A Technophobic Confession :: Personal Narrative Computers Papers

A Technophobic Confession I am a technophobe. There, I admitted it. The Unabomber, George Orwell, my hardheaded grandfather and I are all members of the same fraternity. I am in the closet no longer. Just because I don't blow up buildings doesn't mean I'm not afraid of the unrelenting onslaught of technology. I went to high school in a small town in rural Illinois, and until the age of sixteen, I was able to survive without touching a computer. In fact, the only one I remember seeing on a regular basis was the one in the corner of the public library. Up until my junior year in high school, that computer was just about the loneliest thing in the world. Most of the people in town used a computer for one of two things: word processing or playing video games, and anybody who really had any desire to do either of these owned a computer or had access to one at work. The librarian's daughter used to set books on top of that computer when she was sorting them out to be reshelved. I always thought of the computer as just that, an overglorified bookrack. I laughed to see a tall, precariously balanced pile of books on top of the monitor, which was all but hidden by its dust cover body bag. I laughed because I am a technophobe, and to see it being used in this manner reassured me that computers were, quite obviously, a waste of time and money. Then the e-mail epidemic began cropping up in cities across the nation, and it spread quickly. Like all innovations, it eventually made its way to the Middle West. The outbreak in my hometown started where I least expected it: in that eternally slumbering computer sitting underneath the stack of book returns. It happened overnight. The computer was wired to the Internet. The small weekly local paper pushed the Knights of Columbus hall off the front page to run a story about the Information Superhighway. Clouds brooded on the horizon and little children tossed uneasily in their sleep. I was good friends with the librarian’s daughter. We went to the same high school. She was in my circle of friends. We were juniors. She was the first to get an email address.