Technology's place in my life

I came to the dinner table once when I was ten or eleven and, following up on a conversation I was having with my father, said, "Yeah, that's really high tech." My dad nodded, but my mom looked up. Her eyes narrowed. "Do you know what high tech means?" she asked. I did. At least, I knew that "tech" meant "technology," and I told her so. That answer was good enough, and the conversation continued. The question stuck with me, though, because although I knew the word, I didn't really have any idea what "technology" meant.

When I was an elementary school student, technology lived in the learning center down the hall from my first grade classroom. When I finished my seatwork early, Mrs. Sesta sent me down the hall to place my ears inside oversized headphones and listen to French recitations. (I don't speak French.) But the most appealing device in the learning center was a small electronic box on which word scrolled by that had a small dial with which we students could control the speed of the words. Just like scrolling text at the bottom of a t.v. screen, words flew by, and these words told stories. The dial was numbered, and the faster you could read, the higher you could turn the dial. Some students dreaded this exercise. I loved it, and I prided myself on the number I could get to.

Years later, I made a facetious comment to my sister Maria about how glad I was that I could read a television ticker, thanks to those learning center sessions. "You know that wasn't designed to teach you how to read scrolling text, right?" she said. "It was just to improve your reading skills." I honestly hadn't considered that.

Following my relationship with the scrolling reader, I found other technologies in the learning center to love. I learned to type--starting with my fingers on the home keys and using paper dividers to keep each finger in its designated line. I discovered computer games. And I learned simple Basic programming, a talent that came in handy in fifth grade one a classmate asked me to write a program to play "Ice, Ice Baby" and I was able to. Unfortunately, Vanilla Ice didn't consider that his two-note melody would translate poorly to computer bleeps. My classmate was only mildly impressed.

While I enjoy most technology, my position in a generation that did not grow up with the Internet but that has had computers as integral parts of most of our schooling and of all of our working lives has affected which technological tools I embrace. I latch on to tools that enhance my professional work, but avoid online social networking--a realm of technology that bridges a public/private divide that I'm not sure I'm ready to cross. (Incidentally, I've been thinking about starting a blog for a few years, but haven't. This one was created for a class, and if it hadn't been a requirement, I don't know if I would have ever made one, even though the idea of blogs is appealing to me.) Although I'm sure many people in my generation would disagree, I feel this generational position allows us to take advantage of technology while recognizing that sitting in front of a computer won't ever be a substitute for real life experiences: on most days, I'd choose anything outside over anything online. But I'm getting off topic...

As we've been reading multiple definitions and understandings of what technology is in English 808: Technology and Literacy, I have begun to more clearly see all the tools of technology present in every day life. In a way, having so many technologies and tools at our fingertips makes our non-tech devices even more quaint and appealing: pen and paper, notebooks, voices.

Thinking of these simpler tools--technologies themselves, I suppose--makes me recall my first experience with sewing, an act involving a few small tools: thread, needle, fabric. My mother taught me to sew and showed me how to sew a circle. Armed with this new knowledge, I went to my father and said I could teach him how to sew. He agreed, and watched as I demonstrated. When I handed the fabric to him to try and told him to sew a circle as I had shown him, he slowly and silently sewed a bird's head. It had a beak and a tiny circular stitch for an eye. I was at once amazed and disgruntled. But there is something in this experience worth remembering: when I discovered something new, it didn't occur to me that someone other than the person who had taught me would already know about it. Yet when I realized he did, I was able to learn even more.