Technology in My Lifetime

It is hard for my children to imagine a world without cell phones, but that is the world into which I was born. I didn't spend a lot of time talking on the telephone because it was anchored to the wall and I was an active child. But then, my parents didn't spend much time on the phone either. They had work to do. I remember how excited my father and brother were over our first color television, purchased when I was about ten. It seems to me that we bought a VCR about the same time, which was an even bigger deal. Even so, I didn't like to sit still to watch television. I preferred helping my mom in the kitchen, reading, or playing outside. I must have been in junior high when my aunt bought the first cd player I had ever seen, but I received my first cd player as a gift after graduating from high school. I don't remember listening to it much. I never was drawn to technology. I enjoyed live music. I regret that I was a member of the class of '96 at Houghton College, the last class of entering freshman not required to have computers at registration. I might not have needed this course had I had been one year younger. As it was, among the fifty or so students on my dorm floor, two owned computers. Often they were kind enough to share with the rest of us who set up a round-the-clock rotation schedule so we wouldn't have to hang out in the computer lab. I learned to use an early version of Word Perfect on my friend's computer. One of my close friends at college , a fellow English, major, owned a fancy typewriter. Although I appreciate computers for the access they provide to free literature in the public domain, research at lightening speed, and ways of communicating previously only hinted at in science fiction, I am not attached to my computer, and resent the intrusion of technology on family life. I love the smell of old books, the feel of paper between my fingers, and yet the prospect of a library of books at my fingertips on an e-reader is tantalizingly tempting. There are a myriad of things I enjoy more than sitting in front of a computer screen, so I have only made the effort to learn to use what has so far been essential for me: email, word, and search engines for research. Evidently that isn't enough, because I don't understand computer jargon in the least, nor can I seem to retrieve a folder if I haven't saved it to my desktop. I am thrilled at the prospect of feeling more confident in navigating my way around the computer world.