As long as I can myself remember, I was keen on reading anything and everything. My first book was a colorful ABC, which I received as a birthday present just before the Christmas. And it was my grandmother, who first taught me the basic capital letters of the alphabet, which I then started to recognize, put together and write slowly by hand at the age of three. Later, I also learned how to read and write more and more easy-to-remember words and a few phrases. In kindergartner, during my pre-school years, I was learning the basic principles of reading and writing through playing word cards and word puzzles. It is true that during my childhood and later during the years at school, pencils and pens were predominating computers. Also, my parents had quite a number of printed books at home that felt to me like a small library. I could sit and explore a whole new world to me for hours that seemed, at times, almost as exciting as socializing with friends. My family also had a habit of subscribing and reading popular magazines and newspapers of that time in print. This is how my association with reading has formed during my early years, before the widespread use of computer technology came into existence. The home reading developed my ongoing curiosity for books later in my life. I became a keen reader and made even my first steps in writing my own stories.
My impressions and memories about non-digital writing, using a paper and a pen, are related to the drafting of school newspaper with my classmates, as part of the assignment. Other just as exciting activities during my school years, apart from learning, were making big-sized colorful classroom posters on paper, which were usually devoted to different topics of our choice. And then, a popular thing for teens and young adults was to keep a secret hand-written diary, and I also had one; and to write even some kind of poetry – unfortunately, I did not succeed at writing poetry during my school and college years. Back in college, the students were often using radios to listen to music. Only later the radios slowly became replaced by CD’s.
As it is, I am not a part of the generation that was born with the natural ability to use computers. Like many of my contemporaries, I had to teach myself computer literacy. The first encounter with real computers other than devices used for mathematical calculations, I had during my last high-school years. Signing up for the Information Technology Course that was optional alongside the mainstream Course in Humanities, I finally got a chance to learn the basics of word processing. Unfortunately, computers were less intuitive and intelligent back then and they had just one primitive operating system installed. Computer games and strategies came more lately. As a self-learner, though, I was quick to adapt to new technologies and flexible to use the latest software. As the result, I could engage myself in more socialization and less reading and writing.
On the one hand, digitalization today covers almost all areas of our lives. As people tend to connect online either for personal or business purposes, so do I use Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and LinkedIn more and more frequently. The social media websites help me to stay in touch with the people I know, but can meet less often. A profile on the internet is important too, as it reflects some of my personality. It is also true that a generation meets a generation online, as people continuously explore new possibilities. On the other hand, however, many still prefer using the old pencils to write and draw things on paper, rather than notepads and sophisticated notebooks for writing or visual imaging. A vivid example is Season’s Greetings that are still hand-written and sent via paper mail to the people we care for. This, of course, does not gain popularity with the younger generation, who prefer cutting-edge technology above all.
One of the most vivid examples I have seen on how people’s attitude has changed towards the common ways of doing things, is photography. Prior to the introduction of digital photography, most of us were accustomed to only, first, black-and-white and, later, color films. As long as fifteen years ago, before the technology of pixels was invented, no one has ever believed that it was possible to make digital images and to process them. Now, it is very easy to alter almost any photograph we can think of – a part of it or the picture as a whole, thanks to specialized software.
Likewise, Baron accurately points out in his essay From Pencils to Pixels: the Stages of Literacy Technology, the transition from pencils, with their invention in 1560’s, to pixels that we encountered just before the millennium. The pencil as such is still frequently in use these days, and it is a technology itself. Although, the original purpose of the pencil was to scribe measurements but not to write. The invention of the telegraph in 1849 by Morse and the telephone by Bell goes a long evolution up to the present day computers. If earlier, face-to-face communication predominated, today we experience a general tendency of creating and using computerizing messages, texts, and pictures. Now it is easy to store large files of information rather than keep hand-written diaries, for example.
As of today, modern technology and tools undoubtedly represent the whole world to me. And yet, I still love to take a paper book in my hands and feel the pages of it while reading, than sitting down with a file to read on EBook. Also, I prefer meeting a friend and acquaintance of mine to have a face-to-face talk, rather than to have a long conversation with a person over the phone or by e-mail. My self-expression through technology comes mainly by e-mail: I use it to brief my classmates, teachers, and, sometimes, parents, too.
References
Baron, D. (n.d.). From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology. Retrieved from http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/essays/pencils.htm
