personal computer story

Here goes my personal computer story...

this fragment will published in the journal of Qualitative Inquiry.

My first attempt to become familiar with computers happened when I was in 8^th or 9^th grade (about 1989-91). Every school in our city got equipped with a computer class with a dozen of grey-greenish-colorless machines. Each group of up to 30 students had a few lessons there. Mainly we marveled those creatures and none of us knew what to do. The classes, I remember, focused on parts description, like monitor, keyboard, and CPU, and mastering the keyboard through games. Then we were offered an elective course (unthinkable in the all-required school system) of basic programming. I don’t know why but I was so much fascinated with the idea of computing and really thought of taking the course. Yet I did not sign up: It was scheduled too early in the morning before the first regular lesson (that is at 7:10am), and only a few boys signed up. A helpful moment on the way to taming computers was a course on typing and office management, where I learned how to type and how to create documents professionally.

In 1998, internet cafes and game parlors started popping up here and there in my city. I did not have an e-mail address, friends with one, or anybody else to write to. I had already graduated from college. The only person I could write to was an American journalist from Chicago who had taught English as a Peace Corpse volunteer. As a friend, Eileen left us her e-mail address when she was planning to go back to the US. We ventured to send her a couple of e-mails: To do that one had to go to the post office and ask the clerk in the widow to send a message after filling in a certain form.

My techno history per se started when computers became a part and parcel of my everyday life – that is when I stepped on the campus of an American university. When I arrived to a certain university in Ohio in August 1999, computer technologies swallowed me: Computers were everywhere: in computer labs, classes, libraries, and halls. I did not only have to type papers and use internet for research but I relied on the internet to get in touch with my husband. International calls were expensive and letters too slow, while e-mails and chats were much more instantaneous. If the time difference permitted, we could spend some time in ICQ – he was still using the same café I had left behind. Now without any formal courses, I had to learn by trial and error, by watching my colleagues and mentors work. I had to master the necessary skills in order to survive, since that moment I often combine work, play, and experimentation with information technology.

Reconstructing my personal cyberhistory, I cannot fail to notice that I talk about technology as a skill, ability, something I had to learn, in other words, as literacy. The skills and knowledge of computer technologies, which I associate in my narrative with specific software and hardware, build on an intimate connection with educational processes and institutions: I progressed and climbed up the technological literacy steps as I took more courses and moved from one institution to another. Commands, codes, programs, links, and buttons had to be learned and instructed, explored and trained – they did not come naturally, especially at the beginning. However, the skill-based understanding of literacy may not be sufficient for its emphasis on individual abilities and neglect for context and arrangement of society. The educational institutions approach technological literacy as “access, analysis, evaluation, and content creation” while leaving historical and cultural contingency of these skills unacknowledged (Livingstone, 2004). Understanding literacy in cultural and political terms makes the US-centeredness of information technologies salient. It is the focus on the US – first, trying to e-mail my American friend, second, applying for an exchange program, and third, actually coming to Ohio to study - triggered the reliance on the new ways of interaction. The US has been consistently making claims to the center and the originator of information technologies as well as the claims to globalism, sovereignty, and the over-arching hegemonic power (Enteen, 2006; Stainberg & McDowell, 2003).