Technology and Me

Looking back, I think that I’ve never been a person with a particular fear of technology. Sure, we had our differences and misunderstandings – there were times when I was not far away from smashing my stupid something against the next best wall, but then again there were times when my technology and I lived in perfect harmony. You see, my feelings for technology fluctuated somewhere between a happy and an angry face – never reaching the level of horror as seen at Eduard Munch’s “The Scream”, though.

And as far as I can remember – I knew that technology was fun. Basically, because I knew that TV was my friend (since it showed ‘Tom and Jerry’ and other neat stuff on Saturday mornings) and because I knew no better purpose for my dad’s PC then to play ‘Lemmings’ on it. With passing years my collection of useful technology grew:  I had several video game consoles, a few digital cameras (I passionately lose whenever I get the chance to), and a little assortment of ‘handheld magic’, called cellphones. There were different shades of emotions I went through while growing up with technology, but even on the day, that I’ve lost every file that was saved on the hard drive of my first PC (because of some viruses that tricked my firewall and my anti-virus software), I have not felt terror.

Feeling respect for technology (for being a worthy opponent) – that was ‘das Höchste der Gefühle’, as Germans say, for me.

Consequently there was not much ‘fear’ to overcome with a little help from Bruce. However by being a good girl (aka doing the boring blog-homework-stuff) I learned something that’s as natural and important as the use of technology for human beings: The use of language.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I have not known the English language before, but it’s partially because of BusApps that I was forced to expand my vocabulary, in order to suit the needs of nerds, future business people, business people, students, anybody interested in the stuff I wrote about – “my target group” – and to apply that newly gained knowledge every week.

I did not use any sophisticated strategy to find out about, or how to use, programs and technologies. Every time I am getting to know something new, it comes naturally to just play with it, or let common sense lead me to some point of least resistance. Tugce has already wonderfully described a very similar strategy before and since I don’t want to be a bad phone, I’ll simply link you to her post…

But the real challenge was not about looking at Google Blog Search results, or reading the words other people have written down, but reorganizing all these information into one wonderful, little post. Even though I use IT and words every day, (to me) Blogging itself was a completely new genre to discover! As any other learning process it has not been fun the whole time: There were stereotypes which I had to break down (before building a diverse understanding at that spot), there was my old arch enemy ‘the time’, I had to fight while facing deadlines (time travelling is the answer!), and so on. But on the other hand, this ‘drill’ was probably the best way to learn something about ‘professional’ web communication.

Every week I had the possibility to experiment with this medium in order to start conversations with my classmates. And judging by the nice responds I received, I’d say mission accomplished!

By the way I feel that this is the perfect opportunity to thank everybody who took the time to read and comment my verbiages: Thanks a lot guys! Your comments really helped me a lot! And even if I might not be as good in expressing it as others are, I am truly grateful that you took the time to write some lines, especially since I experienced how ceremonious and delicate commenting actually is, myself!

All in all I think that the most valuable thing, we’ve learned in this class, is about modern communication.

And now its time for me to come to an end & practice some commenting!