Media Convergence

Prennsky's comments are most interesting when looked it from a Media Studies position on convergence. While Media Studies suggests the digital technologies are converging, Prennsky suggests that, at least in the short term, digital users are diverging. I certainly lie somewhere in the middle of his dichotomy. While I reject omnipresent telephony, in many other ways I side more with the conceptions of the digital native. I suspect my work with the computer museum may have made my transition to digital life somewhat easier. Mike and I were also talking about Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy. In Media Culture and Theory II with Dr. Potter, we talked about the huge difference between pre-literate thought and literate thought which has been very greatly effected and shaped by not merely writing, but also publishing, and how our thoughts are often given a form by the nature and organisation of print. The new digital approach, continues to influence the nature of thought processes, often returning us, in part, to pre-literate approaches to knowledge. Ong's ideas, which centre on the use of memory for information storage, give us new approaches to behaviour and thought, and make more understandable differences that are now sometimes solely attributed to age difference.

In my daily life, I use telephony sparingly, e-mail frequently and instant messaging somewhat. I think IM's often tiresome, resulting in interminable babble about nothing if allowed to go on. I prefer to keep it short.