet, however, have never developed an identity that hasn’t included the Internet in some form. Rather than a separate tool, it is woven into the very fabric of who they perceive themselves to be.

This distinction means that, naturally, there will be differences in the ways different groups or generations value privacy or other issues. It doesn’t mean, however, that one group “cares” more than another – but that, then, plays into the discourse of power that you pointed out in your comment as well.

Unfortunately, convincing persons of a slightly older generation of the falsity of this assumption can be difficult at times. Even making them see that they’re making this assumption is hard. Doubly unfortunate is that this disconnect between perception and reality is having a negative impact on what college and university students are capable of wrt research and intelligent information gathering. So yes – dialog, dialog, esp. with persons of our in-between age acting as a translators, bridging that gap, is imperative.

General comment: your (and Emerson’s) examples seem to fit a larger pattern, where members of a more powerful group often seem very comfortable (indeed almost obligated) to speak about, on behalf of, down to a less powerful group, and usually in terms that many members of that less powerful group find — not to put too fine a point on it — both breathtakingly clueless and breathtakingly presumptuous.

Slight caveat: Are there no ways in which that “generational discourse”, however sloppy, is highlighting something correct and/or important?

It may be off the table for you, but it still clearly on the table for Ginny Maziarka, as she and her WISSUP blog have clearly demonstrated.

And, Dan, I did find your transcription of Deborah Caldwell-Stone’s remarks on the aforementioned podcast to be off – and I re-transcribed it to the best of my abilities. I never accuse you of manipulating the transcription in such a way as to be misleading – given any transcription, you are taking a statement made regarding materials in school libraries and stripping it of context in order to apply it broadly across all libraries, including public libraries. What I illustrate is that this comparison cannot – indeed, should not – be be made as haphazardly as you have made it.

Regarding the ellipses comment, my point was the inclusion of “gay-themed books” and nothing else, hence I left the rest out. It’s as simple as that, though your long writing on it almost convinced even me you were right!

By the way, you cleverly assert the “gay” part of this story’s past is still alive. Clever, but it is not. Be that as it may, we have a difference of opinion. A difference of opinion, if honest, has nothing to do with playing gotcha.

By the way, I think “I found Dan’s transcription of the statement to be off” is playing gotcha. If I made an honest error, I apologize. I certainly did not change her words or take them out of context. Saying what you said implies that I did. That’s gotcha.