My Technology History
The goal of this assignment is to explore in some depth your experiences with and ideas about technology. This will be a history paper, in a way, because you must think about what your views of technology are and how you developed those views.
This Technology Narrative should build on and add to your Literacy Narrative. This is another key part of your life story. So try to add on new pieces that will give you, and your readers, more to think about.
The goal here is to think about your own attitudes and ideas about technology. Once you unpack your own beliefs, you should be better able to interact with the beliefs of others and, perhaps, to reshape your own beliefs.
Audience
Your narrative should be truthful, personal, and meaningful, but also keep in mind that it will be shared with the other class members and also will be posted on the Internet. So as you do your writing, bear in mind that it will be used in a public forum.
Some Help Getting Started
If writing your technology story sounds exciting and you know just where to begin, then please feel free to get started. You can ignore the rest of this page and just start telling your story.
If you are a little less sure, that’s ok. As usual I am making a few suggestions for writing below. But, I am also trying to cut down on my influence. I value your stories and really do want to hear what you have to tell. So, you can consider my ideas, but trust your instincts too. If something seems interesting to write about, go ahead. It’s your story, tell it however seems best.
Key Technology Questions
Your Technology Narrative should explore technology based on your own personal life history. As you try to capture your techology stories in words, do your best to answer these key technology questions with the stories you tell:
- What does technology mean to you personally?
- Why is technology important to you?
- What key experiences have you had with technology during your life?
- Where did your ideas about technology come from?
- Who and what shaped your views of technology?
Your Earliest Technology Memory
Often the best place to start a technology narrative is with one of your earliest memories. We tend to think technology = computers. But as young technology users, computers are not the most important thing to us. Other technologies are often much more important to kids, things like bikes, pencils, backpacks, car seats, milk bottles. These items may be somewhat low tech, but the still are tech that changes lives. So think about these kind of memories you have. These kind of stories also tend to be a lot of fun to write and remember.
Try to recall all the details you can about whatever foundational memory you pick. Writing about this early memory can often jog other important technology memories that you have.
Other Technology Memories
From your earliest technology memory, move on through some of the key stories of your life. Select technology-related events from your life which you feel helped you learn how to define technology. Select events which help define what technology means to you.
As you write your Technology Narrative, you might want to consider some of the questions below. You do not need to discuss all the questions. Instead, just answer the ones that seem important to you. If other things seem more important for you to write about, then please write about those. This is your technology story, so tell it in the way that seems best to you.
- How dependent are you on computers? When did your computer use start?
- What are some key experiences you’ve had using computers, good and bad?
- Do you use Facebook? What experiences have you had with Facebook or with Facebook users?
- What are some key experiences you’ve had with using Google? How do you think using Google has changed you?
- How many books do you and your family own? Do you get books at bookstores or libraries? What other types of printed materials do you use/own?
- What kinds of reading and writing you have done in school? What was the purpose of those activities? Who was the audience for this school-based reading and writing?
- What are the most important technologies to you? Why?
- Discuss your experiences with cell phones. Can you live without your cell phone?
- Do you own any pieces of old technology which are important to you? What are they and why are they important to you?
- Have you ever had to go without technology? What was that experience like?
More Analytic Questions
The questions I’ve listed above are very narrative in their orientation. If it would help you to write about more analytical questions, you might try writing about some of these:
- Are all technology users all the same? How often do you have to use technology to be technologically literate?
- What specific technologies must you use?
- Do you have to be a proficient computer user?
- How often do you have to use these technologies?
- Is being technologically literate the same as being educated or intelligent?