As I write this entry, I am listening to Elvis Costello on iTunes, and I keep getting the urge to Google, and tab over to my Facebook and newly acquired Twitter. There's a lot going on, and I can't really resist the urge to play some air drums. (C'mon, Big Tears, Radio Radio, anyone?) So is technology a distraction? I think it really depends on the person.

After reading Part II of Marc Prensky's article on digital natives, I had several thoughts. He bases his conclusions on the amount of time kids spend playing video games. He says that the hours kids spend with the games help reinforce "a very different blend of cognitive skills." I have never really played video games, not when I was a kid and not now. When later in the article Prensky states that "six hours is far less than a Digital Native would typically spend over a weekend watching TV and playing videogames," I thought, "I could never imagine spending that much time in front of a screen!" However, it would be an easy leap to say I spent at least six hours a weekend building with blocks as a kid. So, I may have developed cognitive skills that look different from the typical Digital Native.

Considering this while asking "Is technology a distraction?" begs the questions "What technology?" and "Distracting to whom?" The answer for myself is most technology, including "portable music," is distracting to me. I get too involved. I think I was conditioned to need solitude to focus.

I remember standing with my first or second grade class in the school library huddled around a large wooden cabinet. The librarian was pulling out long drawers full of index cards and pointed out how each was labeled with a range of the alphabet. She called this device a "card catalog."

By middle school, all the card catalogs had been hauled away to some media center purgatory, and we were in thrall to Google. I remember buying my first CD; about a year later I downloaded my first song on Napster. I also remember being in awe of the real-time abilities of instant messenger.

In high school, getting a girl's screen name seemed to take on the same meaning as getting her number. I thought about every movie which makes reference to getting a number, and how they might all soon be dated. (And what about that universal gesture for rolling down a car window? When will that become an anachronistic vestige?) Still, none of my friends had ever heard of Youtube or Wikipedia.

I feel like I grew up in the borderlands of the digital divide. I didn't have the internet at home until forth grade, and by then my bookshelf was full and my cursive was established. I was told to study in seclusion and learned to give my full attention to the environment around me. If I wanted to read, I would go to the library. If I wanted to socialize, I would go to the diner. If I needed to use the bathroom, that's where I went. No wifi, no laptop, just toilet paper.

I still feel rooted in place. Sometimes when I take my laptop to another place and need to access a file, I get the urge to return to the physical place where it was created. On the other hand, so much of our lives take place on the computer, from job searching to banking to entertainment, and I feel like part of my identity exists within the computer. Still, it's not just any computer, but MY computer that I'm wrapped up in. When I moved down to Glassboro a few weeks ago, I only brought my laptop. It has Microsoft Word and connects to the same internet as you. But after a week of living here, it just didn't feel like home. I decided to bring my desktop down, and now my room feels like mine.