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Born Digital arrives on bookshelves

The Berkman Center is pleased to announce that Faculty Co-Director John Palfrey and Faculty Fellow Urs Gasser's Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (Basic Books) is now available.*

Born Digital is an essential intervention in and guide through the discussion around children born into and raised in a connected, digital world. Urs and John tackle the issues -- from online safety to the participation gap to digital creativity and beyond -- in ways that are congenial to fellow academics, as well as to parents, teachers, and others interested in youth and technology.

For more information, links to booksellers, and an excerpt, visit the book's website
(plus, check out the Basic Books interview with John Palfrey).

(Also, in keeping with the themes of the book, Born Digital is available digitally -- in a Kindle Edition from Amazon.)

This publication is a significant one for the Berkman community. In terms of youth and technology, Born Digital both synthesizes and traverses Berkman's areas of inquiry, building on the interdisciplinary research carried out by the Digital Natives project's transatlantic team (from the Berkman Center and from the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland). The interviews and engagement that inform Born Digital were undertaken around the world, and young people -- in research, writing, and media-making -- have themselves played a role in developing the project.

For more information about the Digital Natives project, including links to the project's feeds and other resources, visit http://www.digitalnative.org; and be sure to explore the intern-created “Reporters in the Field” video series, which addresses many of the themes of Born Digital.

And we welcome you to join in the conversation around the book and project by commenting on the Digital Natives blog or YouTube channel or on blogs where reactions to Born Digital are being posted.

For live discussion, we are planning a number of Born Digital events for the coming semester. Details can be found on the Berkman Center Events page.

Congratulations to John and Urs (and the whole Digital Natives project team) on this tremendous accomplishment!

 


BORN DIGITAL: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
John Palfrey and Urs Gasser

Published by Basic Books
Publication Date: September 2, 2008
Hardcover / $25.95 / 288 pages
ISBN: 978-0-465-00515-4

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