A Technophobic Confession :: Personal Narrative Computers Papers

A Technophobic Confession I am a technophobe. There, I admitted it. The Unabomber, George Orwell, my hardheaded grandfather and I are on the whole members of the equivalent fraternity. I am in the closet no longer. besides because I dont blow up buildings doesnt mean Im not afraid of the brutish onslaught of technology. I went to graduate(prenominal) school in a piddling town in rural Illinois, and until the age of sixteen, I was able to get through without touching a computer. In fact, the only one I r whollyy seeing on a regular basis was the one in the corner of the public library. Up until my junior year in high school, that computer was just about the loneliest thing in the world. Most of the masses in town used a computer for one of ii things word processing or playing video games, and whateverbody who really had any desire to do either of these owned a computer or had access to one at work. The librarians daughter used to set books on top of that computer whe n she was sorting them out to be reshelved. I unendingly thought of the computer as just that, an overglorified bookrack. I laughed to see a tall, precariously balanced pile of books on top of the monitor, which was all entirely hidden by its dust cover body bag. I laughed because I am a technophobe, and to see it being used in this direction reassured me that computers were, quite obviously, a waste of time and money. Then the electronic mail epidemic began cropping up in cities across the nation, and it spread quickly. Like all innovations, it eventually made its way to the Middle West. The outbreak in my hometown started where I least expected it in that eternally slumbering computer sitting underneath the stack of book returns. It happened overnight. The computer was wired to the Internet. The small weekly topical anaesthetic paper pushed the Knights of Columbus hall off the front page to post a story about the Information Superhighway. Clouds brooded on the horiz on and subatomic children tossed uneasily in their sleep. I was good friends with the librarians daughter. We went to the same high school. She was in my circle of friends. We were juniors. She was the first to get an email address.