Kenophobia
One of our first assignments in the class "Composing Cyberspace," we were asked to... stop writing in cyberspace. No social media or texting for five days, but instead, a handwritten journal of our experience, one entry per day. The assignment to me illustrates the fundamental difference the textural "space" of cyberspace represents to different generations. There's an anecdote from Richard Bartles in Designing Virtual Worlds of American nerds running up thousand-dollar phone bills connecting to the first multi-user dungeon game, so addictive was the experience of live digital networking. But if you grow up with the addiction, is it an addiction? Or is it just... a part of life? Are we addicted to breathing, when our distant ancestors got along just fine with gills? Day 1 (Thursday, 8/31) I'm a digital immigrant myself. Before age 12 or so (around 1995 or '96) we had no Internet access in my home. Not that many did, but I was one of...