Template:Narratives/Digital Identity
âOMG,â Elizabeth thumbs into her cell phoneâs miniature keyboard. âHeâs soooo cute.â Send.
Perched in a windowsill high above the city, Elizabeth coos over her new nephew. âWhat a peanut!â
Elizabethâs sister smiles from the hospital bed. Andyâs not even a day old, still wrapped tightly in the wardâs white-and-blue swaddling blanket, his tiny facing peeking out from his motherâs arms.
Elizabeth points the cell at Andy and peers through the viewfinder. The baby screws up his already crinkled face. She clicks a photo with the built-in camera, which makes the sound of an old-fashioned camera shutter, for no good reason. Send.
âMust already be the most photographed baby of all time,â her sister laughs. âYou should have seen mom. Youâd think sheâs never seen a baby before. Her poor friends. Theyâve probably all exceeded the quota on their AOL inboxes from all her endless e-mails. Sheâs never learned how to avoid sending pictures as enormo attachments.â
Elizabeth takes Andyâs tiny hand. She runs her finger over the plastic bracelet he wears. âCohen, Baby Boy,â it reads, along with a bunch of other data that a nurse entered into a computer kiosk somewhere. Time of birth, momâs name, a unique identifier, and so forth.
âHey, what about my friends? Iâve been texting them every three minutes since he was born.â
âAt least theyâre used to it. Thereâs no doubt they know to ignore half your messages. Just so they can get something done all day.â
âNot when thereâs a picture of your adorable Andy attached,â Elizabeth pouts, fiddling with the cell phone. âActually, I put the pictures all up on Flickr. My friends who really want to know what Iâm up to subscribe to my Flickr feed, so they get a ping every time I upload a new picture. So I guess their RSS readers look kinda like the inboxes of momâs friends. But thatâs their problem.â
âAndyâs dad is keeping a copy of every e-mail a friend sends in to say congrats in a special folder on our computer at home,â her sister says. âHe figures thatâll be a twenty-first century baby book. We havenât gotten a single hand-written note of welcome to little Andy.â
Without warning, Elizabeth flips out her phone again and trains the lens on her weary new mother of a sister. Click. âHah! Gotcha. Momâll love it.â Send.
Fast-forward: Andyâs four-and-three-quarters. Heâs been typing e-mails to his grandparents and, most important, his Aunt Elizabeth since he was two. Well, heâs had a little help from mom, who lifts him onto her lap, queues up the e-mail program, types in the destination e-mail address, and lets Andy clack away on whatever keys he can reach.
The early mails from precocious Andy to Aunt Elizabeth read: âwwnijrosffreeooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxâ and âijgjigrrwopo[-[pppppppppppp.â She loves them. Theyâre saved to the harddrive of her Apple in a special folder called âAndy.â Heâs her favorite digital correspondent, bar none.
Andyâs momâs laptop is a bigger draw than the TV in the basement. Not a close call, actually. Andyâs a big fan of time on his own, so long as that means heâs plunked in front of the screen of a laptop playing interactive games. His mom worries a little about too much âscreen time.â But Andy loves it, and he goes only on good, safe sites, with a parent always nearby.
Andyâs latest favorite site is pbskids.org. He doesnât know it, but âBetween the Lionsâ is teaching him the alphabet and leading him on some early steps toward reading. (Heâs also getting exposed to the âChick-Fil-Aâ icon every time he logs on. Theyâre the corporate sponsor for the web site.)
In order to play âBetween the Lions,â thereâs a catch. You have to download a bit of software made by a company called Adobe. In the processing of downloading the software, you are prompted to give Adobe word of whether you are over 18 or not, your name, and your e-mail address. Another entry in the Digital Nativeâs distributed digital file is born.