My Relationship with Technology ~ Final Blog Post

Technology is a subject that has slowly become fully integrated within my life. It wasn't something I had a particular interest in (when in the forms of television and gaming consoles) as a child, choosing to instead play with physical toys and use my imagination depicting various situations. As I grew up my attention split more between using forms of technology and my imagination for my entertainment. 

Using a television became apart of my lifestyle more and more as I continued to age. Being 19 years old now, I can say with 100% certainty that video games are a massive part of my life. While I don't remember my exact first video game system, looking through all the systems I owned, I can say with some confidence that it was the Nintendo GameCube, with the games I remember playing the most being Super Mario Sunshine and Scooby-Doo! Mystery Mayhem. 

With gaming being a massive part of my life which is evidenced by how I'm a current Game Design Major at High Point University, the premier life skills university, technology naturally grew to be more and more prevalent in my lifetime. From playing video games, watching YouTube videos of different forms of entertainment, and still watching television shows. There was multiple times throughout my life where I myself attempted to become a YouTuber, recording and posting sporadically while in school. During my senior year in High School was the most consistent I was a YouTuber, focusing on streaming as I played and more often than not speed-running the video games I played but, my "life" as a YouTuber started while in elementary school, figuring out very quickly and easily, because of how accustomed to technology I had become, how to record myself, look over the video, and then later post it onto YouTube. 

By that point in time I was still playing with toys and using my imagination, I hadn't fully gone over into focusing only on technology and wouldn't be like that for a marginal period of time but while growing up I became obsessed with these toys with technology inside of them called "Skylanders" which went along with a video game series with the same name. I played with these figures in the same way I played with my toys, enacting my own scenarios involving all of them, as well as playing the actual video games themselves. I believe these "Toys to Life" figures really did start a spiral of collection and more of an addiction to gaming in my life.

It was in the 6th grade, the year was ending when I received my first phone, it was an
iPhone 5. I became very attached to my phone, from being able to watch videos on it to being able to play video games on it, as well as texting and calling, I was attached to the hip to my iPhone. My relationship to technology was not a healthy one at all, spending hundreds of hours total on devices, but its turned into a healthy relationship as the direction my life is turning is reliant on technology as I'll be involved deeply with video games. I believe that technology itself doesn't have any real negatives but that it's us as human beings that generate the negative connotation that technology has. It won't purposely give us misinformation, it send us the information it believes to be true based on the people who gave it the information or programmed it. It won't intentionally mislead us, it points us in the direction it believes is the right one. 

Moving forward with my life, I'll need to have a deep seeded connection and understanding of technology and, as it stands now, I don't worry about the negatives of technology because of how far we can advance with it. Technology itself isn't inherently bad or wrong, it's us who creates it that determines that. Technology is our path to the future.