Years ago, Italian immigrants from back East would never travel too far from home without packing garlic bread, olive oil and Romano cheese purchased from their neighborhood Italian-American delis. They wanted to be prepared as they ventured into the vast land of Wonder bread and margarine. On airplanes, that garlic and cheese would give off a strong odor, and fellow passengers sometimes sniffed in disapproval.

When I board airplanes wearing my Sony compact disc player, I feel like those Italian immigrants of old. The disc player is an almost obsolete technology, because it plays only one CD at a time. I pass by young people who can listen to 2,000 songs on their iPods. Sometimes, I sense their disapproval.

I am a digital immigrant who grew up on record players, tape recorders and televisions with rabbit ears. I’m trying my best to learn the ways of the digital natives – the younger people among us who grew up on computer technology. Immigrants from other lands are my role models in how to live between two cultures. They’ve taught me to:

“ Learn the language. Eager new immigrants welcome help as they struggle with English. They want to be corrected when they misuse words, phrases and idioms. Digital natives speak a language foreign to those of us born in analog country. For instance, digital “tape recorders” don’t use tapes. Their correct name: digital audio recorders. It sounds odd to me. But we digital immigrants must accept that we will always speak with an analog accent.

“ Learn humility. Immigrants who were doctors, lawyers and professors in their old countries sometimes must return to school, learn new job skills and start over in careers. At the newspaper now, we are all being encouraged to try multimedia storytelling. Those of us trained to report and write lengthy treatises on complex topics must now figure out how to get our point across in one-minute audio or video presentations. It’s humbling.

“ Learn along with other immigrants. New immigrants confide that sometimes subtle “assimilation competitions” develop among immigrants new to this country. Who is learning the language the fastest? Who has best adapted American-like tastes in clothes, food, cars and furniture?

At spokesmanreview.com, you’ll find 37 blogs – online postings on various topics written by reporters and editors here. Most of the S-R bloggers are digital immigrants. The blogs allow us to experiment with audio, video, photo-editing, Web-linking and all the other skills the digital natives in the newsroom learned in middle school. Most important, we can do this without looking foolish, because not many people read our blogs. The digital natives in charge of our Web site are very clever to encourage this competition by sending out every week the statistics on how many “page hits” each blog receives. Page hit is a digital term loosely comparable to the analog word reader.

Dave Oliveria’s blog, Huckleberries Online, is definitely winning our subtle assimilation competition here.

“ Learn patience. Digital immigrants are wise to be patient when new technology is introduced. Some of it will disappear quickly, because the digital natives will come up with something better. So I cling to my solid Sony disc player the way my Italian relatives clung to their substantial garlic bread as they ventured into a Wonder bread world. It’s comforting. And much lighter than my 1980s “boom box” which, by the way, still plays some beautiful music.