See this clip featuring Julia Stiles in the show Ghostwriter to see what I mean:
"Can you jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace?"
"What?" (Yeah, me too, blue sweater girl.)Soon after we got the computer, though, my career as an amateur techie began. I guess the whole thing was my fault. I discovered that on the visual skin of Windows 3.1 (some weird hallway scene that helped you visualize your folders as rooms in a house) I could add a password to any "room." After typing in a random string of characters (remember, this is the 90s and before you had to confirm password entries), I found myself locked out of the computer. Panicked, I tried to figure out what I had typed. Dad saw what I was doing and gave a frustrated sigh. "Do you remember what you typed?" he asked.
"I think it was something like, 'N, n, n, n."
Dad tried that combination of letters, and I watched him become angry after a few unsuccessful tries. I went into the other room, and a moment later I heard him say, "Woo-hoo!" like Homer Simpson. "It started with a capital 'N'," he said.
Remember Trying to Use Computers in the 90s?
I spent the next several years accidentally messing up the computer and then figuring out how to fix it. As new versions of America Online and Windows were released, I'd have to learn them and then explain how to fix their inherent software problems to my parents. (As a side note, I'm glad the days of software becoming dramatically buggy from one version to the next seem to be over, at least to some degree. Does anyone remember using AOL 3.1 because version 4.0 simply didn't work?) When our first computer finally died sometime in 2002, we replaced it with a new tower and monitor with new features and problems. Sure, Iomega Zip drives had a great storage capacity, but they also had a notorious fail rate.
Video Games in High School, or,
How to Play Brood War Instead of Going to Prom
Around this time high school set in and my friends and I started playing network games on the school computers. While I was never the best at Quake 3, Starcraft or Jedi Knight, I was certainly always in the top 3. My interest in technology (or at least how technology could play video games) merged with my social life. A new game meant a new way to pass the time with my friends. Our technological leanings both brought us together as friends and separated us from other students, placing us deeper into geek culture without really being aware of what was going on.
During this time, I also started to participate in online communities. I experienced the thrill of seeing over a hundred replies to my forum thread, of having people on the forum who I'd never met in person refer to me in conversation, of complaining about the minor changes to the site with a united voice that said, "We're in control here, not you, Mr. High-and-mighty Webmaster." It was my first experience with the potential of online communities.
Accidental English
Even though I started my college career with a declared major of Computer Engineering, I changed it to English for some reason when I finished my AA and transferred to BYU-Idaho. There wasn't any fanfare or difficult meditation about what my career path would be. The lady from the BYU-I registrar's office asked me, "What is your major?" and I told her, "Ah, English."
"Okay," she replied. "And what would you like your emphasis to be?"
"What are my choices?"
"Literature, English education, professional writing and creative writing."
"Okay, let's do professional writing." It just sounded like the one that would get me a job someday.
As I took courses, I started to merge my interest in writing with my interest in technology. When I learned that technical writers are responsible for writing instruction manuals, I was genuinely excited. "Wait," I said, "People will pay me to write manuals for vacuum cleaners?" The challenge of explaining a technical concept to someone in a way that couldn't be misunderstood brought me back to my childhood when I'd have to explain to Mom, again, how to make a new folder on the desktop. My interest in humanity and psychology seemed to marry my interest in technology so perfectly. Audience awareness became a game and challenge.
This brings me to my current place in graduate school where I don't have to get a real job for two years because I'm writing a long paper on how internet communities can throw birthday parties for old men in the real world. Even though I'm an American Studies major, that's really an excuse to look at the psychology and humanity of technology users and try to understand how to reach them effectively, how to communicate with them so a message is understood and received perfectly. It's all kind of come full circle in a way.
Technical Prophecy
I feel my experience with technology has given me a kind of technological foresight. I can see new technology and see how it's going to change things down the line. I'm not always right--for example, Google Wave wasn't as revolutionary as I thought it would be even though other services have successfully implemented some of its features--but I think I have a pretty good track record. For example, I'm calling it now: the Google Chrome OS won't take off until it fully merges with Android for tablets, and tablets themselves won't be as popular as they are now in 7 years because people will realize it's a complete pain in the ass to type on an iPad. Google+ is trying too hard but it doesn't offer anything unique, meaning it will turn into more of a wasteland than it is now unless Google does something to make it truly innovative and necessary. And to make a prediction not related to Google, in about 10 years we won't be bothering with full desktop apps except in certain situations (which will be rare); instead, I think everything will be based on the web and consumers will be used to logging in on multiple devices to access their programs and files. Despite what a few loud voices say, people under 30 don't really care about privacy,so we'll let anyone store our data for us so we don't have to.
Of course, those things can only be proven or disproven in time, but I think the advancements in technology and communication are intrinsically tied to changing generational attitudes. For example, since my generation has always grown up with decreased privacy due to Patriot Act-type laws and the rise of internet profiles all coinciding with each other, we're not going to whine as much about what Facebook does with our data as the current generation of professionals using computers does. We willingly give up our data without a second thought, and we don't even think about how we use it. Does anyone read the iTunes EULA? Features like location logging and involuntary message archiving are simply going to become the norm, and we're going to let it happen because we're used to our technology not being private.
So Matt, Who Cares?
What does any of this have to do with my experience with technology? As someone who writes freelance content for blogs and websites, it's my job to understand the current generation of computer users to know how to communicate with them best. As someone who knows the internet changes constantly and who wants to still have a job in 5 years, I know I'll have to update my skills and see what changes are coming around the corner so I'm not left behind. This means more than purchasing a tablet so I can figure out what the buzz is, or using a smartphone so I can merge technology and my life more completely. It means constantly learning about the industry and new technologies and working to understand them as soon as possible.
