My Mom and the Computer

Over the Thanksgiving holiday break, I discussed with my mom about one of the most important technologies that she had to use at her work place today and when she first started. She first started by listing a variety of different technologies but the main one that she talked about was the computer that she uses every day.

When asking her the questions of when did she first use the computer and how that experience was, she laughed. She laughed for many reasons because she said that where she came from did not have any computers. She’s never seen a computer until she came to the states and became a citizen. It was difficult for her to learn how to use the computer because there were so many components to it and so many things about it. We discussed about how long it took her to adjust fully to using the computer in her work place and she said it took about a couple of months until she went back to school. In school, she learned how to effectively use the computer to benefit her in her workplace. After all, it was not that difficult because she had the opportunity to go to school and learn about all of these technologies.

The computer has helped significantly in her career. With it, she is able to contact and communicate to all sorts of people out there. She is constantly learning new things about it every day. For example, emailing was something new when she started her job. She feels that this has made her job a lot easier but at the same time she doesn’t like to sit at her desk all day typing documents. With the computer, she became more productive; it did not really change her perspective about her work place at all. To her, she still likes it with or without a computer but the computer just made things easier for her and faster. She can get a lot more done in a day compared to before when there was no computers.

This kind of relates to the whole conversation of digital immigrants and digital natives. She had to adjust her knowledge and learn about new technologies. For me, I was already born in this digital age. So, learning computers came a lot easier to compare to her. From this discussion with her, I cannot imagine how hard it must have been to try to learn two languages and yet adapt to the new advancing technologies.