By Debora Lui on June 24, 2008 1:07 PM
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A couple of weeks ago, I had something happen to me which made me
consider (yet again!) how much our relationship with new media has
shaped our real-world (or non digital) lives. As a graduate student
with Comparative Media Studies at MIT, I had been preparing my thesis
(the culmination of almost two years of research in school) for final
submission for graduation in June 2008. Like my other compatriots at
CMS, I had basically been living in front of my laptop for months:
writing new sections of my chapters, making last minute revisions, and
formatting all my citations and footnotes. However, unbeknownst to me,
my computer was hatching its own devious plan - one which was unaligned
with my goals of finishing the thesis and thus graduating from MIT. A
year previous, I had faced down a "screen of death" (according to
Wikipedia) on the very same laptop. I was left computer-less at the
exact time when I needed it the most, finals week. I had found myself
not only without computing tools, but also without my precious data (I
was writing papers and making an educational website at the time). For
the most part, I had to reconstruct what I was doing from printed
pages, my memory, or scattered hand-scribbled notes. Thought it was
difficult, I ended up scraping by - relying on several desktop
computers, burned CDs and flash drives along the way to help me finish
the term.
