Pensky suggests that our culture is now made up of digital natives and digital immigrants. Digital natives are those who were born or went through their juvenile years during this relatively recent period. They easily master the new electronic technologies through play and games, just as the older generation mastered natural time/space through play and games. Digital natives comfortably multitask on a computer screen, just as they easily learned to observe and respond to a variety of foreground and background activity in soccer and other games they play. Cell phones and computers increasingly mediate their social interaction.

Digital immigrants are those of us who came into this new environment later in life. Our brain had been tuned to the rhythms and complexities of natural time/space, and so we tend to respond to challenges one by one and step by step. Our social life focuses on direct interaction with friends and business contacts. We study the printed manuals of all new technologies we acquire, much like we read descriptive materials about places we intend to visit.

It took me a long time to move from thinking of my first computer as a really expensive typewriter to the ease I now have with it as a transformative device. And then I had to start all over again with cell phones. So older folks are like immigrants to a new country and its culture. We begin with the elements we can easily master and avoid or seek help for those we can't. For example, my wife and I prefer the feel and format of a daily newspaper, but our grandchildren tend to get their news via the Internet.