Born Digital: Pros and Cons for the First Online Generation

We’re the first people to be brought up fully on line. That was good for a few things: tech literacy, self-education. There’s a down side, though—one we rarely talk about.

We can use software rapidly, but sometimes not all that well. Most of us were not taught the fundamentals. We operate presets, templates, visual editors—with no understanding what they do under the hood. That’s efficient, until something goes wrong.

At WebSlap, I’ve worked on dozens of setups that seemed fine on the surface but were littered with subtle issues: 30+ unused plugins, five fonts coming from different CDNs, broken caching headers. The webby version of duct tape.

None of this is about putting blame on anyone. It’s about the impact that digital-native behaviors have on our work. Speed isn’t always desirable. Quick answers do not scale. And no amount of good tools can solve for lousy behavior.

Having been born digital gives us a head start. Yet we still need to develop the discipline.

Dennis