Digital Natives

I'm completely intrigued by this article. You can see the outline of an entirely new media apparatus coming into sharp focus. It makes Gregory Ulmer's theorizing (which I know mostly from classes with him at University of Florida and his book Teletheory) seem unbelievably prescient. I'm thinking, in particular, of his concept of 'electracy', his notion of electronic media literacy. What made me think of this are the comments in the article about how the college students under scrutiny get their news in a 'disaggregated' way. They pay almost no attention to the big 20th Century forms of mass media (television and newspapers). This is a kind of media engagement, an electronic media apparatus, that, as theorized by Ulmer owes as much to pre-Gutenberg oral cultures as it does to post-Gutenberg print ones. Mcluhan was not fooling around when he coined term "Global Village." And I feel like now, more than ever, I need to go back and not just read more Ulmer, but Walter J. Ong and Marshall Mcluhan as well.