Tutorial Task 8 for Week 9 (I believe)

Giving some decent thought to Essay Topics or Essay Questions, I think the one that best suits me, my writing and my research skills - essentially, the one that suits my strengths - is Question 1, and I'll post it below:

1. Marc Prensky's "Emerging online life of the digital native" and Dave Weinberger's "A New World" both present different views of contemporary internet users. In light of your own experiences with new technologies do you think they are accurate portrayals? Discuss why or why not with specific examples.

Now, I've found Marc Prensky's article here, but as for Dave Weinberger's article titled A New World, well...I'm stumped. So much so that I've emailed Adam Muir, the course convenor for 1501HUM (New Communication Technologies) with the query Where do I find it?

Moving on with some of my additional sources, or references, i have found a number of interesting articles through Google scholar. They relate as they deal with the behaviour of those native to Digital Technologies such as the web, blogging, sharing, creating, gaming, buying and selling etc. as well as including statistics.

My first reference is titled Internet and Society: A Preliminary Report by Norman H. Nie and Lutz Erbring. Basically, this journal concerns the visible effects the internet (and Information Technology) has had on American citizens. An introductory prologue for the article sums up the articles relevance to my assessment question quite clearly; it follows:

Using data from a national random sample of American adults, it is found that the more time people spend using the Internet, the more they lose contact with their social environment. This effect is noticeable even with just 2–5 Internet hours per week, and it rises substantially for those spending more than 10 hours per week.

My second reference is titled Days and Night on the Internet and is co-authored by Philip E. N. Howard, Lee Raine and Steve Jones. As an American research paper, its concern is how the internet has spread throughout America, and looks statistically at the length of time users spend on the net, the frequency of times they use the net and the demographics of those users. It's insightful and helps one understand a little more closely the people more inclined to use the net; their behaviour and assists me in writing my essay, helping me to deduce what a contemporary internet user really is.

My third reference is titled The Internet and Social Life and is written by John A. Bargh and Katelyn Y. A. McKenna. This paper is interesting, because it addresses the historical context of the internet, and then it examines the effects of the Internet on an individual user's psychological well-being, it's effects on personal relationships, identity, the workplace and social interaction and effects on the community. I think this article will be useful from the opposite to a analytical, statistical paper and concerns more the negative effects of internet use, as opposed to Prensky's and Wienberger's positive portrayals of internet use.

My fourth reference is titled Has The Internet Become Indispensable? by Donna Hoffman, Thomas Novak and Alladi Venkatesh. In their article, they explore the idea that the internet (as the title suggests) has become indispensable to people. The idea is that the internet has become so embedded into the daily fabric of people's lives that now, people cant do without it. It also looks at the net as superseding television as the major source of entertainment and continues to raise ideas and points that validate their hypothesis'. Nonetheless the paper is interesting from two standpoints: one as the internet being indispensable in a good way, for business and as an educational tool and second as a negative influence relating to computer addiction through online gaming and pornography.

Lastly, my fifth reference is titled Addiction to the Internet and Online Gaming and its by Peter Wiemer-Hastings. I thought this article would offer an interesting point of view in terms of the assessments question regarding accurate portrayals of internet users. I've noticed in both Prensky's and Wienberger's articles, they make little mention to internet addiction thus, this article could serve to oppose the views both aforementioned authors have. This obviously then is an article that concentrates on the adverse affects of internet use, and addresses the notion of internet addiction and it's shared aspects to substance addiction. To me, of all the articles I have chosen, this one strikes me as the more readable and the less academic.