Gardner on New Digital Media

The new digital media bring to mind two longtime considerations. As formulated by the historian Frederick Jackson Turner, America has been a country of frontiers. With the New Digital Media, we have a new and essentially unlimited set of frontiers — those embodied in virtual realities.

The second feature, pointed out almost 200 years ago by the French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville, is that America is a country of voluntary organizations. The New Digital Media have spawned innumerable networks and associations, dedicated to every cause and pursuit that one can think of, and, no doubt, many that are inconceivable. Snippets from Howard Gardner's final post on the MacArthur Foundation's Spotlight.