The early years

I came home one Saturday after spending the night at my cousin’s house to find my own home abuzz with excitement. I went into the back room and found my parents and siblings gathered around the newest addition to our family: a big, boxy computer the color of grandma’s support hose. It was 1994; I was eight, almost nine, years old and didn’t know anybody else, besides my techie uncle, who had a computer at home. I must have spent hours at that computer, mostly waiting for pages to load, printing off pictures of my favorite ice skaters and reading about Outer Space on Encarta. Encarta, more than any other program or game, was by far my favorite. I spent a lot of time devouring facts and new bits of information and it was because of this program that my interest in space was fueled into an obsession. I was 11 years old and I remember sitting in my grandma’s computer room in her basement and telling her about my dream to go to Space Camp. She suddenly turned around, connected to the internet, and after the familiar dial tone and beeps of the modem connecting, she went to the Space Camp website and signed me up.
The following summer, when I was 12, my dream of going to Space Camp, a dream that had been burning since the first time I read an article on space travel on Encarta, was realized.
I’m nearly 24 years old and most of my life has involved some sort of technology. When I was little, I got to go to work with my Grandma while my parents made hospital visits with my little sister who had some health problems. I would watch my Grandma work for hours on her computer, marveling at its magic screen. After a few years, my family got their own computer where lots of time was spent learning and playing instructional games. One of the best days was when my dad brought home “Flight Simulator” for the computer, complete with a joystick that looked like the ones pilots use. I remember multiple instances where my siblings and I would be gathered around as my dad ‘flew’ over computer-simulated landscapes, marveling at the technology and begging for a turn. When I got to elementary school, going to the computer lab became a part of our weekly curriculum. In my younger years at school, we mostly played with Paintshop, but as we got older, our teachers started making us do typing exercises, with the occasional reward of a game of “Oregon Trail.” When I entered the 9th grade, I took a typing class. I hated that class with a fiery passion, but in the end it helped me become a fast and proficient typer and ultimately, a better computer user. Over the course of high school, I became very familiar and comfortable with computers and began exploring what the Internet had to offer. During my senior year, I started a blog on Xanga. My friends and I would update our posts pretty regularly and even began collaborating on short stories. I think it was at this time that I really became aware of my identity in the online sphere and where I fit in. I was no longer just an observer of Internet activity; I was taking part in a growing discussion, creating new texts and adding information to the web. I learned how to navigate the web and how to determine the credibility of a site. I don’t know if there was ever one day where I woke up and realized I knew the Internet; instead, it feels like something that is an intrinsic and instinctual skill. By playing around and exploring the functions of my computer and various programs, I learned how to identify problems and fix them. The sharpening of these problem solving skills have, more than anything else, made becoming familiar with other technologies amazingly simple.