My Digital Life

Can you imagine living without any digital products? I CAN'T.

When I was a secondary one student, I shared a computer with my younger brother. Now, there are three computers at my home, one is mine, one is my brother's, one is my mother's, who didn't know how to use it at all two months ago.

Computers are so important for us that you can see we all sit in front of our computers after dinner every night. Chatting among us are more or less like... "you know, I read a piece of news from Yahoo this morning which is about..." My brother and I often send YouTube links to each other to share some jokes through MSN. Although we are just sitting about 10 footsteps apart, we talk through MSN. Here is the recent one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lll-voUKiQU&feature=player_embedded#!

One day, when my brother asked me to go to his bedroom in the morning through mobile, I knew our life is digitalized. I won't say I can't leave home without my mobile but I would probably say I can't leave Tin Shui Wai, where I live, without my mobile. My mobile is my watch, my notebook, my camera, my calculator and my torch. My tutorial students can tell whether I forgot to bring my mobile that lesson. They said I was different without my mobile. My mobile is part of me. I think I just don't feel safe without it.

Years ago, when I have my first friend went study abroad, we bought a lot of beautiful paper for writing letters to each other. But, then, we mostly communicate through MSN, Skype and Facebook. With internet, we can talk to each other, see each other and go online-shopping together! Things are changing from impossible to possible. Who would know we can talk without paying the International Direct Calling (IDD) fee? (Do teenagers nowadays know what is IDD?)

The digital world is so inseparable from the real world. It is easier to know what the digital life enable us to do. But it is difficult to aware that what the digital life has taken away from us. I hope I can see clearer how the real and virtual world affect each another. I maybe able to tell the relationship between these two worlds as well as between the identities created and language used.