Has The Definition of a Co-Worker Changed?
by Steve on June 18, 2008
Workstreamer wanted to highlight a recent post by Abbie Lundberg titled, Digital Natives in Our Midst. We felt Lundberg’s central point is an important and in need of exposure:
Digital Natives view as “co-workers” anyone within their network who can help them solve a problem.
Lundberg’s terminology “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” was coined by Marc Prensky in 2001, to describe the emerging dichotomy in both education and the work place.
Lundberg then argues that due to a divide in technological abilities, it is increasingly difficult for the baby boomers, or “digital immigrant generation” to teach and lead the up-and-coming generation digital natives as young people are more proficient at using technology than professors and/or bosses. Obviously there both significant positives and negatives associated with this change.
Furthermore, Lundberg notes that my generation utilizes the entirety of its social network to answer work-related questions (i.e. an i-banker calls a law buddy for a question about a deal). This is something that she claims is largely enabled by technology, and specifically social media.
In addition, many firms are losing potential revenue because employees are both giving and receiving work-related advice free-of-charge; this poses a serious threat to many firms that relied on secured-knowledge for revenue.
In sum, Lundberg believes that this new phenomena has the potential to really shake things up. But enough about what Lundberg thinks…what are your thoughts?
Tagged as:
abbie lundberg,
co-workers,
coworker,
digital immigrants,
digital natives,
gen y,
marc prensky,
millenials,
online collaboration,
steve preefer