A Brain, An Athlete, A Basket Case, A Princess, A Criminal...And A Digital Immigrant?

While having dinner with some friends, one asked if anyone else had caught "The Breakfast Club" recently on TV. Part of growing up in the 80s for me means a shameless love for John Hughes films so my ears perked up.

There is a scene in the movie where John, one of the detainees, is rearranging the library's card catalogue in rebellion. For those of you who didn't spend their high-school years in tight-rolled jeans and aqua net-sprayed hair, there was actually a time when the nerve center of the entire library was a 5" x 7" drawer filled with note cards. No computers, no Yahoo! or Google. Just the original search engine. The Dewey Decimal system.

Both friends are educators at a well-known private school in the very suburbs that Hughes himself graduated from in Chicago. They brought up that while "re-viewing" the movie, it occurred to them during that scene just how dated it is for many of their students now, as they are all digital natives. There has never been a time in their lives when computers, internet and email didn’t exist. Digital natives grew up with all of it. Digital immigrants, by contrast, had to be introduced to it. Adapt to it.

Now despite my birthday placing me in the “immigrant” category, I have always considered myself as savvy as any digital native. But looking back at the conversation today, it occurs to me that that as “with it” as I like to think I am, we were still talking about catching the Brat Pack on old-fashioned cable TV—Not online.

They can’t deport me for that, can they?