1. The Promise of the New Technology

In June 2001, I gave my younger daughter a new laptop computer as a high-school graduation present. My hope was that she would use it primarily as a tool for research and writing in college. The model that I selected came equipped with many features that would help her work: a fast microprocessor and considerable “random access memory” (to speed her writing and calculations and to enable her to operate several software programs simultaneously); an Ethernet card (to enable her, through her college’s high-speed network, to communicate via email and to do online research); a large hard drive (to enable her to store her notes, essays, and the fruits of her research); a DVD drive (to enable her to use the growing amounts of data and software that are commonly stored in that format); and a large, high-resolution color screen (to ease eye strain).

The computer has so far served her well in exactly the ways I’d hoped. But it has also, to my mild surprise, come to function as her media center. The hard drive now houses (along with Abnormal Psychology notes and email archives) over three hundred sound recordings, all downloaded from the Internet. The computer also functions as a mini-theatre. On weekend evenings, a group of her friends will borrow it for a few hours, drop a DVD into the drive, and huddle together on a couch to watch the show. Finally, she was recently given a “CD burner,” which, when connected to the computer, enables her to copy audio recordings either from her hard drive or from compact discs borrowed from her sister or her friends onto inexpensive blank discs. In short, my daughter, like most of her classmates, routinely employs her computer, not just to read, write, communicate, and calculate, but also to gain access to and then enjoy music and movies.