Poetic Justice: A Haiku about your ISP
Oh ATT why, Why must you crash bi-daily, Freaking gateway man.
Read MoreDavid McKissick
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Stories By David McKissick
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Culture shock: from technophobic to hardcore junkie.
Back when I was younger, I was not a fan of technology by any means. To say the least. You see, I was raised by extremely technophobic parents, both of which were, for lack of a better word, fundamentalists. For the fist 13 or 14 years of my life we were very poor, so many things were harder. We didn't have a basic computer (our first computer was a gift, more on that later) until at least 2008 and the highest tech thing we had overall was an old Playstation 2 hooked up to a tube TV from the '90s. Before that was an old NES. "It has 2GB of sheep?" In early 2009 we got our first computer. A real computer, a magical window box thingy! I wasn't too bright at the time. A friend of my dad decided to give us a "premium" quality desktop and monitor that he "built" for us, we were thankful and thought he gave us an amazing deal! A few years later I inspected the old thing and realized it was just a stock hp, painted black and red. Turns out he just went to a dump, took it and painted it, flashed it with linux Mint and called that turd polished. Either way, it was nearly useless. Ever tried to use a computer without internet? You can't do a whole lot. It was strange though, it was daunting, scary, whimsical and strange... Like if someone told you that Dr. Seuss was the most complex writing on earth and then presented The Divine Comedy. Long form. We had no idea what we were doing whatsoever, I've always been fast at learning things if I tinker with them but this was incredibly confusing. Yea. Kinda like that. Building a computer for a tech illiterate friend? Don't give them a linux based OS. Seriously. For those of you that don't know, most linux operating systems are not as user friendly as say, Windows or Mac. Theres exactly 1 exception that easily comes to mind and that's Ubuntu. Anyway, about 8 months later, we got internet (and Cable!). I was a pretty sheltered kid, I had lots of friends but we were all young and so on. See where this is going? My internet adventures started off pretty simple... Looking stuff up, downloading stuff, some... "questionable material." Yaknow, common internet newbie stuff. As time went on I branched out and discovered the vast ocean of communities that that big shiny interweb thingy harbored, unfortunately I was not familiar with internet grade A-hole and sleaze. I learned new words, had new adventures, got attacked (A LOT) and just overall learned a lot. Over the past few years, thanks to aforementioned sleaze, I have become extremely proficient in working with computers of various kinds, be it Windows or any of the many linux distros I've tried. If I could give a piece of advice to parents and guardians? Give them access to a computer somewhat early if you can. I'm not saying shove your toddler in front of a computer but simply let your kid explore, shelter will protect them but it will ultimately hinder their intellectual and mental growth. Let them make mistakes but keep them on the right track with morals and ideals, but give them the freedom of choice. It will make all of the difference in the world, trust me... I know.
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