My digital literacy narrative revolved mainly around communication.  I realized that many of my relationships  have been built across multiple platforms, using technology for sustainability.

The experiment is here.

 

Original Text:

 

I have never had to think about this before, so it’s hard to write about it or even think about. I guess I grew up in an interesting time because I feel like technology has evolved quickly as I have grown up. I think I’d call myself a “digital native,” though there are varying degrees of that among my friends (some of whom have been building websites since high school).

I remember when I was very young, maybe 8 years old, and not really understanding what the internet was, but connecting to the “World Wide Web” with dial up. My mom connected to it often to access her work email. My first email account was lachat88@aol.com because my mom had just taken me to Paris and I like cats. I now realize the email address was incorrectly gendered. I had to explain to everyone in my 6th grade class that it meant “the cat” and not the English “to chat.” Most of them didn’t get it, so I felt dorky and embarrassed and later changed it to “funkyfish21,” which I thought sounded cooler. I had that email address until college, unfortunately.

Once all my friends got email accounts (all AOL, of course), we all spent hours and hours on AIM chatting with each other. It was very important that you had the AIM of everyone you had a crush on and that they had yours so you could message each other.  My friends and I would copy key conversations we had and over-analyzed them, looking for clues that these guys might like us back. This continued through high school, which is also kind of a blur technology-wise. I remember downloading a lot of music illegally (before it was illegal), and using MySpace. There is a whole other narrative here about typing versus physically writing, which would take up too much space to go into, but I think I stopped writing in a diary so much when I started using the internet more.

I started college in 2005, which was about the time Facebook started up. At this time it was only for college students, and was a great way for me to connect with other undergrads who were going to the same school as me, including my roommate. Facebook was a really fun way for my best friend and I (who went to school on the East Coast) to share pictures of what we were doing and all the people we were meeting. For me, this is about the time when the internet really started to take over, and I became more aware of how to use it effectively for research, and to fill holes in books I hadn’t read (SparkNotes).

I have always been wary of technology because I think it fuels my laziness and really bad habit of procrastinating. Since I started writing this, I have checked the New York Times and Gawker once, my e-mail twice, and my Facebook three times. I also googled beach houses for a trip I’m planning this summer. I appreciate those articles that say procrastinating on the internet helps you work more efficiently, but unless I have a very pressing deadline, it takes me a lot of effort to get anything done anymore. I do not read books on a screen. Even when I have a reading assignment that is digital, 90 percent of the time I’ll print it out. I like to be able to mark things up and underline key phrases. For the most part, you can’t do that on a computer, but I’m sure that’s possible on a tablet somehow.

When I had an Android I was somewhat proud of the little time I spent on my phone, and convinced myself that I was doing things that were more important and worthy of my brain space and creative energy. That has changed since I got an iPhone about a year ago. I am terrified of losing that thing because it was so expensive, and I keep thinking of how to use the phrase “pry from my cold, dead hands,” because I think that makes sense somehow. At the same time, that I love being able to talk to my friends (many of whom are in other states) any time I want, I hate being so connected. I (try to) leave my phone at home more often when I run  errands just to get some space from it, because my brain starts to feel really cluttered. I honestly feel kind of exhausted by technology, startups, and whatever else, and feel like I need to meditate all the time and find somewhere quiet to “just be.” I have the desire to connect literally all the time, but feel chained to my phone and computer almost as if there is no escape.

These are the first things I thought about in my digital narrative, which has excluded the following topics I could go on about in depth: working at a struggling publishing house, setting up my own website, setting up websites for companies I worked for, working as a freelance writer for web-based publications, the numerous fights with friends about photos on Facebook, the evolution of my text messaging habits, the ways that Facebook makes it impossible to break up with people, the relationships I’ve built with people solely through e-mail, and worrying about getting brain cancer from cell phones and Wi-Fi networks (what if??).

Reading what I have written, I realize that I am definitely a digital native, but a reluctant one. In my story at least, it wasn’t really a choice. I just grew up alongside technology in a way.