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The App Generation
General Interest 25
How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy,
and Imagination in a Digital World
Howard Gardner and Katie Davis
No one has failed to notice that the current generation of youth is
deeply – some would say totally – involved with digital media.
Professors Howard Gardner and Katie Davis name today’s young
people The App Generation, and in this spellbinding book they explore
what it means to be ‘app-dependent’ versus ‘app-enabled’ and how life
for this generation differs from life before the digital era.
Gardner and Davis are concerned with three vital areas of adolescent life:
identity, intimacy and imagination. Through innovative research,
including interviews of young people, focus groups of those who work
with them, and a unique comparison of youthful artistic productions
before and after the digital revolution, the authors uncover the drawbacks
of apps: they may foreclose a sense of identity, encourage superficial
relations with others and stunt creative imagination. On the other hand,
the benefits of apps are equally striking: they can promote a strong sense
of identity, allow deep relationships and stimulate creativity. The
challenge is to venture beyond the ways that apps are designed to be
used, Gardner and Davis conclude, and they suggest how the power of
apps can be a springboard to greater creativity and higher aspirations.
January
224 pp. 210x140mm. 3 b/w illus.
HB ISBN 978-0-300-19621-4 £16.99*
Howard Gardner is Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the
Harvard Graduate School of Education and senior director of Harvard
Project Zero, an educational research group. Katie Davis is assistant
professor, University of Washington Information School.
Translation rights: Kneerim, Williams & Bloom Agency, Boston
Status Update
Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age
Alice Marwick
Social media technologies such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook
promised a new participatory online culture. Yet, technology insider Alice
Marwick contends in this insightful book, ‘Web 2.0’ only encouraged a
preoccupation with status and attention. Her original research – which
includes conversations with entrepreneurs, internet celebrities and Silicon
Valley journalists – explores the culture and ideology of San Francisco’s
tech community in the period between the dot com boom and the App
Store, when the city was the world’s centre of social media development.
November
320 pp. 234x156mm. 2 b/w illus.
HB ISBN 978-0-300-17672-8 £17.99*
Marwick argues that early revolutionary goals have failed to materialise:
while many continue to view social media as democratic, these
technologies instead turn users into marketers and self-promoters, and
leave technology companies poised to violate privacy and to prioritise
profits over participation. Marwick analyses status-building techniques
– such as self-branding, micro-celebrity and life-streaming – to show
that Web 2.0 did not provide a cultural revolution, but only furthered
inequality and reinforced traditional social stratification, demarcated by
race, class and gender.
Alice Marwick is assistant professor, communication and media studies,
Fordham University. Previously a researcher at Microsoft Research, she
has written for the New York Times, the Daily Beast and the Guardian.