From the Intern Desk…

After several weeks on hiatus, the weekly “From the Intern Desk…” blog series is back in full swing!  This week’s entry is from Jason, a Junior at University of Notre Dame and intern in the Tenderloin Tech Lab this summer:

As I walked into St. Anthony’s on my first full day of work as a new summer intern, I eagerly awaited what my day would hold. After entering the Tenderloin Tech Lab on the third floor, I learned I would be helping teach the Basic Computer Skills class, a 12-class program for people with little or no computer experience. I quickly flashed back to my middle school computer classes, remembering countless hours of typing, learning the home keys on a keyboard, my first web design using HTML, and the years of fidgeting with my laptop, discovering all of the eccentricities of Windows XP.

I received my first laptop in sixth grade as the first class of a now school-wide laptop program. As any self-proclaimed computer nerd would do, I quickly familiarized myself with the new hardware and learned the new programs that came pre-installed in our machines. Computing had become second nature to me and I soon found myself being called upon to fix my parents’ or brothers’ computers when they weren’t working properly. I had mastered the basics without even recognizing them as skills that needed mastery.

Flash forward to the Basic Computer Skills class and the students are learning the differences between files and folders, how to use a web browser, and how to open their first email accounts. Things that had been so simple for me—so basic—were difficult skills that required practice and effort before they could be mastered. As we worked on creating and saving new Word documents, one student inquired, “but why are we doing this? I’ve got a pen and pencil right here!” As I grappled to come up with an answer that didn’t include a philosophical discussion detailing society’s expectancy for everyone to be computer savvy, I realized that technology—that which is supposed to make our lives easier—doesn’t always carry through on its promises.

We celebrate our iPhones because we they allow us to do things that were never before possible.  But are they making our lives easier? When I watch my friends frantically pounding out emails on their BlackBerries over Sunday brunch, I can’t help but think that their lives were never as complicated or stressful as they are now that they are masters of, and slaves to, technology. It seems as if our idolized devices have become the rulers of the world, and we their abiding customers.

Don’t get me wrong; I love being a member of Generation Google. Moreover, I’m absolutely thrilled to spend my next eight weeks helping people learn how to use technology to make their lives easier. Clients are learning to create and edit resumes, search for jobs on the internet, and get in touch with distant friends and relatives. But as I celebrate each small victory with the students—using their first flash drive, sending their first email, making their first Facebook profile, to name a few—I’m reminded that technology is here to serve us, not the other way around.