Derek Brown

Professor Walls, ENC-3417

Digital Literacy Anecdote
24 Feb 2013
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Digital Literacy Anecdote
I must have been about five years old when my Dad brought home an enormous box. I
followed him up the stairs, spying as he laid the box contents in his loft office. Reading over
instructions, he glanced down at the objects then back at the paper. He carried a large TV
looking object, a rectangular box, some wires and cables, and a remote device to his desk and
began to piece the thing together. At some point my dad must have noticed me because he asked,
Want to help? and with a quick head shake I moved to his side. He straightened the TV object,
placed the rectangular box one on the floor, and set the remote device out in front of him. With a
few extra glances over the paper, he turned to me and said, Press this button, motioning to the
box. I bent over and clicked it.
The rectangular box roared like a car motor, words appeared on the screen, things
beeped, and a picture of a blue sky and window appeared. I figured it for a TV, but watching my
dad click the remote device I could see he was controlling the screen somehow. He must have
seen the excitement in my eyes because he asked Want to try? I leaped onto his lap and clicked
away as he said, This is a computer, Bud, a brand new Gateway 2000. I looked over my
shoulder at him and he just smiled, so I clicked a few more buttons. He let me do most of the
actions but sometimes hed reach down and move me in the right direction. We played on the
computer for awhile that day, and many days to follow, but soon that computer was outdated;
thats the trouble with technology, its always changing. But one thing though I will never forget,
my dad introduced me to digital technology.
Digital technology however, meant nothing to my five year old brain. My dad talked
about terms like typing, mouse, keyboard, monitor, and tower, and I sat mesmerized. I
remembered he used to sit in the opposite corner of his desk working on paper documents while I
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pounded away at the keyboard. Not realizing it then, but my dad and I were the first generation
of father/son computer interaction; my dad didnt have computers when he was young. David
Barton of Literacy describes this experience as a social history of literacy, saying my dad was
pass[ing] on [to me] a culture in a changing environment (50). The societal demands of
literacy had changed since my dads youth; were now required computer for every day
functioning. Computers changed the way literacy was conducted and because my father needed
the technology, he deemed it important I learned it too. My dad walked me through my first steps
into digital literacy, but it was far from my last. Computers and technology would rapidly change
over my lifetime, and I learned and adapted to each one just as I did with our Gateway 2000.
Though the file storing and transferring of a computer was immense, my five year old
mind was more focused on their ability to play videos games. My parents had done a good job
keeping the game consoles of the time, Nintendo 64, Playstation, etc. away from our home. They
must have known of some unknown danger of games, especially my dad since he played Atari
throughout college. Though, my peers parents were far less restrictive.
Around the time I was eight, I started a new school after my family moved from Florida
to Ohio. Determined to make new friends, I used recess time to explore around to find some.
While exploring, I noticed a large group of classmates down by a group of picnic tables.
Approaching the kids, I saw one was holding some sort of device. The device was small, purple,
played music, and see-through, so you could see the mechanical parts. My computers fascination
lured me to his electronic device, so I asked him what he was doing. He simply shrugged me off
saying, Stop or Ill lose! At this I figured it must have been some sort of game, but he held the
device in his hands, theres no way something that small could play games. I asked some other
kids what the device was but many of them were just as reluctant to talk. I wondered what could
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be so amazing that caused kids so be such selfish pricks, but my prying paid off when I finally
figured out what it was; it was a Gameboy Color and the game they played was Pokemon Red
Version.
Though I never heard of such a device, I never wanted something more. The idea that a
game system could be held in your hands was new to me, and fascinated me. I thought about
how big a computer was and how all of that could be condensed into a device small enough to
carry it in your pocket. I had to convince my parents to get me one, knowing full well there
hesitance to any new technology, but this device must have been different or it was my endless
prying because by my next birthday I received a purple, see-through Gameboy Color and later
received Pokemon Red Version.
Understanding how a computer worked, I flipped a switch and the device came to life, it
had a few buttons on the top labeled A and B, with an arrow directional pad. The game screen
changed to match the inserted game, and it read Pokemon Red Version, then proceeded with
several animated graphics of monsters battling. Though, the most unique thing about my
experience with the Gameboy was how quickly I adapted to playing the system. I understood that
buttons must be clicked to get to play the game. More importantly is that I utilized practices
learned in school and on computers to accomplish personal goals. I had to understand the text of
the game but also how to navigate the game. The Gameboy served as a conduit between the
digital world and the academic world of literacy for me. Barton put it best when he said, the
practices leak from one domain to the other... meaning the domains of home and school
overlapped because literacy is fluid; I took my knowledge of different areas to accomplish the
goal of understanding the game system (39).
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Thinking beyond the realm that literacy is restricted to certain areas, literacy became a
tool to me and not merely just a practice. My experience with a handheld device gave me the
idea that literacy was not restrictive to place or reason but instead restricted to the person. Each
person has their own literacy background and when presented with a new technology their ability
to adapt to the technology is determined by implementation of their different literacy skill sets. I
managed to implement my skills successfully into the Gameboy, but I could not implement them
into a larger system because as revolutionary as the Gameboy was, it was still restricted to the
individual. It would take the interactions of internet through instant messaging (IM), emails, and
MMOs for my literacy tools to be used on a larger scale.
By my Jr. High school years, the social norm had turned to chatting with each other
through the internet. Not wanting to feel left out, I asked my sister what instant messaging was
and she explained it was the ability to be able to converse with another person online
instantaneously. But to do so it required an IM account, she walked me through the setup screen,
which required my name, number, email address, and finally a screen name. At first things went
well, I could chat with anyone I knew at school as if they were right there, but soon typing began
to be a problem which was later alleviated when I discovered shorthand typing.
Arriving home after school one day, I logged on to AIM, America Onlines instant messaging
system, to be greeted with several other schoolmates. I started a simple chat with them, typing in
hi or hey, whats up? I would normally get simple responses like, oh hey, nothing much,
or how is it going? but one friend responded, hey, brb! Baffled, I asked what it meant, but I
got no response. I felt a fool sitting there waiting until about 10 minutes until, it means be right
back, silly. Everyone knows that! Wondering if other words were shorthanded, I researched
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and found Lol to mean laugh out loud, nvm to mean never mind, jk to mean just
kidding, afk to mean away from keyboard, and u to mean the word you.
Discovering these words led me to think why this type of speech isnt used everywhere,
like at school. At the time this sounded like a practical solution though, I realized now how
wrong to use shorthand in different discourses would be. School teaches proper spelling and
grammar because the writing language is standardized and universally known. If shorthand was
implemented there would be many more cases, like my own, where the reader would be lost at
what is meant by brb. Though, we could learn these new words since the learning of new
words is dependent on the redundancy of written language, but reading is so depend on how to
pronounce words and phrases the shorthand would simply remove this factor (Barton 83).
The community of instant messaging I discovered developed its shorthand because it was
practical; the conversing took place in real time like a conversation and confusion could be
assessed immediately. The academic setting however, is written as to be read at anytime of
reception, so terms like brb do not work because the authors presence with the reader is not
needed. Shorthand instant messaging was developed as a tool to be used as if both writer and
reader are present at reception. Understanding the differences across discourses develop from
their perceptive needs, I knew instant messaging and academic writing possessed their writing
systems because they worked for that community. My experience with instant messaging opened
my mind to the different ideas and discourses of literacy and presented the aspect of the ability to
interact with an online community of people.
One Sunday at church, my friends Dan and Michael were talking with our youth pastor
about a game: their level, towns explored, and quests completed, but they also spoke of trading
with people and joining with another player for quest. Interested, I inquired about how they
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played with other people online. They explained the game was a massive multiplayer online
which it encompassed the connectivity of the internet with the role-playing aspects of video
games to create a virtual community. In this community, a player could interact with any other
player online at the time. Excited, I asked what the game was called, and they told me
Runescape.
Later that evening, I took my first steps in to the virtual world of Runescape, where I
played a champion and took part in completing tutorial based quests that advanced to the main
world that consisted of towns, deserts, kingdoms, and all sorts of creatures. I began my
exploration as I would any game, talking to the NPCs, non-playable characters. The characters
would talk to you and give you advice or a quest to complete with rewards of gold, experience to
level your character up, or weapons and armors to protect your player in combat. Many of these
concepts previously seen in other games, but there was one difference, the world teemed with
people.
Though Dan and Michael explained to me that the game was a mulitplayer I didnt quite
understand exactly what that meant. The game came to life with the interactions of players,
buying, selling, questing together, but most of all through the chat system. The chat system gave
players a dialogue box where they could type in anything, hello!, How are you?, I am
Jedimaster9d, (My in game name). The IM system allowed for players to discuss in real time
the experiences they were having in this online community. It gave a voice to a community of
players that once was restricted to a home or playground.
I then began to understand what my parents feared about technology, what society fears
about technology. Literacys advance in technology, such as in MMOs, now made it possible for
young teenagers to access a world of knowledge through the internet but more importantly
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contribute to that world. As Dennis Baron of A Better Pencil put it, the technologies of literacy
control not just who can read and write, but also what can and cant be said, (23). My access to
MMOs presented the beginnings of an opportunity to spread my ideas with people I had never
met. The digital age brought with it a changing of literacy because no longer were authors of
books, magazine editors, and the government agencies able to censor what people said. The
virtual community established through Runescape gave me a voice to spread and validated that
my ideas were important. The magnitude of this revolution carried on into my high school and
college careers through a different virtual community, that of social networking.
I discovered social networking sites in my sophomore year of high school, about middle
2000s, when Myspace and Facebook were first gaining popularity. Social networking presented
the user with the opportunity to connect with peers on more than the conversation base of IM but
allowed for individuals to create a personalize webpage that friends could comment and post on.
Many of my friends and me even came to point of obsession as we waited around for comments
to appear on our page. Our obsession grew from a need to belong and to gain more of this feeling
we started editing our own comments and pages to attract our peers. Feedback became essential
to how we worded things on our Facebook and Myspace because good writing became defined
as something that had an effect on the world (Thompson 1). Our peers would only be moved to
do something, such as leave a comment, if we composed something worthy of their time.
My goals for writing had grown to be directed at my global community; the digital
literacy world changed my writing from a self-centered aspect to paying attention to who would
read my writing. The fact remains today that I dont post anything on my Facebook that could
lead to negative connotations because a future employer might draw conclusions based on what
he read about me. I learned that good writing had more of a purpose than a grade for a professor,
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it give you an identity to the world (Thompson 1). Understanding my identity became essential
as myself as a writer, and a person.
Exploration through digital literacy defined my personal literacy to grow beyond the
mere lessons my dad taught me. Looking at my life through the changes in literacy helped me to
realize that literacy is everywhere. But that it still begs the question What is literacy? I
understand it as the video games I played, the family that taught me the computer, the virtual
community I became a part of, and the writing done for my peers. But a precise definition of
literacy may be an impossible task, because it is different for each and every person (Barton
18). We all come to understand it differently, each of us have our own literacy history. I grew
with video games and peer interactions serving as a conduit to my literacy growth, but those are
not the only literacys. Literacy is everywhere with many different types as Barton says, people
today are constantly encountering literacy, (Barton 3). The interactions with people, the
Facebook statuses you post, and the news channel you watch in the morning, or the place you
grew up in is all literacy; your literacy identity is formed from those interactions. My literacy
identity formed through utilization of my skills through different discourses into a writer that
pays attentions to his peer audience base. My experiences in my life defined me, and will
continue to define me forward into to my life.






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Work Cited:
Baron, Dennis. A Better Pencil. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.
Barton, David. Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. Malden:
Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Print.
Thompson, Clive. "Clive Thompson on the New Literacy." Wired. Wired Magazine: 17.09., 24
Aug. 2009. Web.13 January 2013.