Week 7: #17 Looking Back at Technology

Since I'm generally knee deep in technology, I thought I'd talk a little about how I got to where I am in terms of technology. I am not a digital native, I'm just a bit too old (36) to have grown up with computers, although I had access at various times. When I was in elementary school, my best friend Cheryl had an Atari computer. Her mom used to type in programs she found in books and record them to cassette tape. We played games on the computer, but that was about it.

At home we had a TI99-4A, which hooked up to the TV. Again, just played games. When I was about 13, we bought an IBM PC jr. Frankly, it was too difficult to use, so we just didn't do much with it except use it for a word processor.

In high school and then in college, rather than use the computer to type papers, I used a typewriter, because...I was afraid of computers. I know, that may be a bit hard to believe now, but I really was. It took needing to write a resume in my 3rd year of college to get me on a computer in the library's computer lab. I had to have a friend of mine show me how to use WordPerfect (in DOS). After that, I wrote the rest of my papers using a computer, because it was a lot easier.

My point is, that anyone can learn. I am advanced in terms of technology now, but this wasn't always the case.