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My Life
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First Watch
My first watch was an analog glow in the dark Mickey Mouse watch given to me by my grandma when I was about 3, in preschool. Some other kids had watches, but for us they might as well have been bracelets because I don't think we valued them for their ability to tell time. I liked because it glowed in the dark. In fact I couldn't read analog watches until about middle school, which is why I quickly upgraded to a digital watch in elementary school. The watch no longer works, but I still have it. -
Children's TV gaming device
When my sister and I were very young we would play with this kid's toy that plugged into the TV and would allow us to do things like play around with shapes. -
First Computer
We had the first family computer when I was only 4. It was a mac, which, despite a brief flirtation with PCs, would continue to be my family's brand of choice into the present day. My twin sister and I would mainly use a basic drawing software with a simple toolbar for changing things like brushstrokes and colors. I still remember how difficult it was to share the computer amongst 4 people - my dad would be doing his taxes and I would want to play oregon trail. -
First handheld gaming device
When I used to be on the mighty-mights ski racing team in pre-school, I remember playing my Sega Game Gear on the long drives to the mountains. I think I even had a TV tuner for it as well. I did get a gameboy at some point, but up until the Sega Dreamcast era I stuck with Sega as my gaming brand. When I was a little older, I would meet my first best friend when I saw him playing his on a plane and we decided to trade games. After he moved away, we grew apart. -
Exploratorium
The exploratorium is an interactive science themed museum at the palace of fine arts in San Francisco. I would go on several field trips here to check out usually physics related exhibits. -
Learnt basic computer programming.
In an after school technology program, we constructed robots with small motors and legos then programmed them using PCs running on DOS. I don't really remember any programming today nor do I think I have much of aptitude for it. My brief flirtation with the more technical side of computing was much like my experience with playing the piano - after my parents said I didn't have to go to Piano lessons anymore, I stopped going. After middle school, I was allowed to choose my interests. -
First Time on Camera
I went to summer school one year for something called "Kids on Camera," where we would all pretend to do little commercials for things like chocolate milk. Mom still has the VHS tapes. -
First Video Game Console
It was a sega saturn. My favorite games were panzeer dragoon and any sonic game. -
Tamagotchi!!!
I remember everyone having these little brightly colored eggs with screens on them hanging from their backpacks. It became the thing to have, but like any craze I got over it quickly. I still remember hearing noises from a crack in the car seat as my tomagotchi slowly died from malnutrition. -
Internet became a part of my life
It wasn't until middle school when I began using the internet for things like research and email. I still remember when the library switched over it's catalogue from cards to a digital system. My first research project was on the Spanish colonization of Latin America and teachers would not yet count internet sources towards the research requirement. -
School subscribes to JSTOR
At this point, the internet was still valued primarily as a tool for organizing and cataloguing other media in their physical forms. This meant that most of our research came from the books in our very small public school library. I still remember the excitement my teachers had for resources like JSTOR. The ability to read complete digitized versions of texts was really the the first time I used internet not just a catalogue but a media distribution and storage device. -
First DV camera
When my grandfather was getting towards that age when death is no longer some far away idea but a looming reality, my dad got a small sony camcorder so that he could film his dad imparting his wise words of advice to my sister and I. -
Get my N64
Mario world was my favorite game. -
First Cell Phone
I got my first cell phone in middle school (before most of my friends). I didn't real want a phone at this point because a phone is one of those technologies that only becomes useful and enjoyable when other people adopt it. Since none of my friends had it, a phone for me simply meant less freedom from my parents and their need to constantly know where I was. -
Get my playstation I
I was really into games during elementary school and middle school. So I (or my friends) all had access to any of the three major gaming systems. -
Touch Screen ATMs
I think around this time is when the first touch screen ATM machines came out. -
Graduate from middle school
Graduating from middle school marked a major shift in my relationship with art and technology in that my parents no longer forced me to take piano lessons, study computer programming, acting camp or do any extracurricular activity that I did not genuinely enjoy doing. -
Playstation II
I got one the year after they came out and this was the last video game console I would ever own. I guess in high school I sort of lost interest in them and if I ever did play games, I did so on my mac. -
Sony Metreon Opens
The Metreon was a digital entertainment center that Sony opened up in Downtown San Francisco. It was there that I saw my first Imax movie. I remember that they also had a cool exhibit based on the book The Way Things Work. -
Projectors
Going to a wealthy private school in SF, all the classrooms were equipped with drop down screens and projectors. Many teachers required us to make a powerpoints for our presentations. At first, I would create text heavy slides and essentially read from the screen like I would with a note card. Over time, I've learned that images and economy of language make for much more effective powerpoints presentations. -
First MP3 player
I never own eda portable CD player because when I first started listening to a lot of music in high school, the Ipod had already been released. I have had a number of ipods, beginning with the 2nd G classic. I still don't know exactly why, but I suppose I've always been somewhat of an early adopter when it comes to new technologies. -
First time recording and editing DV
When I made my first short video for my first year film class in high school (a short film called "Chain Reaction" which was a kind of video poem that tried to draw connections betwee various social commentaries using recorded and found footage), all the information was still stored on tape. You would then have to digitize or "capture" that information onto a hard drive. -
First Laptop
After diagnosed with a learning difference dealing with a motor skills issue, I began using a laptop in class to take notes. Since high school I have always preferred to type everything. But what was so great about having a laptop is that I didn't have to worry about sharing the family computer or waiting in line at the library. From this point on, access to a computer was no longer an issue and only then did I become dependent on it. -
First DVR
With the introduction of dual tuners from our cable provider, we no longer recorded on to VHS but used the DVR instead. I think we we're HD at this point too. -
First "Smart" Car
My dad's new BMW not only had a navigation system (which still required DVDs), but a multi-disc CD changer and XM. It also had a device that integrates the Ipod into the stereo system and steering wheel controls. -
First Smart Phone
I was very disorganized, so my dad got me a Palm Treo smart phone to keep my contacts and appointments in. To be honest, it was really impractical for things like email and synching with your laptop. The one thing I prefer about keeping records like appointments or contacts digitally is that they can be archived and organized better than paper. It is certainly easier to search for say a meeting time in your phone than in a paper calendar. -
Wireless Home Streaming
About 4 years ago, we began networking the whole house wirelessly including to the speakers in every room and the TV. -
Joined Facebook
Got one to keep in touch with friends from high school while off at college. To be honest, I have really only kept up with a handful of close friends from back home and I suspect it will be the same thing after I leave college. I suppose I am one of those people who prefers having face-to-face relationships with people. If I don't see them, they tend to get buried underneath the imediacies of my daily life. -
Students expelled for tampering with the High School Wikipedia page
Three students at my high school were expelled after they went onto the SF University High School wikipedia page and edited the page to be extremely racist towards African Americans and Latinos. Having the defamed the reputation of a school that prides itself on racial and intellectual diversity, the students were asked to leave after their identity became known. -
Inflight Entertainment System
I have always flown to school on JetBlue. Now they have XM and Dish network TV for every seat. Virgin America also has their own system, but theirs is more like an ipod instead of a broadcasting device. You can also use the screens to chat and play games with other passengers. A lot of newer aiports also have screens where you can order your food via a touchscreen monitor and it will be brought to you. -
First contribution to Wikipedia
For a research assignment on intellectual property laws and licensing issues in my Media Tech and cultural Change Class, Professor Mattell required us to incorporate our research into the appropriate Wikipedia articles. At the time, I was enrolled in a Japanese history class in which the professor (Waters) had been very explicitly against citing wikipedia as a reference source because the "information was unreliable." Our Wiki assignment was in part a response to this position. -
Video Bus Stop Ad
I was in NYC waiting for the bus and I noticed the normal advertisement poster case next to the seats had been replaced by a plastic protected screen flashing still images of Gucci models. I think I have seen ones more recently with sound and more graphic intensive video (i.e. not just stills). -
Posted my first video to YouTube
For my Media Tech and Cultural Change course we we're all required to make a kind of mash-up or "remix" videos and upload it to YouTube. For my video I took footage from the movie Dazed and Confused and spliced it underneath audio from a 1960s anti-marijuana PSA. When I recently checked the YouTube page, I was shocked to see that over 60,000 people had viewed it and to find the forums very active. -
Became a star on Middlebury Confessional
Shortly after the blog Middlebury Confessional, in which users names are kept completely anonymous, I would introduce myself to people on campus and I would often here, "You're the Kyle Howard from Midd Confessional." Sure enough, the blog was filled with posts from someone (actually a group of friends and later people I didn't even know) claiming to this mythical figure with my name. Here's the interview I did for the campus. -
First Iphone
I waited for the 3G, but I finally got one as I found that I needed to be able to respond quickly to emails while working at various internships in Hollywood. And I use mobileme as well. Before I had a full keypad, I would never text. But now that my whole family does, i txt my parents more than we talk. -
Became a victim of Identity Theft
While checking my bank account statements, I noticed a monthly charge was being made by some company I had never heard of based in Columbia. This was the first time that I realized how truly anonymous the internet can be. From now I own I'm very careful with who I give out my credit card information to because you never know who they might give it to or who is really running a website. -
First Time Shooting on Solid State Video Camera
When I shot a short film on a Panasonic AG camera last summer, a number of things have changed since high school. First, you are no longer recording to tape but to removable hard drives. Second, you can also choose from a much larger variety of frame rates. -
Editing Internship on Chronicles of Narnia III
This was my first time working on a major commercial project that made use of a tapeless, filmless workflow. The HD cameras shot directly to a portable set of hardrives or "Codex." The vast improvements in quality and variety of compression formats is striking. Not to mention the use of a Unity, which is essentially the server on which all 10 Avid Editing systems at the office ran off of. -
Staying in touch
I was recently abroad working for a month in London and, while I did use skype to talk to my close friends, I found myself emailing and txting my parents more than anything else. To be honest, my relationship with my family has been somewhat strained recently. I personally find that when having difficult conversations in which it's very important to choose your words carefully and to think clearly rather than emotionally, text-based conversation is ideal.