Becoming Digital

The class name "Becoming Digital" for 21W.784 is going to have to change sometime soon. It won't be long before the people taking the class will have no idea what it means to not be digital. Perhaps it will have to be changed to "Becoming more digital". My father used to sit me down and tell me about the days when a computer took up a whole room. Years later computers got smaller, but they weren't exactly doing a whole lot more. If all our Macbooks and Dell PC's could do was type word documents and play one video game called Oregon Trail, I would argue that we hadn't yet earned the right to say that we've become digital. A digital society means so much more than just a wide distribution of cheap computers. It means the access to networked communities not bounded by geography and having the ability to share ideas and media at your fingertips. This has all happened, and has happened quite recently.
This sort of society-altering technology exists and has been warmly embraced by a few in America. Not everybody has a World of Warcraft community to go home to every night. However, most people do have an E-mail inbox to sort through or a facebook account to manage. Even my grandmother uses the internet on a daily basis. In this respect I feel that all of America (and most other developed nations) have become digital. It is just a matter of the extent to which individuals take it.
The idea of digital media being used for niche groups and special interests comes up time and time again in this class. The more I think about it, the more this seems true and pertinent to myself as a media user. The internet is my primary connection to the digital word. Without thinking about it I am constantly customizing my internet usage to fit my own lifestyle. Nobody tells you what websites to visit or what music and programs to download (legally of course). The internet has become so vast that there are no longer limitations to what you choose to learn from it. It's like an ultimate encyclopedia. If I want to know the resistance in the light-bulb filament on a Yamaha YZF-R1 motorcycle turn signal I know I can find it somewhere on the internet if I look hard enough. And here is the best part about the internet and becoming digital, even if that information about the turn signal isn't anywhere to be found on the internet, I can put it there. In fact, I find out about the lightbulb resistance later on I may even feel obligated to make available to others on the internet. This mentality is and has been key in the development of our digital world.
We didn't become digital when the computer was conceived or when the internet was introduced, we became digital when we realized the potential of these devices and decided to make them our own.