Image by dollie_mixtures
When my (5th) alarm woke me up this morning, the first thing I did was check my phone to see if I had any messages. The second thing I did was to turn on my PC and leave it to boot whilst heading downstairs to make a coffee. Even though I may lack the funds to own the fastest and the best, I am a true technology addict. I have a “smart” phone (Nokia e90 in my case) with a Twitter client installed and unlimited data on my contract. If I don’t know the answer to something, I Google or Wiki it immediately, when I’m writing I have multiple windows open that I click between, and I’m constantly working on more than one thing at once.
I’m a member of the unique generation who embraces technology in all it’s forms yet remembers life when the Internet and mobile phones weren’t such a major part of our everyday lives. My personal exposure to technology came slowly. My Father was offered a special deal on an IBM PS/1 (for the geeks amongst you, I believe it was the 2121 model) when I was around 8 years old. I took to it very quickly, playing the (awesome) games that came with it, including Silpheed which I was completely obsessed with for a time, and I would type my homework at every given opportunity. Despite my alternate begging and whining, we didn’t have a phone line installed upstairs at that time, so I was unable to satisfy my curiosity and mess about with Telnet. Otherwise, I might have been a bigger geek from a much earlier age, and probably run up a huge phone bill by accident, as I didn’t really know what I was doing. I did however, learn simple BASIC programming, enough to write a version of “Consequences” that printed out the story on the screen. I was exceedingly proud of that!
Interestingly enough at this point, I did start keeping a diary in a password-protected text file, a precursor to my later addiction to blogging perhaps!
Shortly afterwards, a child at my school won a Blue Peter competition, and the school received a new computer complete with this amazing breakthrough in technology, the CD-Rom! I spent ages watching videos on Encarta in absolute awe, but it wasn’t until a good couple of years later that we had a new computer at home, complete with Windows 95, around the same time my school connected to the Internet, and my real geek life began!
Image by One Tree Hill Studios
Soon, I was spending every lunch and break time in the IT room, sending pointless emails to people a few desks away from me, and delighting in receiving them in return. My first website was on the wonderful Geocities (RIP) and if I recall correctly it contained a load of animated .gif files I’d found on other hideous flashy websites that I wanted for some reason to store for posterity. I would chat to people on the other side of the world in Yahoo! chat rooms, and watched some of the earlier Internet memes develop, such as the Hampster Dance, the annoying music of which could be heard blasting out of the “Bondi Blue” G3 iMacs. (those were SO cool when they first came out!)
When we were finally connected to the Internet at home, that was when I really started participating in the social side of the Internet. I joined every forum I could at first, most of which I barely ever visited, but eventually narrowed it down to a couple, one of which I am still a regular visitor to. At this point, I started my first online journal, hosted by Angelfire andcomplete with password prompt that anyone could get past just by viewing the source. This must have been around 1999, and I have no idea if that site even still exists, the address and login details have been long forgotten.
Through joining a chat connected to the most active forum I was a member of, I attended a meetup in London, and made some friends who are still amongst my closest today. Once we changed to monthly-billed dial-up (as opposed to the 1p per minute we were previously paying which somewhat restricted the time I was allowed to spend online) I spent hours every weekend chatting to my new friends on IRC, visiting their homepages and building up a collection of geeky in-jokes that are still funny now. It may sound quite solitary, but it was a great time in my life, and once I had my own laptop (when I started University in 2002), I would chat into the small hours of the morning from my bed, particularly when on the ultra-high-speed connection on campus (a huge leap from the dial-up my parents still had at home until 2003!)
Somewhere during this time, I received my first mobile phone, something that really felt like a right of passage back then. I think I was around 16, and it was a Siemens C35i, which had polyphonic ringtones(!) but no Snake, something that I envied the Nokia-users for. Suddenly, texting was my favourite thing, and I must have spent a small fortune on it. My first contract phone, which I bought at the endof my first year of uni, was a beautiful thing – I could send as many texts as I wanted to and always pay the same each month!
I joined Livejournal on Saturday 22nd November 2003, the day after my birthday, and haven’t looked back from blogging since!
This was intended to be a post about how all this technology has shaped me as a person, affected how I live my life and how I believe our habits, concentration and methods of working can be directly altered by the constant access to information available nowadays. This is longer than I expected it to be however, so congratulations on getting to the end of all that, and the follow-up will be posted soon.
I’d really love to hear about your digital lives too!
My digital story isn’t too different from yours, really.
I remember having an old, old, old apple computer when I was about 3.
My mom played Wheel of Fortune on it, and I played some board game with mice.
I don’t know what happened to that computer, but when my family moved when I was 4, the computer disappeared. We wouldn’t have a computer again for another 3 or 4 years.
When we finally got the new computer, I became obsessed with computer games! My three favorites were Chips’s Challenge, a game where you could create outfits for Barbie and print them out and actually make her wear them, aaaaand…I game whose name I can’t recall, but it contained a handful of interactive stories.
As I grew older, I became even more obsessed with computer games. I played the Oregon Trail (best game ever!), Sabrina the Teenage Witch games, and a series of games by a company called Purple Moon. Purple Moon was eventually bought out by Mattel and Mattel ruined EVERYTHING!
My family didn’t get internet until I was 11. All my friends had internet, and they always talked about chatting on IM. I’d never heard of AIM. Or the internet for that matter. But, I talked to my parents about it, and they decided to get the internet! They even downloaded AIM…which I’m sure took forever on that really old dial-up internet.
When I first had the internet, I had a healthy relationship with it. I’d spend some time on night chatting with friends, but I was still a very active child, and I explored the outside with my friends.
But, my family moved when I was 13, and I suddenly became socially awkward. That’s when my love affair with my computer began. I created webpages and joined forums and Neopets! And that’s what I would do in my spare time! With webpages, I started at Expages then Envy.nu then Geocities then my site got hosted by this wonderful girl named Ali from liquidfrost.net. Creating webpages and visiting webpages was so fun! I loved seeing the creativity and reading about other peoples’ lives. I loved all the new friends I made too.
After a while, my webpage buddies focused on growing up, and after a while, a myriad of websites went under. I was so bummed. Eventually, mine went under too.
I still stayed in the blogosphere, but I just layed low with my friends only livejournal. Within this past year, my love for the blogsphere was rekindled after perusing sites like Galadarling and Nubby Twiglet and Half Accidental and Yes and Yes and YOURS! and a myriad of other blogs. I had to start one of my own, and I haven’t looked back yet =D
My computer gaming obsession still remains. I’m really bummed because my computer really isn’t fantastic. And, ever game I want to play makes it lag. Boo hoo! For every hour of gaming I can’t do on my computer, I do on my Xbox or PS2 instead.
Still socially awkward too, but I don’t regret all the time I spent on the internet.
oops! that was a novel!
Brilliant post! My early digital life involved a lot of Encarta videos too, haha.
Oh, Encarta! I remember that– always searching endlessly for facts for essays. Awesome!
haha this is awesome! It’s funny because I was just saying to my mom yesterday how I’ve never lived without some form of interactive technology. I grew up shooting ducks on duck hunt (now i’m a vegetarian, haha), and that progressed to better gaming systems, like nintendo, super nintendo, and then nintendo 64.
when we got a computer, I remeber spending hours on AOL, just reading stuff and being mystified with this magical Internet. I played around with making my own websites, learned some super basic HTML, and was really into sissyfight.com. Sissyfight doesn’t exist anymore, but it was this hilarious game where you would make this character (who was usually butt ugly) and would then hang out in a schoolyard with four other girls. The girls then make fun of each other, pull hair, scratch, or tattle. Last girl standing wins. I was obsessed!
I then became a neopet addict like the lady above me. I was close to becoming a “neopia millionaire” but then blew all my neopoints on a flashy house and lost most of my funds. Someone broke into my account later on and took everything that I had in my saftey deposite box. I gave up neopets when it went corperate. The game is completely different now, as its all about the advertising. It has lost most of its charm.
Soon after that, my love of social networking sights kicked in. From there, I learned about the blogosphere, mainly through Doe Deere. I remember her tutorials back in the day, and was SO HAPPY when I found her new site! I then decided that since I’m a writing student who loves beauty, spirit, and fun things, that I would start my own blog. And the rest is history.
Their is still sooooooo much to learn. Our society hasn’t even seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to technology.
Hah, I just wrote a novel too. oops!
Side note- I noticed that you say you hit your alarm clock 5 times this morning. I just made a post about peaceful alarm clocks that you might like.
Hehe so much of that stuff jogged some memories. I did rack up those huge phone bills, going on AOL and asking random people the old ‘a/s/l?’ trying to make friends hehe. It is interesting, like you say, that we can remember life with and without all this technology. But where would we be without it now??
Dude, my digital life started when I was 4 o 5 I guess.
The first computers were here in Mexico and my daddy had very easy access to them, so he brought one home. One of my first memories is of my cousins and I lounging around my living room playing some game about monkeys is a green and black screen.
I learned Linux commands and how to plug and unplug hard drives just to play stuff like Space Invaders. I was a little whiz at Windows and at computer classes during grade school where we used old Apple computers. I remember wen the iMacs arrived, they were green and had games about the muppet babies and stuff like that. I use one of those iMacs at work now, of course it is updated to the T of Mac technology.
I got my first e-mail address in 4th grade at hotmail. That address will stay with me until 8th grade when I would change it to another hotmail address and that one stayed wit me until I started using Gmail. I used to go into Starmedia chat and meet my friends there, I remember my phone bill having 500 + calls to the internet number.
I used ICQ, then MSN Messenger and now I use GTalk to do my IMing. As for cell phones, my first one was a star tac by motorola which I got when I was like 13, then I had a Nokia which I lost (it was a small high end one, so I got into real trouble when I lost it). After that one I had another 2 nokias, 2 sony ericssons and now I have a motorola with a Twitter client (jib jib is my weapon of choice n_n).
Now I have unlimited DSL internet with a wireless router, I own an HP Pavillion dv2000 (one of the last computers with Windows XP). My dad made a desktop for when I started college, but now he uses it because I can fit my life into my laptop. Besides, the desktop only has 40GB of storage.
So many of my childhood memories have to do with computers… I guess it’s a good thing that I chose my career pth to be 100% computer related, isn’t it?
Kisses.
Oh I love this post! It really brought back some memories. We got our first computer when I was about 8 I think? It was Windows 95 I think. I thought it was so cool! Encarta really was amazing, do you remember that game on it? You used to walk around a castle answering general knowledge questions.
I don’t know when we got the internet, but I remember when we got the internet in primary school when I was in year 6, we thought it was amazing. I remember spending a lesson on Ask Jeeves, asking silly questions like why is the sky blue? I think it must have been about 1999 when I first got the internet, terribley slow dial up. My mum used to put a timer on so we didn’t spend too long on it! The dawn of broadband was really something special. I think I got Livejournal in about 2001, after spending years on msn talking to my friends. I also created my own website in about 2002/3, for the band something corporate! I think that was a geocities one too, but it was so rubbish I used to call it ‘geoshitties’ and think I was so witty. I abandoned that after a while and then just spent my time on livejournal, myspace, etc.
Then last year I took the leap from Livejournal to a ‘proper’ blog! I really can’t imagine life without the internet or computers. One of my tutors went into a big rant once about how easy undergraduates have it now, like we can search journals online so easily and find facts at the click of a button and type everything up! Back when she did her degree, it wasn’t compulsory to have essays word processed because not everyone had computers!
Considering the internet is so important to me, I’ve never actually had internet access on a phone. This is mainly because I know it would distract me too much!
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