The App Generation (22 page)

On one reading, it may seem that we see apps and the App Generation as moving inexorably in the direction of ready-made solutions to existing problems. In this unappealing scenario, identities will be more superficial, packaged less interestingly, idiosyncratically, less meaningfully consolidated; intimacy—even if it proves more robust than privacy—will be more superficial, more tenuous, less likely to evolve over time; and imagination will be enhanced chiefly for evident problems with evident routes toward their solution. Or, extending beyond our individual young subjects, it may seem that, in spheres ranging from religion to education, the plurality of apps, and the uses to which they're currently put, lean strongly in the direction of dependence, not enablement.

But the App Generation (and its successors) need not accept these trends. As individuals, as groups, as cultures, people can decide at certain times, or under certain circumstances, to
dis-
engage from the digital world, to explore paths on their own,
to form identities, achieve degrees and forms of intimacy, and forge creative directions that had never been anticipated before. (Of course, as Jacques Ellul might have quipped, disconnecting technologically may prove easier than challenging the consciousness created by technology.) The birth of writing did not destroy human memory, though it probably brought to the fore different forms of memory for different purposes. The birth of printing did not destroy beautifully wrought graphic works, nor did it undermine all hierarchically organized religions. And the birth of apps need not destroy the human capacities to generate new issues and new solutions, and to approach them with the aid of technology when helpful, and otherwise to rely on one's wit.

Of course, other potent factors are at work. In this book, we have not spoken much about the ambition and reach of vast multinational corporations or of totalitarian states.
³⁶
For every major medium of communication that began as the product of human imagination, one can tell a story of how megacorporations eventually came to dominate the media and to determine how human beings interacted with them. Google, Apple, Amazon, and their less prominent peers have tremendous power and access to data of a size and scale that not even the most imaginative science fiction writers—H. G. Wells, Jules Verne—could have anticipated a century ago. It would be a brave person who would predict that the fate of corporation-devised and -sold apps would be different; and it would be a naive person who would simply assume that such power will inevitably be dedicated to benign uses.

We must also acknowledge the possibility of powers even greater than those associated with megacorporations and powerful political entities. As we come to understand better our genetic and neurological nature, there will be attempts to reconfigure our species, more or less aggressively, and to usher in a so-called
singularity,
in which the lines between computer and brain, machine and human, mortality and immortality become blurred or blended or disappear altogether.
³⁷
As more than one wag has put it, “The question is no longer, ‘Are computers like us?' but rather, ‘Are we like computers?'” To the extent that these impulses are realized, human tendencies to resist or transcend apps will evaporate. Just as surely as the reach of Big Brother in
1984
or the programming of Alex's brain in
Clockwork Orange,
apps will come to control our lives.

And so we come full circle to the questions raised by Anthony Burgess. Is it better for our species to tolerate our imperfections—our individualized identities, our idiosyncratic forms of intimacy, our stumbling but earnest and perhaps unique efforts to be creative? Or should we attempt to uncover, or create, the full spectrum of apps or the super-app needed or wanted so that you—we—can pursue a certain view of the Good Life? One does not have to embrace a romantic notion of free will to acknowledge that this is a genuine choice, and one that future (if not present) generations will need to make—individually and perhaps collectively.

In closing, let's revisit our central metaphor. As a species, we face a choice. Apps are not going to disappear, and there
is no reason why they should. The question is whether we are going to become increasingly app-dependent—looking for an app in every situation and spurning any that lack a ready app? Or will we become app-enabled—using established and new apps to broaden our repertoire of possibilities? Or even, on rare occasions, tossing technology to the winds, app-transcendent? Perhaps, in the spirit of an analog (rather than a digital) age, and recalling the ticking clock featured on the front page of the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
we should monitor whether, over time, the arrow points toward greater dependency (which for us would be dystopian) or toward greater enabling (which for us would be utopian).

As this book was just about finished, Howard had the opportunity to talk with his grandson Oscar, then aged six and a half, about his experiences with digital media. Except for Howard's checking with Oscar's parents beforehand, Oscar was not prepared or prompted in any way for the chat. He allowed Howard to record the conversation and, in fact, when the interview was concluded, showed Howard how to shut off the recording function on his iPhone.

Not surprisingly, as a child born in 2005, Oscar has always been surrounded by digital media. He is completely conversant and comfortable with the terminology and jargon. Howard asked him what would happen if “Opa” (as Oscar calls his grandfather) took away his iPhone.

O
SCAR:
I would not be sad, I still have a computer.

H
OWARD:
Oh, what's it like?

O
SCAR:
Bigger than my mom's.

H
OWARD:
What do you do on it?

O
SCAR:
Search on toys, go to dot com, to do something like herofactory dot com. Little things. . . . I can write a little code into the line, so I can play some sort of game.

Howard was a bit taken aback at Oscar's ease with terminology (dot com) and activity (write a little code). And so Howard asked him if he ever “Googled” anything. The following exchange ensued:

O
SCAR:
I Google
everything,
Amazon, like anything I need to go to Google or write it down.

H
OWARD:
You sound a bit exasperated.

O
SCAR:
Kind of, but I['m] not sure I know what “exasperated” means.

Howard moved next to what one does and what one does not do with computers. Here Oscar made a very clear distinction:

H
OWARD:
I grew up without computers. What do you think that was like?

O
SCAR:
People would do all chores and more chores and more chores and no fun.

H
OWARD:
No fun?

O
SCAR:
A little bit, but not much fun.

H
OWARD:
Do you use computers for school and study?

O
SCAR:
I don't really do [those] things. I just use my computers for fun.

H
OWARD:
How do your mom and dad use computers?

O
SCAR:
For only one thing . . . work. My mom downloads things that she has to do, like, does work about food in my school [Oscar's mother is doing graduate work in food science].

It appears, then, that Oscar makes a rather sharp division: kids/computers/fun versus adults/no computer/no fun or adults/computers/work.

But were computers merely a source of pleasure and amusement? Howard decided to push Oscar a bit on what digital media did and did not mean to him, and what they enabled or prevented. This conversation proved most illuminating with respect to how Oscar sees the world—his digital worldview:

H
OWARD:
How do you feel when your parents say, “Put it away”?

O
SCAR:
Feel a little blue, a little blue [said in a slightly plaintive tone].

H
OWARD:
How would you feel if your parents took all your computers and phones away for a few weeks?

O
SCAR:
I'd feel a little blue, but I could actually have a little more freedom . . . play with my toys, play with Aggie [his then-eight-month-old sister], go to places with Mom and Dad.

H
OWARD:
What do you mean by “freedom”?

O
SCAR:
Mostly people have technology [his word,
no prompting from his grandfather], they are watching every game, and [makes a boring sound] and do it all day, and [don't] do anything else, but just watch TV. . . . So you can play with toys and things like that.

Oscar is certainly not a student of digital media, nor has he read about utopias and dystopias. Nor have his parents or grandparents discussed with him the ambiguous seductions of the digital media. And yet, at the tender age of six, he already senses that one can become a prisoner of the new technologies and that a world beyond them is beckoning to be explored . . . there were but time and space to do so. He does not need to be a participant in the toy-playing experiment carried out by Elizabeth Bonawitz and her colleagues. In some sense he has attained the insight embedded in that study: even though a well-demonstrated toy or well-designed app has its virtues, there is also virtue—and even reward—in figuring out things for yourself on your own time, in your own way.

With essayist Christine Rosen, we worry about the “ultimate efficiency—having one's needs and desires foreseen and the vicissitudes of future possible experiences controlled.” With poet Allen Tate, we spurn a world in which “we no longer ask ‘is it right,' we ask ‘does it work?'”
³⁸

As authors, we get the privilege of last words. For ourselves, and for those who come after us as well, we desire a world where all human beings have a chance to create their own answers, indeed, to raise their own questions, and to approach them in ways that are their own.

I. EDUCATOR INTERVIEWS

In 2008, we conducted interviews with forty long-standing classroom teachers (twenty-four men, sixteen women) to cull their observations about how current students may be different from the students they taught in the predigital era. Educators and researchers affiliated with Harvard Project Zero recommended these educators to us based on their years of experience and teaching excellence. Participants averaged 23.5 years of teaching experience, and all but two had been teaching since 1992.

Participants were drawn from eighteen schools in the greater Boston area and one in central New Hampshire. All served students from affluent families. In total, we interviewed educators from two middle schools, two colleges, and fifteen high schools.

The educators in our sample represent a broad range of intellectual disciplines, including history (6), general social studies (1), English and/or English literature (6), foreign language (2), art (5), theater arts (7), music (5), biology (3), chemistry (1), physics (2), athletics (2), and general education (1). Several also
coached a sport or, in the case of boarding school teachers, served as housemasters, and could therefore comment on their students' lives outside the classroom.

Two researchers conducted the interviews, which followed a semistructured interview protocol and lasted approximately 90 to 120 minutes. Participants were first asked general questions about the changes they've noticed in various aspects of students' lives, including academic engagement and performance, peer relationships, and extracurricular activities and interests. In an effort to avoid biased responses, we deliberately did not raise the topic of digital media during this part of the interview. However, participants typically introduced the topic on their own, and we were ready with a series of follow-up questions.

All but one of the interviews was audio-recorded. Both interviewers took detailed notes during each interview, which they later synthesized into a single record. Attached to each record was a briefer topsheet that summarized key points of interest. Halfway through the interview process, project staff constructed a matrix grid to organize salient data from each master record and topsheet. Categories were determined by the strength and frequency of a finding and later amended as more data were captured.

II. FOCUS GROUPS

Members of our research team conducted seven focus groups between May 2009 and March 2011. Participants were fifty-eight veteran professionals who each had over twenty years of experience working with young people (roughly ages twelve to twenty-two) in a variety of settings. The professionals included psychoanalysts; psychologists and other mental health workers;
camp directors and longtime counselors; religious leaders; arts educators; and high school teachers and after-school educators who worked primarily with students living in low-income neighborhoods.

The focus group facilitator asked participants to reflect on changes they have observed in youth over the last twenty years and to offer their thoughts on the causes of these changes. Each participant was given 5 to 10 minutes to share his or her initial reflections, with the facilitator asking clarifying questions and summarizing themes as appropriate.

Members of the research team followed up with questions that encouraged participants to elaborate on their answers and invited them to respond to comments made by participants in earlier focus groups. The majority of these follow-up questions related to the “three Is” (identity, intimacy, imagination) identified as dominant themes from earlier, one-on-one interviews with veteran educators. To guard against leading questions, digital media were not introduced as a topic of conversation until a participant explicitly made reference to them.

Following each focus group, researchers compiled their individual field notes into a single memo summarizing the major themes discussed. One researcher then synthesized these themes into a series of formal reports, one for each group of professionals.