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Digital Essay on my Technology Literacy (Class Assignment)

Digital Essay on my Technology Literacy (Class Assignment)

In 1981 the IBM Personal Computer model 5150 was released. My parents bought one for my 11th birthday, thinking it would be a great asset for school. I used it as a glorified typewriter. You had to essentially add the programs yourself, and that was not easy to do. I was too young to understand what all the bells and whistles did, and there were not many. The World Wide Web, or WWW, was not introduced until 1989, my freshman year in college (the first go-round).

My first video gaming system was Atari. This came out in 1977. However, I didn’t get one until I was about 10 years old. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t a big gamer. I skipped right over the Nintendo era. My cousins and friends had one, but other than Leapfrog and the first Mario Brothers game, it wasn’t my thing. I wasn’t good at Pac-Man either.

I bought my first cellphone in 1992. It was a Nokia. The first phone bill came in at $289. You got something for 1000 minutes free and were charged .30 cents a minute over that. I understand that in 2023, that may not sound like a lot of money, but in 1992, it took an entire paycheck to pay it. I made $7 an hour, and that was a decent salary working at Macy’s flagship store on 34th Street in New York.

My son was born in 1996, and the world of technology opened new doors for me. I bought him a LeapPad to be used as a learning tool for reading and math. He graduated to every gaming system created from an Xbox to Nintendo. I was introduced to the World Wide Web through social media when Facebook became a thing because I had to monitor his use of this platform. By 2008, my son was in the 7th grade, and I allowed him to interact with his friends on Facebook, but his time was limited, and it was conditional upon him accepting my friend request. My acquired sons (I dislike the word step) were older than him, and they kept me in the loop about how social media worked. Facebook was great for me because it was a link to communicating with my family in New York without having to call all the time. It was great for sharing pictures. Social media has taken a turn, and in some ways its great for activism, in other ways, people are very comfortable being contrary and saying things they would say publicly.

My concern with the development of AI is how easily things can be manipulated. AI’s voice generator can create words that do not come out of someone’s mouth. I see the dangers in that with a political leader’s voice. Manipulating photos can be fun. However, it can also be used to lie about where someone is, what they are doing, and who they are doing it with. Technology is changing rapidly. There isn’t much a robot can’t do. From driving a car without human intervention to soon enough, flying an airplane. My question would be, will there be a time when life imitates art, and we are faced with an iRobot catastrophe.

My technical literacy is almost nonexistent beyond the day-to-day life of social media and basic content creation. As a creative writer, storyteller, and activist, I took this class with the hopes that I will be able to better understand the basics of web design and create more enticing visual content when I use TikTok and other platforms to display my work. I am a Global student, so my entire degree has been online. I graduate in May of 2024!

Over the last year, I have learned to use social media sites like LinkedIn to further my writing presence and create an outlet to network with like-minded people. I am a self-published author on Amazon, and I had to learn how to utilize Canva when creating my book "Journal and Manifest with Your Ancestors." So I consider that to be an incredible success since I created this journal completely on my own. I followed someone on YouTube to learn the ins and outs of utilizing KDP Amazon and Canva.