User Portrait as a Media

As a media user, I employ a wide range of technological toys. I have my cell phone in my right pocket whenever I am not in my room. I carry my iPod in my backpack in case I find myself needing tunes. I have a digital camera and an account for an online photo hosting service called Flickr for when I want to share pictures with the world. While at home, I have access to TV shows, movies, video games, and music. I had a laptop back home and will soon have a laptop here that I will likely be on most of the time I am on my hall. Then there's my desktop computer that serves as my main portal to the internet as well as my preferred video game platform.
Of all these gadgets, my desktop computer is the most used. I occasionally play video games when I have time, but I spend most of the time on my desktop on the internet. Social networking and instant messaging take up a chunk of my time spent online, but they are not the reason I spend so much time on the internet. I prefer interacting with people in person, so spending so much time interacting with people through text never hooked me as it does others. Instead, I spend most of my time on the internet learning about anything and everything that interests me. I believe that the reason the internet has such importance to me is because of my love of learning. The internet has the potential for a near infinite amount of information and it is incredibly easy to find.
Some examples of the tools I use to find all of this information are blogs, news feeds, and digg.com. Blogs are online journals that are sorted chronologically so that the most recent post is at the top of the site. There are certain blogs based on people's lives that I enjoy reading, but most of the blogs I visit are more like a collection of magazine articles. These blogs include stories about recent events, instructions for cool projects, tips for organization, generally cool information, etc. News feeds are easy ways to get all of my daily news and blogs in one convenient location. Digg.com is my favorite place to find stories and articles from all over the internet. Digg combines principles of social networking and news feeds to expose stories to the world that may otherwise not get the attention they deserve. These are just some of the ways to find the more intriguing blogs, news feeds, articles, stories and anything else that interests you.
The computers, cameras, iPods, and other gadgets all fuel my desire to communicate with and learn about the world. It's not about having the fastest computer (though I do) or the flashiest cameras, and it's definitely not about having the coolest MySpace page. Technology is my way of feeling connected. Technology is 42.