My Digital World Narrative

Growing up in a period where technology was rising at speed of light, I cannot deny the huge impact it has made in my life. Going back to where it all started, when I was around 3 years old, my father brought-in a PC (Portable Computer) and put in in our living room for work purposes. As I always admired it whenever I passed by, he downloaded a game that was suitable for my age and that’s where the journey with the digital world started. 

I used to spend several hours playing games and drawing nonsense on Microsoft Paint, which is an application that can be used for drawing and painting images. Despite that, my mother made sure to set a limit for my screen time fearing it would damage my eye vision.

Years Later, the Internet connection reached Lebanon and i decided to join the social community. It was through arguably the most famous social platform, ‘FaceBook’. I created an account and started searching for all the people I know, sending them friend requests and liking their photos, however I was always cautious with the information I put online, by not posting a lot of personal photos. Of course, I used a fake birthdate as i wasn’t old enough to meet the age requirement at that time. I was really amazed at how complex this platform is, connecting people miles away through a digital screen. In addition to that, Facebook wasn’t restricted to communication only, as I played a game called “FarmVille” which is a farm-simulation game where you can basically run your ‘digital farm’ and you had to wait a certain period to harvest the crops, which made me always come back to the computer screen to check my progress.

And then, I got my first phone, which was a Blackberry . All this innovation was combined in a small device that could fit in our pockets. I downloaded all kinds of applications like Facebook, Kik and started texting and calling my friends.

Being a French educated student, browsing and reading articles online has helped me develop my English reading and writing skills. At first, I used ‘Google Translate’ to understand complex words. But that didn’t stop me from browsing more and more on the web, as the scope of topics is so wide that you could only write a keyword and that would be enough to get hundreds of sites using the search engine ‘Google’. Furthermore, as I read more articles, I was able to reach a point where I didn’t need any translation, for that i am grateful for the web for ‘technically’ teaching me a language!

After starting college, I started to rely on digital books, or what we call E-Books, for my studies, since first it would eliminate the burden of carrying the heavy textbooks, making them more portable and I felt it was more practical having them on my Laptop. I was required to buy a textbook once, and after trying to study from the hard copy, i have realized that i couldn’t unless it was on my Laptop. During my semester abroad, i was introduced to a new method of learning which was an online course where all the material and lectures were given on the web, through recorded videos and PDF files. I found it to be really efficient as i had the complete freedom to keep up with the course at my ease.

Nowadays, I have limited my time on social media, using Instagram and WhatsApp for a maximum of one hour per day. I am more interested in reading articles about my major to stay up to date to the advancements in my field. Furthermore, I constantly check LinkedIn, which is a website used for professional networking linking between the employers and the job seekers, to keep an eye on opportunities in big companies.

Finally, there is no doubt that the digital world is ruling our lives and has become a necessity. I had minimal knowledge about its intersection with the disciplines of humanities , to create what is so called “Digital Humanities”, which i’m planning to explore this semester to gain more insight on its tools to use them in my field.