Theme Week Two

We are currently living in a golden age of technology, which completely surrounds us and has permanently changed the way we live. Even right now, I’m using cloud storage as I type this essay, and meanwhile I’m streaming tv. If I wanted to, I could get in touch with anyone through electronic means in a split second, I could remotely check on how busy the restaurant I work at is, or could play a video game with someone on the other side of the Atlantic ocean in real time, as if they were sitting right next to me. The possibilities are just about endless.

I’ve liked technology since I was fourteen years old. When I started high school I bought my first desktop with money I had made working at a farm near my house over the summer. Over the course of my freshman year of I would always stay up late at night playing with that computer. I learned how to take it apart, I learned how to write programming, and how computer networking works. I later bought a laptop to use during my study halls, which eventually led to a few problems. After I found out that the network at our school was pretty open, my and the other kids in my study hall thought it was hilarious to take control of teachers computers and screw around with them, or to make messages pop in up on someone's screen while they were working. We had fun with that for about a month before the school administration caught on and called me down to the main office for a chat right at the beginning of a school day. Heading down to the office was about the scariest thing in the world for me. I had been a class clown in middle school and was constantly in trouble, so I had been trying to avoid incurring the wrath of my teaches. I was panicked the whole way down to the office because I knew that I was gonna be in trouble. I got down to the office, and was sat down in a conference room with the principal, the I.T. guy from our school, and the superintendent. They told me that the clowning around with computer needed to stop. I wasn't allowed to bring my laptop to school, and was only allowed to use school computers for schoolwork, which would be verified as anytime I logged in to a school computer would be remotely monitored by the I.T. department.

After this little incident, I was scared off of playing with computers. I lost interest in programming and things like that, and moved on to other stuff. I spent a ton of time hanging out with friends and being a teenager though, which is something that keeps you completely surrounded with technology. Electronics are an almost integral part of growing up today. People, especially teenagers, constantly check their facebook, use cell phones for everything, and become more and more reliant on technology everyday. Because of this, your average person is unbelievably fluent with computers and technology. I feel that every generation of people will become more and more dependent on the advances we've made. People will always understand the new technology that we’re currently using while they are young better than stubborn adults do and they’ll think of more innovative ways to use it.

I got a real interest in this stuff again my junior year for two reasons. My school started offering AP Computer Science as a course, which took a little convincing for to get into after the incident I had freshman year, but ended up being my favorite course other than the math classes I took, which is hands down my favorite subject. At the same time I bought my first car and learned tons about wiring electrical systems, since I had to have a cool sound system in my car being the cool teenager that I was. I did great in my class and learned tons about programming, which then paid off at my job where I often ended up maintaining the computer systems in the store, something I’m still doing today.

Ton’s of people are just like me in that they take quickly to technology and quickly learn how to use it. Kid’s that are growing up right now will grow up playing video games with motion sensitive controllers, touch screens, and camera systems. By the time these kids are adults, They’ll be so comfortable and fluent with technology that they’ll have imagined ways to use them and created newer technology that we can’t even imagine. I think that the part of history that I’ve watched play out is the changes in society that are coming from a full on embrace with technology that we’re in today, which I think will lead to some of the most impressive creations and thinking in years to come.