Well, the fat lady has sung on this program, and while it is gratifying to finish (an MP3 player would be even more gratifying), I will miss this guide to discovering new useful websites that populate the ever-expanding expanse of cyberspace.
However, it has inspired me to be more proactive in searching out new sites on my own. Also, it has absolutely convinced me that I need to get high-speed
Internet at home, because my snail-slow dial-up connection just doesn’t jive with some of the more exciting applications out there (like YouTube and Pandora.com).
I have grown u
p on computers. My dad got me my first Vic 20 (left) when I was 5. It had a whole 5 kilobytes of RAM. Then we got a Commodore 64 (64KB of RAM!), which also came with it’s own tape drive. Not a big ol’ floppy disk, and this wasn’t one of those more-ancient reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorders. You could just use an audiotape (like you would get your Blondie album on, only blank) and record s
ome bleeps and hchckchkchcckhkhs (which you could play on a regular tape player... it sounded so much cooler than the Blondie album, but I was still a kid) that actually translated to a bunch of ones and zeroes, which actually meant something to the computer. This amazed me.
And how you have things like YouTube. This also amazed me. If something interesting in the world was recorded on video, odds are you can find it there. I haven’t searched for myself, yet. I’m kind of afraid of what I may find. (Were there camcorders at those college parties? Uh, not that there was anything I would ever be ashamed of going on. I just don’t want people to see how low my, um, Scrabble score was… Yeah, that’s it.)
I can only imagine how mysterious these technologies are to others not as familiar with technology as me. I think that one of the more rewarding parts of 23 Things is seeing some of my co-workers discover (and hopefully become more comfortable with) all the cool things there are out there. Even more rewarding would be an MP3 player. Then I’ll have to get high-speed Internet for sure!
However, it has inspired me to be more proactive in searching out new sites on my own. Also, it has absolutely convinced me that I need to get high-speed
Internet at home, because my snail-slow dial-up connection just doesn’t jive with some of the more exciting applications out there (like YouTube and Pandora.com).I have grown u
p on computers. My dad got me my first Vic 20 (left) when I was 5. It had a whole 5 kilobytes of RAM. Then we got a Commodore 64 (64KB of RAM!), which also came with it’s own tape drive. Not a big ol’ floppy disk, and this wasn’t one of those more-ancient reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorders. You could just use an audiotape (like you would get your Blondie album on, only blank) and record s
ome bleeps and hchckchkchcckhkhs (which you could play on a regular tape player... it sounded so much cooler than the Blondie album, but I was still a kid) that actually translated to a bunch of ones and zeroes, which actually meant something to the computer. This amazed me.And how you have things like YouTube. This also amazed me. If something interesting in the world was recorded on video, odds are you can find it there. I haven’t searched for myself, yet. I’m kind of afraid of what I may find. (Were there camcorders at those college parties? Uh, not that there was anything I would ever be ashamed of going on. I just don’t want people to see how low my, um, Scrabble score was… Yeah, that’s it.)
I can only imagine how mysterious these technologies are to others not as familiar with technology as me. I think that one of the more rewarding parts of 23 Things is seeing some of my co-workers discover (and hopefully become more comfortable with) all the cool things there are out there. Even more rewarding would be an MP3 player. Then I’ll have to get high-speed Internet for sure!
