Ring Ring...

The earliest memory that I can recall of in terms of using some sort of digital new technology device would have to be my first cell phone. Being the eldest and attending a school that wasn't in my district my parents decided that the best way to keep tabs on my would be to get me a cell phone. I still remember what it looked liked, this blue/black box of a thing with a green screen. I think it even had an antenna., it was a hand me down type of phone that my father had owned.

The purpose of the cell phone was so that my mom wouldn't freak out as much about me taking a long time to get home. My high school was located in Downtown LA and I have to take the city's public transportation to get home which took about an hour in total. Typically my mom would call me as soon as school let out, I would then proceed to walk and talk to my bus stop. After riding for about 25 minutes to stop number 2, I would have to call her back to assure her that I was still alive and then as I boarded the second bus tell her I was on my way home.

My mom was always calling me trying to find out where I was, if I was on my way home or just trying to catch up with me on how my day went she used the cell phone as a way to keep tabs on me and make sure that I was where I supposedly said I was going.

Another first memory with the cell phone would have to be texting. It was a faster, simpler way to inform my mom that I forgot my soccer cleats for practice or a project for a class. Texting was also a discrete way to talk to so it became a new way to communicate not only with my mom but with other people as well. I would text friends to avoid homework or text my dad to find out information I may need. Texting was a whole new world that opened up to me and allowed me to communicate with friends when I was bored and exchange ideas on papers or something of that nature.

I still text a copious amount each day. I actually prefer texting than actual phone calls. The things is I run out of things to mention or talk about with her after about five minutes. My mom and I text more than we talk. In a typical week we will have texted over 50 messages and actually have talked on the phone for less than 20. Same with my dad. Texting is a preferred way of texting being that each of us lead busy lives and live in differed time zones. Texting just makes life that much easier.

The idea of the cell phone still plays huge role in my life today. I am updated about certain news ongoings, sports especially (I am a huge sports fan and continuously get updates about my favorite teams and any other sports news happenings), twitter updates, google and of course normal people. Having a cell phone that was the size of a brick to a smaller size brick (blackberry) which helps me keep my life a little more organized being that serves not only as a phone but an organizer. The advancements of cell phone technology make it difficult for us to live without them. The changes and further developments of the cell phone not only as a phone but as a constant companion one that we feel naked and abandoned without.

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.

DRAFT: Back to the Future

Back to the Future: A Non-Traditional Student

When I returned as a “non-traditional” student this year after an 18-year absence, I didn’t expect to feel particularly advantaged. I’d logged a lot of time in the small-business and business writing world, so I knew I wasn’t arriving entirely unprepared. The fascinating fun part is the sudden view that has opened for me: a crystal-clear contrast of my own digital “then-and-now” is unmistakable in a student context. In every other life aspect, the gradual, thorough digital saturation has been so steady and uninterrupted that it feels seamless. In school, today becomes juxtaposed with how I did it before—and the chasm is revealed.

Thankfully, business (as well as my own interests) has kept me technologically engaged, so I haven’t struggled to bridge a basic skills gap. I have a theory that the only way we get out-moded is by being so attached to how we are used to doing something that we forfeit the opportunity to explore anything else—new things and old alike. They say the old railroad owners went bankrupt because they believed they were in the railroad business, but they had customers because they were in the transportation business. They were unwilling to evolve as a transportation industry. But I wonder if out-moding can go either way: an unwillingness to move forward surely stymies us, but discarding an earlier human skill-set because we think we’ve “evolved” beyond needing it may be just as treacherous. My first child is almost old enough to be my classmate, so it’s interesting for me to hear young adults talk about their grandparents sympathetically, that it’s sad how they have no life, given how severely digital-communication-impaired they are. I’ve often been reminded of a great quotation I once read: When I was a youth, I was impressed by people who are clever. I am older now, and I’m impressed by people who are kind. [cite speaker] (complete this thought.)

Of course, I’ve had a couple of Back to the Future moments, like when a student employee noticed that I’d written down an office location incorrectly. She helpfully explained, “Um, FYI, I’m pretty sure there’s no building on campus called the ELWC.” I told her that when she was in pre-K, the WSC was the ELWC. And BTW, BYU used to be in the WAC, before it was the MWC. But that was even before the MOA was TBA.

I’m not usually unsettled by change, but for nostalgic reasons, it was still fun to discover that some things are the same: the carillon bells, the Tuesday devotionals and the bookstore candy counter remain as constant as planetary fixtures. Other things have changed so much they are almost unrecognizable. The re-engineered Harold B. Lee Library is remarkable in every way, but the most notable difference in the HBLL since 1991 is easy to spot: Today, it has about 350 more computers available for student use.

My first season at BYU was from 1988 to 1991, on the cusp of the digital tide. We were just beginning to glimpse that new communication technologies would soon become an all-access party, but even then, the idea of universally connected communication seemed destined for entirely practical purposes—people and organizations doing business more efficiently with each other. Entertainment and social interaction of any kind was solidly in another category. You had a computer because you were a student; you had a Nintendo because you needed a break. There were plenty of computers on campus—but 99.9% of them were for faculty and administration purposes. The only people I knew who used e-mail were executives with tech companies and university professors. My dad was a professor at BYU at the time, and he got a big kick out of exchanging electronic mail with his brother in Logan, a professor at USU.

The computer lab in the library, to my memory, offered maybe a dozen PCs and 3 or 4 Macs. You had to pay to use a computer in 15 minute increments, so most students didn’t do any real writing there; they’d bring their work to the lab on a floppy disk just for printing. Most students still didn’t own a computer, and many who did hadn’t invested in a printer yet. Before my husband was even my fiancé, he bought his first PC and dot-matrix printer—an Epson 8088 with a 20 MB hard drive. (My iPhone stores about 400 times that much.) His father, a CPA and investment advisor, was alarmed at this ridiculous extravagance. What kind of a student needs to have his very own computer? Not every student apartment had even one computer, so there was a lot of borrowing and bribing going on.

Being the token almost-40-year-old in some of my classes presents an interesting mixed bag of perceptions about the digital literacy of “older” people. Overall, assumptions from young students seem to be roughly divided into two categories: (1) patience and compassion for this mom, who is probably doing something that’s totally new and hard for her, or (2) over-crediting and respect for this woman, who has probably been doing this for years and is just making it official now. Both are partly true.

I’m a prolific texter. I have two teenage sons with a full roster of extra-curricular activities, and family texting keeps the wheels on the train. But I am aware that this is not (yet) totally typical for mothers. In one of my summer classes, we were divided into groups to create oral presentations. In arranging for collaborative time, we exchanged contact info and I asked one male student, “Do you text?” He said he does, and then using his best Eagle Scout manners, he politely offered to teach me how to text on my phone. I laughed, and without thinking, said, “I’m guessing your mom only uses her phone for actual calls.” I apologized and thanked him for the offer, but assured him I already knew how.

My dad retired five years ago, but before then, there was no point in trying to reach him on his cell phone. It was never on. Church callings have kept him busier since his retirement than he was before it—a fact that I believe has contributed to his being fully conversant with cell phones. Before, Mom and Dad would head out for a destination with the plan to meet up with grandkids later, cheerfully calling over their shoulders, “We’ve got the phone with us.” And I’d holler back, “Remember it only works when you turn it ON!”

This little point of discussion got a lot of airtime: Dad didn’t see why the phone should be turned on when he’s not using it. Answer: So we can reach you. But he knows when we’ll be trying to reach him, and he’ll turn it on then. Besides, it wastes the battery. It’s like idling your car. When I told him it consumes a great deal less energy than idling your car, he said fine—it’s like a flashlight, then. Why would he turn on a flashlight and then put it in his pocket? I needed another angle. Dad’s a fisherman; maybe that tortured metaphor will make more sense: Keeping your phone ON is like having your fishing line out, even when you aren’t hungry. Something nice might happen!

Shortly after the flashlight exchange, I overhead my younger son’s scout leaders (one newly married) talking about a similar frustration with their mothers. “You have to turn the phone ON, mom!” He laughed. “Old people are funny about cell phones!” I almost started to share the flashlight story when he turned to me and said, “Oh—sorry—I hope you weren’t offended that I said that.” (Um, I wasn’t—but I might be now!)

[conclusion]

From flip phone to iphone

I’ve had more cell phones than lovers. 5 cell phones; 2 lovers. I use lovers in very strict terms, as I always have. To me, lovers are boyfriends, nothing else. Not a one-time date, or some guy I kissed once. They are guys that have fixed my car or my computer just because they wanted to. They call me or text me late at night, and early in the morning. They add me as a friend on Facebook. These are the guys you don’t want at first, the ones that talk you into liking them. I’ve never been talked into getting a cell phone. Those I’ve always sought out with great purpose and determination.

Back in the day it used to be AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). I spent middle school weeknights in front of a computer screen “talking” to my friends. Since we were only between the ages of 11 and 13 during middle school, we were confined to our dens on school nights after being strapped to the kitchen table for hours doing homework. I’m sure my mother would have liked to attach some sort of apparatus to my head that detected off-topic brain waves and shocked me whenever one made its way into my thoughts. The digital realm was our only way to get together and defy our parents. Sure, they wouldn’t let us out, but that wouldn’t stop us from stoking the coals of our flaming teenage love affairs. I once started “going out” with a guy on AIM and broke up with him in the same 4 hour conversation.

That’s when I first came up with my killer break-up pitch. “Do you ever think we were just better off as friends?” Who can say no to that? I would never have come up with that on the spot. Were it not for the fact that you can take minutes to respond online rather than seconds in person, I would never have had the thinking time to come up with that winner.

This was all pre-cell phone of course. If I’d had a cell phone I would have undoubtedly sat on my bed or in front of the t.v. texting, like I do now. We did have a family cell phone when I was that age, but it didn’t text. We got our first Motorola when I was about ten. It was the size of a small clock radio and had the same digital numeric screen. It’s hard to recall the time when cell phones didn’t have cameras, let alone an actual LCD screen. My parents shared that phone with me sometimes, like when they let me go to the mall with my best friend who was also a Mormon, whose parents were almost as strict as mine. After all, I’d need it to call them when I was done so they could pick me up in the family SUV. I must say that even the embarrassment of the roof of my mother’s Tahoe sprinkled with Teenie Beenies Babies (they were sewed to the ceiling, my mom thought it would be cute) even that humiliation was somewhat balanced by my hip cell phone. Sure my mom was decorationally and socially challenged, but I had a cell phone. It helped a little.

Then, my friends all got cell phones, of their own. Talk about being shown up. I still shared the brick with my uncool parents. So, when I began high school my parents decided I needed my own phone. My own phone !!! This phone had a little screen with an address book, and text messaging. It was probably one of the first text-able phones. It was another Motorola. It pictured a cute little envelope flying in from invisible cellular space every time I got a text. I still remember the first text I got from my friend Leah. She asked if I was going to meet everyone at the volleyball game.

In those years I was lucky to get more than one text a day. Even better, if I got one text from a guy in a day. Between my braces and raging acne, I was better off in the digital realm. So I continued to develop my texting finesse. It was easy because I grew with the trends. As emoticons and shortened words made their way into text vernacular, I was on the forefront of the movement.

“Wat r u up 2?”

“n2m, jc, u?”

“hw, bball game l8ter”

“k ttyl l8ter”

That’s what my life consisted of. After a couple years I wasn’t happy. I needed a new phone because mine was broken, or because my mom had dropped it in the toilet. Mostly, that’s what I’d tell my parents. In reality, I hated the fact that all my friend were now getting flip phones. I wanted one badly. The level of poshness in high school when someone looks at their phone’s screen and flips it open with their thumb is comparable to having the “Rachel” hairdo in the 90s. You wanna be the Jennifer Aniston in your high school you better get a flip phone and a pole to lean against in a very public place. It’s best if someone calls or texts when you’re in the middle of large circle, from which the conversation will take you. Otherwise, your popularity will go completely unnoticed. But if you’re truly popular, this will happen so often that inevitably some large herd of lemming will be present for a few of them.

So after my flip phone got me no popularity and no more texts than usual, I got another. I put my SIM card in a friend’s old phone and used it for at least a year. It was a fatter Motorola, but it was cool at the time. It had the air of the Nextel phones that could walkie talkie people. (I think it even had that function, but I never used it.) It was the same shape, almost the same size, and it was like wearing Target jeans and trying to pass them off as Sevens. A little obvious.

I'll Pray For You

This is short I know it will be longer in the final format:


I was the only person left on the planet who didn’t have texting. I would come home for vacation and spend countless hours texting people from my dad’s work phone hoping it would annoy him enough to add texting to our family plan. There were times I came very close to accomplishing my goal but every time my mom walked into AT&T she would back out on me. I would come back to Provo without a texting plan and without any true sense of who I was. Ok, maybe this would be true if I were in middle school but I still tried as hard as I could to get texting added to my phone.

“You want me to be social in school right Mom?” I would try to use my lack of social skills as a push toward texting. My mother has always criticized me for my school, work, then bed schedule. My logic in this was only people who have texting get invited to parties. I didn’t say it was sound logic.

“You can text me anytime you want Mom.” That should have been the deciding factor. She could get a hold of me no matter what I was doing with my new found social life. In class? No problem, just send a text right?

“Everyone else has texting.” Bottom line I was desperate.

I begged and pleaded for a year and finally decided to give up or get my own cell phone plan. I wanted to do all I could to have my parents pay for it but texting was that important. My mom and I were sitting in the foyer at church the Sunday after Christmas talking about my desperate need for texting when the first counselor of the Bishopric came out of one of his meetings. He stopped dead in his tracks, spun around on one heal, and looked straight at my mom.

“This girl doesn’t have texting?”

Laughing my mom said, “No, she doesn’t need it.”

“Tina, every girl needs texting. Heck, I need texting.” He then opened a door to another meeting and paused to look at me, “I’ll pray for you and you will get texting.”

My mom and I just sat there stunned. Did he just say he would pray for me to get texting? I was pretty sure I had miss understood but the look on my mom’s face confirmed it was true.

“There’s no way that is going to work.” My mom looked at me as we both tried to hold in our giggles.

A week later I sat in the airport texting my mom. It would take her 30 minutes to respond but I did it just because I could. I could text anyone. Moral of the story? Prayer works.

Progressive Reluctance

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Grant Burns

Professor Paul

English 326

9/23/09

My Digital Evolution: Progressive Reluctance

My experiences with acclimating myself with the endless wave of digital advancement has been a slow and steady climb to say the least. I have always viewed technology as something of moderate convenience rather than absolute necessity. I do feel that I have grown accustomed to a few select advancements that I enjoy on a daily basis. However, I must say that my use of technology has been a reluctant one on my behalf. Furthermore, I firmly believe that my feelings toward the digital age stem from my belief that technological advancement has caused a regression of interpersonal communication skills, all the while masquerading as its beneficiary.

The first time I ever encountered something completely bizarre and different than I had ever seen before was in kindergarten when I first used a computer. I could mark this as the beginning of my digital advancement as I played addition games on this box with a keyboard in front of it. When I think about it, those computers didn’t even seem like computers, just machines used for a few simple tasks. I really didn’t see the point in them personally, but as the years went on in school, computers began to play a major role in my education.

I really don’t think it was till high school that I felt the pressure to truly know how to use a computer. I don’t know if that sounds shocking, but that’s how the situation went. I was probably in my junior year of high school when my teachers had said that papers needed to be handed in by way of printed page. I thought to myself “Why is that necessary?” I couldn’t understand why

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they wanted our assignments in such an impersonal way, all typed up in the same format, like ducks in a line. I felt that I was so use to writing things by hand that to type something up would be foreign to me. I must admit it truly was. I didn’t become apt at typing till my freshman year at college. I simply didn’t spend any time on these machines. I mean I didn’t even have an email account until I was a junior in high school and my cousin showed me how. For me this transition was very difficult and I was still attempting to turn in papers handwritten, which had mixed reactions because I have always known my handwriting to be both quick, thoughtful, and a bit untidy to put it lightly (few can translate it).

In my senior year it was truly expected to turn in papers typed and in a certain format. This caused me to be forced into learning how to better use my grandpa’s computer which had dial-up by the way and this was 2005. When I got into using a computer regularly, I did enjoy the professional manner in which information could be presented. I also understood the plight of teachers to be able to grade quickly without showing favoritism to handwriting styles (too personal perhaps). It added up to me that to make it in the professional world, there has to be a standard everyone needs to abide by. This was something that was very important for me to learn as college quickly approached.

I received my first personal computer the summer before I began at BYU. It was a Compaq M2000 which I had been using for four years straight until it met its demise this summer. It was something special to have a computer all to my own, something that expensive that could do so many things. It was an upgrade over my Grandpa’s model and there is much truth in the belief that the things you own arise a certain defense of their merit because you are now associated with them. I learned how to type mainly through instant messaging and it is my belief that many

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others would say the same. I enjoyed the speed and efficiency I could now work with and found handwriting other than for class notes a thing of the past.

My reception of a cell phone was one I partook of with great enthusiasm. As compared to my transition into the computing world, my transition into personal phones was considerably smoother. I felt left out that everyone else around me had a phone while I did not. I felt that in case of emergency or simply for convenience a cell phone was a must. I also attribute my eyes opening up to the world of technology through computers to be part of how eager I was to own this new instrument. I adamantly state that my need to feel accepted socially, especially to the fairer sex, was a major reason why I needed a cell phone. Having one makes you feel connected to others and accessible. I must admit that I received that phone on my 19^th birthday and I still use the same one today, four years later.

This I feel is a point at which I hit a plateau of technological advancement. I later bought an IPod in order to have songs at hand and eliminate cds. However, I still find myself making cds as the IPod runs out of life and I have to resort to older methods. I do like my IPod, but as far as technology is concerned mine is far out dated at this time. I haven’t really kept up in the phone race as you now know. The Razor passed me by, the Sidekick, the IPhone. I own none of these nor have any desire to. I have a quality phone that has never had issues and that’s probably because it’s a function model rather than something sleek and breakable. I don’t have a digital camera and don’t see the need for one really. I think people take too many pictures if anything. Tell me you haven’t seen the endlessly useless photos of people on their facebook pages and you’d be lying. I just now got a new computer for rental at BYU. It is an older model with windows XP on it which I prefer anyway since I hate vista. I really have been set in my ways for

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a number of years and I think that’s how I’ll always be. I don’t think I’m a step behind at all, on the contrary, the wanton spending of money on every new thing that comes out when next month they’re going to put something better out doesn’t make sense to me. In my opinion, we have too much technology. The time we spend caught in the tech companies’ nets of commercialism, causes the loss of deeper and more important skills. Whatever happened to talking over the phone? Younger people can only text each other and can’t seem to formulate full sentences. I was just at a group job interview the other day, competing with high school seniors and college freshman. Tell me eloquence and quick thinking doesn’t have something to do with the fact that I pride myself on face to face relations and almost never text anyone, preferring the direct impact a phone call can have? I believe that the more personal the contact, the bigger the impact the massage can have. Thus, I have tried to remain true to what I believe in, in the face of advancement.

It seems to me that my position in regards to technological advancement, this digital culture we all live in now is one of reluctant acceptance. I will do what is necessary to fulfill what has come to be accepted as forms of information exchange. However, I still prefer and will uphold older forms as better suited and more impactful in regards to interpersonal relations. I have enjoyed the fruits of technology through my few years of experience. Yet, I haven’t forgotten that for so many years I managed just fine and in some cases better, without. Technology in the sense of its current advancement is a luxury, but is something we have been led to believe is a necessity. I for one am sticking to my guns and along the way am hoping to at least have others recognize how communication has been affected in a negative way. It may be a futile effort, but it’s a theory I have seen much validity in.

What is truth? My experience finding out....


When I was 14 years old, my family had gotten a brand new computer. It was an HP Pavillion with Windows 95. Although such a computer is a “dinosaur” compared to today’s computers, we thought it was top-of-the-line at the time. We had had another computer that just ran DOS and some word processing; moreover, if our new computer could be considered a “dinosaur” by today’s standards than our previous computer could be considered as having been present for the “Big Bang”. As I helped my dad hook up and install drivers on the new PC, I couldn’t help but notice the CD-ROM drive. “Whoa!” I thought as I put in my first computer game into the drive. “This is perhaps the coolest thing I have ever seen!” Later that week I had a friend of mine come over and show us how the computer really worked, he helped us to truly see what this new PC was made of. Sure enough, I was introduced to AOL online chat as well as ICQ (I Seek You). Right before my eyes, my friend and I were chatting to someone whom we had never met and probably never meet. I thought to myself, “what a great way to socialize.”

It’s true that online chatting is a great way to connect with other people, but could such an invention be possibly too good to be true? As I chatted more and more on ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger, I learned more and more about the lingo of online chatting. I had learned early on that there are predators out there thanks to my parents informing me. I found that you could say anything you wanted to over the internet and there was no way of proving your statements to be right or wrong! I began chatting with females about how great I was at wakeboarding and how much I loved to skateboard. In reality, I did none of these things, but in my fourteen year old head, did it matter? It’s not like these people I chat with truly know who I am and there’s really no way they can find out.

Soon afterward, I began to even accept anything I read online as truth. One night I was chatting with a friend of mine from Michigan. He brought up how some guys came to his doors and wanted to talk about the Bible. I could only imagine that it was the missionaries. He began to tell me he wasn’t interested in what they had to say, because he felt the Bible contradicted itself. “It does!?” I gasped allowed. I began to wonder what my parents were hiding from me. Perhaps my friend was right. Shaking, I asked him what parts of the Bible contradicted the whole. He gave me a few verses and I looked them up, but after reading them I couldn’t find the contradictions. I soon realized that he was reading everything out of context. I realized there and then that I was somewhat taking everything I read online to be true. I believed what everyone was saying on online was true. But my experience in this matter didn't end with my friend in Michigan.