You hear a lot of talk about digital natives and how their generational swamping of everything will change the world. I don't really buy that. I don't buy many generational generalisations at all. But if we accept the general generational generalisation premise, then I think its time to start cherishing the skills and attitudes of analogue natives.
I was recently slightly involved in a sort of art project done by some alpha digital natives that involved sending a real physical object to people. It was a nice idea. But you could tell they hadn't given enough thought to the problems of analogue friction. My participation in this nice little idea required two specific trips to the post office and about 40 minutes of waiting around in queues. Which is too much for a nice little idea. A digital version of this idea would have required about 3 minutes of commitment while not going anywhere. And that would have been fine.
Of course, part of the charm of this thing is that it was physical/analogue/real - but I think an analogue native would have recognised that they'd have needed to work much harder to remove the friction, or make it much more than a nice little idea.
So much joyful digital stuff is only a pleasure because it's hugely convenient; quick, free, indoors, no heavy lifting. That's enabled lovely little thoughts to get out there. But as 'digital natives' get more interested in the real world; embedding in it, augmenting it, connecting it, weaponising it, arduinoing it, printing it out, then those thoughts/things need to get better. And we might all need to acquire some analogue native skills.
Or something. Anyway.
