It was Easter morning 1992. My brothers and I were woken by our parents and in the Allred tradition led to our Easter baskets via a scavenger hunt. We began in the living room and carefully following the clues were led around the house, through the garage, into the front yard, then into the back yard and eventually into the small shed. And there they were, amid the tools, our Easter baskets! However, this year brought a new surprise. Among the Easter baskets there was a large box that contained our family’s first personal computer.
At seventeen, my mom finally allowed me to get a cell phone. I agreed to pick my brother up whenever I wasn’t at work in return for a cell phone. We went to the Sprint store, and I picked out a silver square. I took the phone over to my friends house and he showed me how to text. I wasn’t that attached to my phone at the beginning. I liked to be able to call my mom and send the occasional text. The phone allowed my so much more freedom then I had previously and ultimately made me feel comfortable with the decision to move across the country at eighteen to pursue my education at BYU. After that, my real “addiction” to the digital world began when I was given a laptop for my high school graduation gift. I used it for music, chatting, assignments and the inevitable social networking.
My earliest digital memory is talking to my dad on the phone while sitting at my home computer. I pressed as many keys as I could as fast as I could because I wanted my dad to think I was fast at typing. I think this was the beginning of a general "need for speed" in my life, especially in the technological aspect.
I’m old enough to remember the first time we got a computer in our house. It was a beige monstrosity about three feet square that fed on flaccid squares of plastic. I was timid around it at first. My mother used it to play typing games occasionally, and I rather enjoyed the lights and sounds emanating from the screen. My main concern was the printer. More than once I pictured my hands getting caught in the spokes that pulled the paper through. I knew that, if I wasn’t careful, I would be yanked off my feet and twisted through that loud, awful machine until I came out the bottom as flat as a printed page.
That beast came to our home the same year that they installed a computer lab at my elementary school. These boxes were much more inviting, as there were 5 computers but only one printer in the whole room. It seemed content to keep to itself, and so I stayed on my side of the lab and inspected the newest, beigest box of all. By the end of the day I had yet to turn on the screen; I spent the entire time following wires from the wall to the box.
My earliest digital memories involve watching my brothers play video games. We had a Super Nintendo at the time, and listening to the theme songs from "Final Fantasy III" or "The Legend of Zelda" still brings me right back to those times. For some reason, I found watching my brothers spend hours leveling up there characters absolutely fascinating.
When I was in high school my county participated in this digital technology immersion program - all the middle and high school students were given iBooks by the school. It was cool to start using a personal laptop in class to surf the web and email assignments to my teachers, and to use it from home because I had never had a personal computer before.
My earliest memory was on Christmas morning sometime in the early nineties when my dad lead us downstairs to show us the new computer he'd just bought and set up overnight as we slept. I was too young to play any of the games and didn't know what a computer was used for in the first place, so I just spent the majority of my time creating masterpieces on MS Paint.
I’ve never been much of a techie to begin with. My dad, on the other hand, has been both a techie and a Trekkie (the Star Trek kind) for as long as I can remember. I think he was programming computers using the old DOS language before I was even born. With that type of pedigree, I was always surrounded with the cutting-edge toys of our digital culture, but I often wondered why I was never fascinated with them the same way he was. I would watch Star Trek with him when I was, ahem, much younger, but he never raved about teleporting and warp drivse as one might expect; no, what got him were the practical technologies that were just around the corner for our society. He talked about the pins all the characters wore, for instance – the little Star Trek emblems that Captain Kirk would hit on his chest and say, “Beam me up, Scottie.” Those little pins were simply much cooler, more practical cell phones. Mind you, this was back in the days when cell phones were the size and weight of a brick and had to be carried around in backpacks. Think of the thousands walking around every day with their Bluetooth's stuck in their ears - looking back, you might say Dad was a bit of a visionary.
Growing up alongside the developing technological world, digital discoveries and advances were easy for me to accept and adjust myself to. I have taken most of my digital development for granted, accepting it as the natural accompaniment to a progressing life. Were I to write about each metamorphism of computer and each required elementary school learning-fun game that I played during my childhood, I’m sure my paper would simply echo every other student’s. Instead, I am more interested in how these digital developments affected me as an artist.
No, I cannot draw. Not to save my life. Perhaps this would have hindered my soul’s longing for artistic expression had I been born into say, nearly any other decade. Luckily, I was not. Was I bound to end up passionate about photography? Or was I subconsciously edged towards it, invisibly pushed along in the strong undercurrent of digital development’s flow? I do not know.
My first legitimate digital image exposure was, by modern standards, to relatively poor quality images of nature and outer space; just one step beyond the pixilated images that popped up on the screen in front of me upon my completion of a level in various spelling or typing games. (Such mediocre exposure did little to stir my imagination, thus it will not be counted). My first ‘real’ interactions with digital images were those I hungrily absorbed while browsing through Grolier’s Multi-Media Encyclopedia. I treated this educational aid as a game and spent hours searching fanatically for the most intriguing pictures. Eventually my parents caught on and bought us Dorling Kindersley’s My First Amazing World Explorer and My First Amazing History Explorer. While these games continued to fuel my desire for and obsession with the world, they admittedly did little for my development as a photographer.
Blogging i something that is still a bit new for me. I remember not knowing what a blog was a couple of years ago. I never knew what people were talking about when they used the word. I started a blog about my experience in the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. I posted pictures and wrote about experiences I was having in order to document them. It was also for the purpose that my family and friends would be able to experience with me a little more. It was a hard discipline for me and I didn't like doing it much. Now I feel like I don't have much unique content to write about, but I'll occasionally read other people's blogs.
My dad is a computer programmer, so I always remember having a computer in the house. However, I don't remember when I first played on it, but I remember I was skilled with maneuvering through MS DOS for a 4-year-old. I was able to look up files and send commands to get myself logged on to a game called Crystal Caves. It was a game where I was a man in space, searching for crystals and killing aliens. - Cambria Varney
P.S. I made my google account under a false name, hence the weird "Risika" said... yeah...
This memory is not necessarily my earliest digital memory, but definitely the memory that has had the biggest impact on my digital life. I returned home from my mission in 2008, and when I left, there was no such thing as a smart phone, iPhone, or anything like that. When I returned home, it was incredible to see the advances in cell phone technology. I had a companion describe to me what an iPhone was and I was shocked. When I returned home and actually saw the iPhone I was even more shocked. The way cell phone technology has advanced in the past five years has been incredible to witness.
I remember using the computers at school because we didn't have a personal computer at the time. We used a program called Type to Learn which helped us develop our typing skills. We would compete against each other to see who could finish the level first. Little did we know that we were learning a skill; it was all a game to us.
These memories are relatively long ago, but I feel like I took a big step back in terms of my Digital Nativity when I spent two years away from home on my mission to El Salvador. In El Salvador, I had weekly access to the internet for one hour so that I could send and receive e-mails from my family. While I was limited to one hour per week, New New Media was gathering a full head of steam and by the time I returned after my two years were completed, I was lost in the massive amounts of information and media available online. I remember distinctly walking around with my last mission companion one day when he told me about some great soccer player and the amazing things he can do with a soccer ball. When I told him that I had never heard of him, he told me that I had to “Youtube him” when I got home. I had no idea what he was talking about. Before November 15, 2006, I had never once searched for a video in Youtube. Nowadays, hardly ever does a day go by that I do not look up at least one video on Youtube that I hear about among friends or while I am on campus.
"I could not care less for technology at that point! I would much rather go climb a tree, play baseball, or run around and play tag. Games were what my brother did, and typing on the computer is what my sister did. I, however, was the one who would dominate in all things out-doors and strength related. Sadly, the majority of the neighborhood was captivated by this Super Nintendo thing that I had little to no interest in. I was fine playing with all the other kids that liked the being outside better. It was not long before a Sega Genesis appeared down the street and the rest of my crew took up Sonic the Hedgehog as a religious movement. The Holy Wars commenced. It was a long, deep-seeded war between the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis factions as each claimed superiority over the other. I was Switzerland. I was indifferent on the matter and had no desire to get involved."
One of my most memorable experiences with the digital age.
My dad has been practicing law for the past 18 years, since I was 6. He has worked all over the state of Utah. On a day-to-day basis he could be from St. George to Brigham City and everywhere in between. He would call us from pay phones and hotels. We would have to wait until the evening to talk to him and try and catch his phone calls during the day. My dad was working for a law firm in Salt Lake when the “brick” cell phones were introduced. The firm got their attorneys cell phones to stay in touch even when they were on the road. This also meant that we could get a hold of our father during the day without having to wait for him to call in the evening. The phone was for anytime use, so my parents would also use it when they went on dates so the babysitter could get a hold of them. This was a big advance because it took the “public” out of our phone use and made my dad accessible more often. I say that it took the “public” out of our phone use because I recall receiving phone calls from my parents while they were out on a date and trying to get a hold of them shortly thereafter. The “*69” feature was available when I was younger so we could try to get a hold of my parents if we called them back immediately after they called us. Unfortunately, this wasn’t always the case. I tried to do this one night and a strange man responded on the phone and said, “This is Hell.” As an 8-year old I was quite scared. The cell phone took the “public” out of my contact with those I love.
This wasn't my earliest digital memory, but it is the most interesting and most recent experience with technological communication.
You will often hear people nowadays say that technology is making our society less personal. Online dating, Facebook, and blogs are all cheap shortcuts to make people think they are connected on a personal level. People start dating without ever seeing each other face to face; others get married after only some online chats and maybe a dinner-and-a-movie date in real life. Ah, the evils of the digital world, eh? But look at the mail order bride system. That’s been around forever. Socially acceptable? Not quite. Fast, easy, “personal”? Maybe so. My story, however, does not involve the internet. Or Russian women. Welcome to the wonders of texting. First off, I am a texter. Quick and convenient, texting allows me to multitask. You can’t talk on the phone and brush your teeth. You can’t talk and do a jig. You also can’t talk on the phone and stall for 47 seconds while you come up with something witty to say in reply to what your conversation partner just said. Quips don’t sound as quippy that way. .......(long story short)....... And that’s how I got a boyfriend over text messaging. I like to think that it's because our texting abilities are far above the average texter. No abbreviations. No smilies. Just broken thumbs punching out short novels incorporating extended metaphors and the words “despondency,” “indubitably,” “exaggerated,” and other polysyllabic bits of vocabulary gold. But despite our incredible lexicon and intelligent use of literary devices, was getting a boyfriend over text a tad over the top? Probably. But it’s a lot more socially acceptable than a mail order bride. Cheers to broken thumbs.
My first cell phone was a pay-as-you-go phone, which was perfect for me as a Freshman in high school. I only used it to call my parents and my friends, so I didn’t need many features. It used it mostly to find whoever I was with should we be separated and to make plans with family and friends. I didn’t really have texting until I got my first phone in my senior year of high school. I was on my parent’s plan for a long time; even after I returned from my mission to San Diego. It was only about a year ago that I bought my own contract, after I got home from a study abroad program in England (which, as a side note, I loved being able to use Skype and email to keep in touch with my family and friends while I was over there and without a cell phone). I never used to text as much as I do now. I suppose it makes a difference whether you have family and friends that text a lot.
My parents called it the electronic babysitter. But my siblings and the rest of the nascent digital natives called it Nintendo. Every weekend my parents would rent a Nintendo Entertainment System, abbreviated as NES, as a reward for good behavior and as a way to preoccupy us. While we were preoccupied in the basement, my parents would spend their time together upstairs
It was Easter morning 1992. My brothers and I were woken by our parents and in the Allred tradition led to our Easter baskets via a scavenger hunt. We began in the living room and carefully following the clues were led around the house, through the garage, into the front yard, then into the back yard and eventually into the small shed. And there they were, amid the tools, our Easter baskets! However, this year brought a new surprise. Among the Easter baskets there was a large box that contained our family’s first personal computer.
ReplyDeleteAt seventeen, my mom finally allowed me to get a cell phone. I agreed to pick my brother up whenever I wasn’t at work in return for a cell phone. We went to the Sprint store, and I picked out a silver square. I took the phone over to my friends house and he showed me how to text. I wasn’t that attached to my phone at the beginning. I liked to be able to call my mom and send the occasional text. The phone allowed my so much more freedom then I had previously and ultimately made me feel comfortable with the decision to move across the country at eighteen to pursue my education at BYU. After that, my real “addiction” to the digital world began when I was given a laptop for my high school graduation gift. I used it for music, chatting, assignments and the inevitable social networking.
ReplyDeleteMy earliest digital memory is talking to my dad on the phone while sitting at my home computer. I pressed as many keys as I could as fast as I could because I wanted my dad to think I was fast at typing. I think this was the beginning of a general "need for speed" in my life, especially in the technological aspect.
ReplyDeleteChad Harrison
ReplyDeleteBlog: http://noitdoesnotmakesense.blogspot.com/
I’m old enough to remember the first time we got a computer in our house. It was a beige monstrosity about three feet square that fed on flaccid squares of plastic. I was timid around it at first. My mother used it to play typing games occasionally, and I rather enjoyed the lights and sounds emanating from the screen. My main concern was the printer. More than once I pictured my hands getting caught in the spokes that pulled the paper through. I knew that, if I wasn’t careful, I would be yanked off my feet and twisted through that loud, awful machine until I came out the bottom as flat as a printed page.
That beast came to our home the same year that they installed a computer lab at my elementary school. These boxes were much more inviting, as there were 5 computers but only one printer in the whole room. It seemed content to keep to itself, and so I stayed on my side of the lab and inspected the newest, beigest box of all. By the end of the day I had yet to turn on the screen; I spent the entire time following wires from the wall to the box.
My earliest digital memories involve watching my brothers play video games. We had a Super Nintendo at the time, and listening to the theme songs from "Final Fantasy III" or "The Legend of Zelda" still brings me right back to those times. For some reason, I found watching my brothers spend hours leveling up there characters absolutely fascinating.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in high school my county participated in this digital technology immersion program - all the middle and high school students were given iBooks by the school. It was cool to start using a personal laptop in class to surf the web and email assignments to my teachers, and to use it from home because I had never had a personal computer before.
ReplyDeleteI was nineteen when I got my first cell phone.
ReplyDeleteMy earliest memory was on Christmas morning sometime in the early nineties when my dad lead us downstairs to show us the new computer he'd just bought and set up overnight as we slept. I was too young to play any of the games and didn't know what a computer was used for in the first place, so I just spent the majority of my time creating masterpieces on MS Paint.
ReplyDeleteForgot my URL: http://debbiebarr.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteI’ve never been much of a techie to begin with. My dad, on the other hand, has been both a techie and a Trekkie (the Star Trek kind) for as long as I can remember. I think he was programming computers using the old DOS language before I was even born. With that type of pedigree, I was always surrounded with the cutting-edge toys of our digital culture, but I often wondered why I was never fascinated with them the same way he was. I would watch Star Trek with him when I was, ahem, much younger, but he never raved about teleporting and warp drivse as one might expect; no, what got him were the practical technologies that were just around the corner for our society. He talked about the pins all the characters wore, for instance – the little Star Trek emblems that Captain Kirk would hit on his chest and say, “Beam me up, Scottie.” Those little pins were simply much cooler, more practical cell phones. Mind you, this was back in the days when cell phones were the size and weight of a brick and had to be carried around in backpacks. Think of the thousands walking around every day with their Bluetooth's stuck in their ears - looking back, you might say Dad was a bit of a visionary.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up alongside the developing technological world, digital discoveries and advances were easy for me to accept and adjust myself to. I have taken most of my digital development for granted, accepting it as the natural accompaniment to a progressing life. Were I to write about each metamorphism of computer and each required elementary school learning-fun game that I played during my childhood, I’m sure my paper would simply echo every other student’s. Instead, I am more interested in how these digital developments affected me as an artist.
ReplyDeleteNo, I cannot draw. Not to save my life. Perhaps this would have hindered my soul’s longing for artistic expression had I been born into say, nearly any other decade. Luckily, I was not. Was I bound to end up passionate about photography? Or was I subconsciously edged towards it, invisibly pushed along in the strong undercurrent of digital development’s flow? I do not know.
My first legitimate digital image exposure was, by modern standards, to relatively poor quality images of nature and outer space; just one step beyond the pixilated images that popped up on the screen in front of me upon my completion of a level in various spelling or typing games. (Such mediocre exposure did little to stir my imagination, thus it will not be counted). My first ‘real’ interactions with digital images were those I hungrily absorbed while browsing
through Grolier’s Multi-Media Encyclopedia. I treated this educational aid as a game and spent hours searching fanatically for the most intriguing pictures. Eventually my parents caught on and bought us Dorling Kindersley’s My First Amazing World Explorer and My First Amazing History Explorer. While these games continued to fuel my desire for and obsession with the world, they admittedly did little for my development as a photographer.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBlogging i something that is still a bit new for me. I remember not knowing what a blog was a couple of years ago. I never knew what people were talking about when they used the word. I started a blog about my experience in the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. I posted pictures and wrote about experiences I was having in order to document them. It was also for the purpose that my family and friends would be able to experience with me a little more. It was a hard discipline for me and I didn't like doing it much. Now I feel like I don't have much unique content to write about, but I'll occasionally read other people's blogs.
ReplyDeleteMy dad is a computer programmer, so I always remember having a computer in the house. However, I don't remember when I first played on it, but I remember I was skilled with maneuvering through MS DOS for a 4-year-old. I was able to look up files and send commands to get myself logged on to a game called Crystal Caves. It was a game where I was a man in space, searching for crystals and killing aliens. - Cambria Varney
ReplyDeleteP.S. I made my google account under a false name, hence the weird "Risika" said... yeah...
Just leaving a comment on your blog! LOLZ
ReplyDeleteThis memory is not necessarily my earliest digital memory, but definitely the memory that has had the biggest impact on my digital life. I returned home from my mission in 2008, and when I left, there was no such thing as a smart phone, iPhone, or anything like that. When I returned home, it was incredible to see the advances in cell phone technology. I had a companion describe to me what an iPhone was and I was shocked. When I returned home and actually saw the iPhone I was even more shocked. The way cell phone technology has advanced in the past five years has been incredible to witness.
ReplyDeleteI remember using the computers at school because we didn't have a personal computer at the time. We used a program called Type to Learn which helped us develop our typing skills. We would compete against each other to see who could finish the level first. Little did we know that we were learning a skill; it was all a game to us.
ReplyDeleteThese memories are relatively long ago, but I feel like I took a big step back in terms of my Digital Nativity when I spent two years away from home on my mission to El Salvador. In El Salvador, I had weekly access to the internet for one hour so that I could send and receive e-mails from my family. While I was limited to one hour per week, New New Media was gathering a full head of steam and by the time I returned after my two years were completed, I was lost in the massive amounts of information and media available online. I remember distinctly walking around with my last mission companion one day when he told me about some great soccer player and the amazing things he can do with a soccer ball. When I told him that I had never heard of him, he told me that I had to “Youtube him” when I got home. I had no idea what he was talking about. Before November 15, 2006, I had never once searched for a video in Youtube. Nowadays, hardly ever does a day go by that I do not look up at least one video on Youtube that I hear about among friends or while I am on campus.
ReplyDeletecomicommentary.blogspot.com
ReplyDelete"I could not care less for technology at that point! I would much rather go climb a tree, play baseball, or run around and play tag. Games were what my brother did, and typing on the computer is what my sister did. I, however, was the one who would dominate in all things out-doors and strength related. Sadly, the majority of the neighborhood was captivated by this Super Nintendo thing that I had little to no interest in. I was fine playing with all the other kids that liked the being outside better. It was not long before a Sega Genesis appeared down the street and the rest of my crew took up Sonic the Hedgehog as a religious movement. The Holy Wars commenced. It was a long, deep-seeded war between the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis factions as each claimed superiority over the other. I was Switzerland. I was indifferent on the matter and had no desire to get involved."
One of my most memorable experiences with the digital age.
ReplyDeleteMy dad has been practicing law for the past 18 years, since I was 6. He has worked all over the state of Utah. On a day-to-day basis he could be from St. George to Brigham City and everywhere in between. He would call us from pay phones and hotels. We would have to wait until the evening to talk to him and try and catch his phone calls during the day. My dad was working for a law firm in Salt Lake when the “brick” cell phones were introduced. The firm got their attorneys cell phones to stay in touch even when they were on the road. This also meant that we could get a hold of our father during the day without having to wait for him to call in the evening. The phone was for anytime use, so my parents would also use it when they went on dates so the babysitter could get a hold of them. This was a big advance because it took the “public” out of our phone use and made my dad accessible more often. I say that it took the “public” out of our phone use because I recall receiving phone calls from my parents while they were out on a date and trying to get a hold of them shortly thereafter. The “*69” feature was available when I was younger so we could try to get a hold of my parents if we called them back immediately after they called us. Unfortunately, this wasn’t always the case. I tried to do this one night and a strange man responded on the phone and said, “This is Hell.” As an 8-year old I was quite scared. The cell phone took the “public” out of my contact with those I love.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis wasn't my earliest digital memory, but it is the most interesting and most recent experience with technological communication.
ReplyDeleteYou will often hear people nowadays say that technology is making our society less personal. Online dating, Facebook, and blogs are all cheap shortcuts to make people think they are connected on a personal level. People start dating without ever seeing each other face to face; others get married after only some online chats and maybe a dinner-and-a-movie date in real life. Ah, the evils of the digital world, eh? But look at the mail order bride system. That’s been around forever. Socially acceptable? Not quite. Fast, easy, “personal”? Maybe so. My story, however, does not involve the internet. Or Russian women. Welcome to the wonders of texting.
First off, I am a texter. Quick and convenient, texting allows me to multitask. You can’t talk on the phone and brush your teeth. You can’t talk and do a jig. You also can’t talk on the phone and stall for 47 seconds while you come up with something witty to say in reply to what your conversation partner just said. Quips don’t sound as quippy that way.
.......(long story short).......
And that’s how I got a boyfriend over text messaging.
I like to think that it's because our texting abilities are far above the average texter. No abbreviations. No smilies. Just broken thumbs punching out short novels incorporating extended metaphors and the words “despondency,” “indubitably,” “exaggerated,” and other polysyllabic bits of vocabulary gold.
But despite our incredible lexicon and intelligent use of literary devices, was getting a boyfriend over text a tad over the top? Probably. But it’s a lot more socially acceptable than a mail order bride.
Cheers to broken thumbs.
My really cool, totally, and intensely awesome blog is called Daddyhack.net
ReplyDeleteFollow it, like it, check it out!
Coming home from the mission, my dad got me my first cell phone which I used mostly to talk with my girlfriend (who is now my wife – Thank You digital, cell-phone god! [I was about to capitalize “god” because I know He inspired my dad to get me that phone! I know it!]). Anyway, all joking aside, I did use that cell phone for literally THOUSANDS of hours during my first semester at BYU, as my girlfriend-turned-fiancĂ© was living in Iowa, 1500 miles away. And I have no doubt that it was this technology which held our relationship together, offering us the ability to “keep the fire alive” digitally until I returned home in May to marry her in the flesh.
My first cell phone was a pay-as-you-go phone, which was perfect for me as a Freshman in high school. I only used it to call my parents and my friends, so I didn’t need many features. It used it mostly to find whoever I was with should we be separated and to make plans with family and friends. I didn’t really have texting until I got my first phone in my senior year of high school. I was on my parent’s plan for a long time; even after I returned from my mission to San Diego. It was only about a year ago that I bought my own contract, after I got home from a study abroad program in England (which, as a side note, I loved being able to use Skype and email to keep in touch with my family and friends while I was over there and without a cell phone). I never used to text as much as I do now. I suppose it makes a difference whether you have family and friends that text a lot.
ReplyDeleteMy parents called it the electronic babysitter. But my siblings and the rest of the nascent digital natives called it Nintendo. Every weekend my parents would rent a Nintendo Entertainment System, abbreviated as NES, as a reward for good behavior and as a way to preoccupy us. While we were preoccupied in the basement, my parents would spend their time together upstairs
ReplyDelete