Blog Smith

John Palfrey, a professor at Harvard Law School and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has co-written two books examining online issues -- Access Denied, which examines global Internet censorship and filtering, and Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. The latter book, published last month, set out to provide "digital immigrants" -- older generations of parents, teachers and others -- with a portrait of "digital natives," who were born after 1980.

Palfrey was asked questions and I posted his answer below:

Which findings in the book were most surprising to you? I didn't find as many young people taking advantage of doing everything they could do with technology. I didn't see the outpouring of creativity I was hoping to see.

I wanted to see that the technology was a gateway to get more young people involved in civic life. I didn't find a huge rush to use these technologies to improve the world. There are examples of incredible social entrepreneurs … but there is not a large-scale rush, which I was hoping to see.