Ada Lovelace Day
I have this friend. ::looks in reccea's direction:: She's been telling me for a while now that I can no longer tag complaints I have about other people's bad technology with "And if an English major is critiquing your [technological fail], you know it's bad."
Because she insists that I'm not really a typical English major when it comes to technology.
I never once used a computer in a classroom while I was in K-12 schooling. I didn't really have a technology mentor in that sense. My first computer was a Mac SE in 1990. I didn't have email in college. I did take a job working in an office that used PCs where I learned to use Lotus 1-2-3. I didn't get my first email address until my first post college office job. When I went off to grad school, I still didn't have a permanent email addy.
And then, I found fandom.
Now, I mock anyone who thinks he (and it usually is a he) is more tech savvy than I am because I use a Mac. And often, I win.
About 90% of what I know about technology, I learned from fandom. (Okay, to be fair, there was other tech along the way. But still. It was really fandom that make me into a gleeful tech geek. And when your department's tech guy introduces you to the company wide tech guy as a geek and a gamer and you deny it until you're faced with overwhelming evidence, at some point, you sort of stop fighting it and get over the imposter complex.)
So my Ada Lovelace day shout out is to every person in fandom who dragged me kicking and screaming into some new technological experiment. To every woman in fandom who convinced me that, yes, I really did want to play around with Photoshop. Or who explained to me how to use IRC. Or who convinced me to get a Mac and partition the hard drive. Or who commented to explain how to make animated icons. Or who hooked me up with a connection for some new technological advance.
Because she insists that I'm not really a typical English major when it comes to technology.
I never once used a computer in a classroom while I was in K-12 schooling. I didn't really have a technology mentor in that sense. My first computer was a Mac SE in 1990. I didn't have email in college. I did take a job working in an office that used PCs where I learned to use Lotus 1-2-3. I didn't get my first email address until my first post college office job. When I went off to grad school, I still didn't have a permanent email addy.
And then, I found fandom.
Now, I mock anyone who thinks he (and it usually is a he) is more tech savvy than I am because I use a Mac. And often, I win.
About 90% of what I know about technology, I learned from fandom. (Okay, to be fair, there was other tech along the way. But still. It was really fandom that make me into a gleeful tech geek. And when your department's tech guy introduces you to the company wide tech guy as a geek and a gamer and you deny it until you're faced with overwhelming evidence, at some point, you sort of stop fighting it and get over the imposter complex.)
So my Ada Lovelace day shout out is to every person in fandom who dragged me kicking and screaming into some new technological experiment. To every woman in fandom who convinced me that, yes, I really did want to play around with Photoshop. Or who explained to me how to use IRC. Or who convinced me to get a Mac and partition the hard drive. Or who commented to explain how to make animated icons. Or who hooked me up with a connection for some new technological advance.