Kendall, L Technobiography

When I was in high school, ha hum (back in 1970-something) there were no home computers, cell phones, Internet, etc. I started using a computer when I started working for Raytheon, in their ship test division. I got my first computer when I started college in 1996, but I did not have access to the Internet because I lived so far out in the country. However, living so far out meant that my home was "off the grid," so we had solar panels and batteries, and an inverter that powered our house. Even our well water came from a solar powered pump, and we had a cell phone (one of those old heavy giant phones that looked like a small loaf of bread) to make emergency calls.
When I transferred to Northern Arizona University in 1997, I got my first introduction to the Internet, and began learning more about doing research from home. When I transferred to the University of Maryland for graduate school, I began learning about digital video, photography, and editing software when I was working on my Ph.D. These helped me create a DVD to go with my dissertation. However, I did not get a personal cell phone until 2005. Do I use it to text? No. If I have something important to say, I say it or leave a message. Do I have a facebook page? Yes. Am I registerd on other social networking sites? Yes. Do I use them? No. I have hundreds of "friends" I have never met and never will, and frankly I don't care what 100s of people are doing moment by moment or what they had for breakfast. This whole twitter, facebook, myspace phenomenon seems very narcissistic. Do I use email? Of course. I have 8 email addresses (4 faculty, 2 work, 1 personal, and 1 student) and I get 100s of emails everyday (99% junk, so sometimes I spend more time wading through and deleting them than I do answering the ones I need to get to because they really are important). Do I im? I tried it, but I don't anymore. I did not like being interrupted while I was working on something. Do I have a web page? Yes, for my business. So, while I am pretty well connected digitally, and sometimes the technology is really helpful, most of the time I feel like it's just more work piled on my already too busy work load.