Friday 8 October 2010

Jonathan Franzen on Apple

I've been reading, and quite enjoying, Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (I've the first edition with the typos).

A section that made me laugh out loud was when one of the main characters, a not-quite-failed rock star called Richard Katz launches into an attack on Apple - "I think the iPod is the true face of Republican politics" (Franzen: 2010: 201) - as part of a bigger tirade against the fake subversive edge of popular music culture in response to a question about the "MP3 revolution".

Here's a short extract:
I've been given the opportunity to participate in the pop-music mainstream, and manufacture Chiclets, and to try to persuade fourteen-year-olds that the look and feel of Apple computer products is an indication of Apple computer's commitment to making the world a better place. Because making the world a better place is cool, right? And Apple computer must be way more committed to a better world, because iPods are so much cooler-looking than other MP3 players, which is why they're more expensive and incompatible with other companies' software, because - well, actually it's a little unclear why, in a better world, the very coolest products have to bring the most obscene profits to a tiny number of residents of the better world. [...] We're about the relentless enforcement and exploitation of our intellectual-property rights. We're about persuading ten-year-old children to spend twenty-five dollars on a cool little silicone iPod case that it costs a licensed Apple computer subsidiary thirty-nine cents to manufacture.
Strangely, as someone in thrall to the unhealthy consumerist fetishism of all things Apple, it struck a bit of a chord. I love the design of their products but, partly as a result of recent experiences with the iPad, am increasingly irritated by Apple's closedness, control freakery and ruthless pursuit of profit.



References

Franzen, J. (2010). Freedom. London: Fourth Estate.

Wednesday 6 October 2010

Those 'not digital natives' references


Net Generation


This is me using my blog again as a dumping ground for my references. This time it's for all those lovely papers debunking the myth of the 'digital native':
Bayne, S. and Ross, J. (2007). The ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’: a dangerous opposition. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) December 2007. PDF format. http://www.malts.ed.ac.uk/staff/sian/natives_final.pdf
Bennett, S., Maton, K. and Kervin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5): 775-786
Bennett, S. and Maton, K. (2010). Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate: Towards a more nuanced understanding of students' technology experiences. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(5): 321–331
Brown, C. and Czerniewicz, L. (2010). Debunking the ‘digital native’: beyond digital apartheid, towards digital democracy. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(5): 357–369
Burhanna, K.J. et al. (2009). No Natives Here: A Focus Group Study of Student Perceptions of Web 2.0 and the Academic Library. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 35(6): 523-532
Hargittai, E. (2010). Digital Na(t)ives? Variation in Internet Skills and Uses among Members of the “Net Generation”. Sociological Inquiry. 80(1):92-113
Helsper, E. J. and Eynon, R. (2010). Digital natives: where is the evidence? British Educational Research Journal, 36(3): 503-520
Jones, C. and Czerniewicz , L. (2010).Describing or debunking? The net generation and digital natives. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(5): 317–320
Jones, C. and Healing, G. (2010). Net generation students: agency and choice and the new technologies. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(5): 344–356
G. Kennedy, T. Judd, B. Dalgarno and J. Waycott (2010). Beyond natives and immigrants: exploring types of net generation students. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(5): 332–343
Margaryan, A., Littlejohn, A. and Vojt, G. (2010). Are digital natives a myth or reality? University students’ use of digital technologies. Computers & Education. Article in press
Selwyn, N. (2009). The digital native - myth and reality. Invited presentation to CLIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals). London Seminar Series. London 10th March 2009. http://www.scribd.com/doc/9775892/Digital-Native

If you have any more please pass them on.

Delicious links.