Start out your journey by being a twenty-six year old, history student with a computer dating back to the mid-90s. Then add your gender as female and your hobbies as camping, reading, running and anything outside the realm of video games and computers. Then (and here’s where it gets tricky) decide to travel two hours to engage in a full-day Northern Digital Expo! This my peers, is how to feel like an outsider.
It is interesting to note that just days before the expo, I was comfortably engaged in my weekly digital history class, exploring ideas surrounding the digital world and discussing possible display technology. Reflecting on my day at the expo, I started to think: what were the major differences between class and the expo? Why did I feel so comfy/cozy in my digital history class, but not in the digital expo world?
It turned out to be pretty easy to spot the differences. For starters, my digital history class does not have dancing, Old Spice, ‘cyber girls’, which, I am guessing were aimed at the majority of expo goers – male, 15 to 25 years old. Secondly, my digital class does not have a deafening loud heavy metal(-ish) band playing while we are computing. And lastly, our classroom, for the most part, does not smell like a mixture of energy drinks and Doritos, which were handed out in large quantity, for gamers to smear all over the latest controllers, keyboards and virtual reality simulators.
Now, the Digital Expo had some interesting and more positive elements: guitar hero wars, large gaming arenas, massage tables (mostly unvisited), and the latest in Mac computers - but for the most part, it felt more like a toned down frat party than a digital expo.
1 comment:
Most such expos are like that; I've been to a couple that danced around the edges of that kind of them, likewise quite a few friends, and the "OMG aren't we so extreme!" style's annoyingly common. That's not out of place at, say, a gaming conference, but... yeah. There's a few pretty distinct cultures in the field, and a baptism by total immersion in one of them can be a little unnerving. ;)
Personally I want the chance to attend one or two of the TED conferences, which, while not exclusively digital in nature, do have some really neat stuff on the digital front without basically being, as you said, theme parties.
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