I can see different technology literacy narratives in me. In them, I write something nice about my first gaming console (the PlayStation), or my longtime trustworthy BlackBerry (2015-2019), or how even I got into digital art. But where do they lead? The PS1 led me to considering myself a gamer and as an adult writing a post about video games and racism where commenters openly threatened me. The BlackBerry left me stranded at defunct bus stops in the winter too many times to count when it couldn’t connect to the internet. My art is so much a part of what I’ve shared already. Everywhere I look in the kaleidoscope of devices and stories I have to tell, there is a pattern of wonder leading to exploitation, abandonment, danger. Whether I leave in what happened for others to observe or screen out the “bad,” I’m left with a 20/20 hindsight laden with shame that I thought so high of myself without a closer look.
But somewhere in me I know I am more than a canvas of rectangular red marks long faded from upper thighs or a sculpture of joints bent around handheld technologies. I am more than my software history or library.
My draw to digital/culture studies has always been in part because of what technology does. Technology is the intermediary between material and digital cultures, the key to all the possible places I could be brought. Digital art led me to online forums and in-person conventions. Healthy sexuality subreddits and Facebook groups I found as an adult led to going to queer events all over the Twin Cities.
As we go forward into the future, technology as a “great mediator” begins to feel so hokey and unnatural. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not seeing people. I have a hard time watching a Zoom lecture without getting antsy or thinking it’s a recorded video. I can’t even finish typing up a paper without closing my eyes while I do it.
I’m clinging to what I can with a gross hope. The letters on my keyboard are wearing away from the oil on my hands. The stickers on my laptop are covered in dirt. Nature is healing.