Intro to Digital Media Literacy

My mom graduated from Syracuse University in 1989, she was a communications major when technology was a burgeoning norm in everyday society. Technology companies like Apple were at the top of the cutting edge. The Macintosh Personal Computer had come out in ’84, but people didn’t really gravitate towards it. It wasn’t something that everyone had, and foreshadowing how people today approach new age technology, it wasn’t until people felt they needed it that it became popularized. So, back to my mother, as a senior in college she was focused on completing her senior thesis. During a conversation with her grandmother, she mentioned the paper and her grandmother excitedly invited her to her house for the weekend to work on her brand new Macintosh Personal Computer. She had been gifted it, but in her old age she had no use for it and it had been sitting in her attic. My mother apprehensively agreed to use the computer, strapped for time, and went to her grandmothers house with no expectation of finishing her assignment. To her surprise, the computer was easy to use, and she did finish the thesis. She was a computer savant. An original Macintosh Personal Computer circa 1989.

It is currently 2023, the Macintosh Personal Computer is a relic, and I am currently writing this article (and all my other ones) on a Mac Book Air that was released in September of last year. My mother carries her Mac Book Pro everywhere, she actually can’t do the work she does without it. That’s everyone though, right? Ever since I can remember, she’s had the latest technology. When I was in elementary school, she had a flip phone, the Macintosh Personal Computer (or desktop) lived in our basement, and her laptop went everywhere with her. Both pictured below.

As the years progressed, and technology evolved, so did she. She replaced the desktops as Apple came out with new ones, ones every other year she would come home with those big white bags with those chic white boxes inside holding a new laptop. And of course during this time she had a blackberry, because that was the hottest cell phone out. But then the iPhone took over, and the blackberry was out. The iPhone, the iPod, the iPod touch, the iPad, the iMac, they all entered the house and became… completely necessary.

So my dad completely doesn’t care about technology, he uses the oldest iPhone that Apple stores will sell and he uses it for calls and texts. Nothing more. For most of my high school career, he used one of my old mac books to do work from home, and when I was a senior we got him a brand new one that we spent an entire day teaching him how to use. He adapts with the times as necessary, and never anything more. He is as digitally literate as he needs to be. My mother, is very different, as you can guess she adapts as she sees necessary. But the technology that she has to adapt to is different than the 1984 Macintosh Personal Computer. Her iPhone runs out of storage, she’s in the store within the week getting a new one. Her computer crashes, within the hour she’s opening a chic white box taking the plastic of the latest model. She learns how to use it, and she utilizes it to its fullest potential. The modern woman. She believes herself to be literate and therefore she is.

Every year there is an entirely new line of technology, new technology to learn and master until the next thing comes out. So what does it mean to be digitally literate? Do you have to be 22? Do you just have to be willing to learn it? Most jobs require it. Under skills they say something like proficient in Excel, Adobe Premiere Pro, etc. How does one make a living, an independent living, without being digitally literate. Farming? Living as a Nomad? To be literate has a spectrum of meaning based primarily on what you want to do with that literacy. As time has gone on, it’s become increasingly pertinent and necessary to be digitally literate.

Citation:

Jony Ive’s Design Legacy at Apple

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-democracy-truth-internet-search-facebook