My History with Technology – A Reflection

I’ve seen this discussed a lot online so why not try to do my take on this topic too!

The 1990’s

My first piece of technology back in the day was really the Television back in the 90’s when I was a kid. The realm of exploring it was not really in my alley at the time because all I thought was if you turn it on, change the channel with a remote, and then it works by your command with funny pictures and sound. Yeah, that was my draw to watching television to about several hours a day after preschool and elementary school.

The next was the telephone, not the cell phone, but the landline phones – old school virtual network phones. I thought these were kind of cool because you can talk with your grandparents and aunts/uncles from far away like they were next to you – again, at the time, I was a kid.

Okay, let’s talk games.

The late 90’s/early 2000’s

I was a Pokemon fan, in fact, I am still a Pokemon fan as I was the target audience when Pokemon became the craze in the late 90’s! So, what is my first hands on with a piece of technology? Yes, my parents bought an eMachines windows 95 computer from Costco!

Wait, no, sorry for that diversion, it was the Game Boy! Video games were the main craze when you are not playing outside the street and at night. This was my first instance of diving into a long run cause of both isolation and socialization. Why? Because this activity, growing up, can be performed independently yet also socially like Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart, or even online games like MapeStory or RuneScape.

Yet, at the time, all my high school friends were in on this like it was some form of sick social drug – we were all playing it, we were all imagining it, and all that – especially when you can connect devices together with something called a Link Cable.

Okay, enough about handhelds and gaming consoles, they are still around today.

Back to my old eMachines computer – Yes, Windows 95 was my first entry into the world of technology through Solitaire and Space Pinball! Okay, those were some fun games at the time but I did not really think much to it because my family were missing one thing: the internet.

Early Middle 2000’s

I was going through Elementary School at the time (Kindergarten and grades 1-5 = 6 years starting from August and ending in May) and my school had the internet! And the computers that the school had were those Apple iMac computers! Rows and rows of them because that elementary had the donation funding.

This was the portal to NetScape and webpages where, at the time, I thought this was cool yet I was still focused on watching TV and playing video games with my neighborhood kids.

Then my parents finally decided to get the internet when I was in the 4^th grade – dial up. Dial up internet was horrendous, there was a lot of beeping sounds before you are connected to the internet and even then, it was super slow. The websites that I primarily went to were just, you’ve guessed it, Pokemon.com and some simple flash games websites.

Late middle 2000’s (2004 – 2006)

My dad finally bought a new computer– an HP Windows XP computer and we upgraded to DSL internet around the same time. This was now the trend when I started to go outside less, I got a bit “smarter” to figure out some things, YouTube was starting to be a thing, and I was in middle school.

The computer would last me all the way through the start of high school because the Internet was the “wild west” at the time – viruses, pop ups, and other bad stuff were rampant but I felt protected when an antivirus sweep would detect and quarantine those programs (Not that I went to “bad sites” but rather Pokemon fan sites).

Wifi – the Linksys WRT54g was my family’s first router by the end of the late middle 2000’s. The only reason why we got it was for, you’ve guessed it, the Nintendo DS! I was anticipating for the next release of Pokemon yet playing Mario Kart DS at the time. However, one thing that I would like to add is CS372 made me really appreciate getting hands on with these tech because the concepts like virtual circuit, packet switch, and wifi networking per node made today’s culture possible.

Anyways, late 2000s to 2020.

No one plays outside anymore after my high school age. Then again, the financial crisis 2007 happened.

High school, original college, and work– all of those technologies above became vital to my technological expertise along with the final major gadget release: The smartphone (I only got the iPhone when I was in my original college due to release time and my age ~ 2010 @ iPhone 4).

The only thing pivotal were the upgrades: network service type (DSL -> cable internet), computers (With experience with both Windows/Mac), game consoles, and additional smartphones – in fact, I think technological hardware seems to have stagnated.

2020

Zoom, internet, and now postbacc college. How far have we came and I grew up with a ton of social shift from TV -> Smartphone. In fact, I don’t even have a TV because those technology is superseded by the computer at the end of the day.

All in all, my history with technology throughout my years was mostly for entertainment and social endeavors – I never thought I would do a computer science degree and work directly with technological software because I was focused on a business degree at the time.

Next time – let’s talk about the home networking.