World wide web literacy narrative essay

Back in 1986, when I was in eighth grade; my first experience with computers was horrible.

We would sit in class and enter line after line of code; which made as much sense to me as typing in a foreign language. I was typing in letters and numbers, but had no idea what they meant. Hours were spent this way; so at the end of the exercise I could hit ” enter” and see some lines flash across the screen over and over. By the time I was finished with eighth grade I never wanted to see another computer ever again. Unfortunately the following year in high school I had to take a computer course. It was more of the same; a bunch of codes and “ mumbo-jumbo” that had no meaning to me what so ever. I struggled through the class the rest of the semester and barely passed.

The whole experience left a bad taste in mouth. There was a lot more writing in high school also and everything had to be typed. This usually meant working on the computers.

I think my loathing of computers started to affect my writing assignments. My discomfort was showing through on my reports. It was a stupid hang-up that was pulling me down and making me detest writing of any type. As hard as I tried I couldn’t get passed it. Computers were my nemesis. I hated them and I felt as if they hated me. This would be my attitude for years to come. In 1994 I had joined the Air Force and was living in Japan.

One day I had received a letter in the mail. It said, the “ World Wide Web” would be coming to the base soon and explained what it was because they did not have it in Japan yet; heck it was still new in America. This was a very big deal because the base was located at the farthest, northern tip of the mainland. It was wedged right between hundreds of rice patty farms and the bottoms of mountains; secluded to say the least. Anything new was big news and this was some of the biggest news in a long time. The next day at work all the talk was about “ the web”. Some people I knew had been back to the states recently, heard about it and used it while they were there; they gave me examples of what I could look forward to.

Imagine being alive when electricity was invented and you lived in a part of the country that hadn’t had it yet; I imagine it was the same feeling of excitement and not knowing exactly what to expect. This was going to allow me to see news from home as it happened, not days after, write letters to loved ones and get a response in minutes not weeks, and for at least a short period of time; I would be able to escape the tiny little part of the world I was stuck in even if it was only in my mind through the things I read. Days went by and I had to buy a computer. I started remembering all the drama I had with them when I was younger but I was determined to put that behind me. A lot of time had gone by and I was going to try to get passed my issues. Luckily my neighbor who worked with the military computers on base knew how to hook it up and get me started surfing the web and e-mailing. Due to the fact that I had to type everything in on the internet I became more comfortable writing; something my discomfort with computers had taken away from me earlier on. Pre internet my mom and dad might get a letter from me every once in a while.

Slowly I would send them e-mail a couple times a day. The more I looked things up the more I enjoyed reading about what was going on in the rest of the world. This meant I would have more to talk about and more importantly; more to write about. Computers were so different. This time I wasn’t using it because I had to, now I was using it because I wanted to. Anything that came up in conversation; if there was a question about a sports statistic or who sang a song on the radio, it was challenge for me to find out the answer as soon as possible. I would go home and enter all those questions into the search box as many different ways as I could.

“ Who sang that song” or “ that song was sung by who” till I came up with the answers. Thanks to the internet I found a new interest in reading and writing that till this day I enjoy and according to my wife; spend way too much time on.