In the previous post I talked about the digital natives and how they put into question the way our old leaders think. At the LIFT conference in Geneva, Switzerland, experts contrasted the network-focus of the digital natives with the focus on hierarchy and distance of the leaders. It was also mentioned that the real tsunami of digital natives does not take place in Europe or Japan because of demographic trends. Many European countries and Japan risk becoming countries with majorities of senior citizens.
However, all this does not imply that digital natives in emerging countries are one homogeneous group. Florence Chee talked at LIFT about her research in the use of virtual worlds and games as means of communication. How do factors like culture, social structure, and infrastructure affect how people play online games in different global contexts? Chee visited 6 countries and researched the remarkable differences in the usage of virtual worlds and games. Here is the video of her presentation at LIFT (the title ‘Yuri Suzuki’ is an error):
You can find more on her blog, Constructing Amusement and for the academically inclined there is this link to Public Virtual World Gaming in Asia: Preparatory Fieldwork for Site Selection, Protocol Testing and Research Instrument Development (go here for the full pdf document).
Related on MixedRealities: the work of Cory Doctorow and his recent book For the Win about young gamers uniting internationally to defend their rights.
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