My story is a bit of a strange one. I went from being terrified of technology to addicted to it in a matter of months. Usually people are one way or the other, but somehow my personality totally flipped one-eighty degrees. It all started when a mate of mine was looking into game design courses in Melbourne. I thought this was a rather ambitious undertaking on his part, as he wasn’t particularly arty or creative. I also didn’t realise how much IT and programming was involved in studying gaming. But when he started his course, he really surprised me with how smart he was.
I guess this mate of mine had a particular talent at dumbing down techy concepts for an outsider like me to comprehend. Whenever I had problems with my computer, my other friends would scoff at my ignorance while my mate who was studying video game design was much more patient. He would explain in everyday language how I could do simple and then complex things using on the computer. I started to realised that computers aren’t all that arcane after all. In fact, most problems or queries can be solved by looking up simple instructions with a google search.
I think the reason why it took me so long to overcome my technophobia was because I tend to become flustered when the computer doesn’t do what I’m expecting it to do, and because it’s not human, I can’t even talk to it! This to me felt like reaching a frustrating impasse, but these days I’m less intimidated by computers like my friend in the video game design course. Melbourne has a few courses like these and I actually find game design and web development quite fascinating. And now that I’m pretty much glued to my computer screen, I’m actually thinking about taking one of these game design courses myself! Thank God I’m not the hopeless technophobe I used to be!