The five pieces of technology that defined my adolescence

Posted by Aaron Souppouris on January 8, 2012 06:41 am 47


One-

Nokia 8210 (1999-2000 - 14-15 years old)

8210

While the 8210 wasn't my first phone, it was the first phone that felt like a part of me. Texting took off in the UK a long time before the US, and my fourteen-year-old self was already using it to flirt, gossip, cheat tests, and do everything else that teenagers love to do. It was the social tool, along with ICQ (or later, MSN Messenger), that was used by kids in my area. I, of course, had the most technologically advanced handset of them all, tricked out with a custom dragon case, which unfortunately I couldn't find to illustrate just how geeky I was.

Two-

Sega Saturn/Sega World (1995-2003 - 10-18 years old)

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Image via Capcom Unity

I've already posted an ode to my love for games during my childhood, and I can't glaze over it here. The Saturn gave me the best gaming experiences of my life, and Sega World, a huge arcade/indoor theme park in central London, was my weekend spot of choice. A huge array of games, and more importantly, a huge array of hardcore gamers to hone your skills against, made this the most important arcade spot in London, right up until it's eventual closure earlier this year.

Three-

DA (2000-2006 - 15-18 years old)

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DeviantArt, or DA for short, in case you don't know it already, is a huge online art community. With 14 million members and counting, I think it's the largest of it's kind. Looking at it now, it seems a pretty ordinary site, albeit a great time- waster, however, in 2000, for me at least, it was nothing short of revolutionary.


It was an online community, and more than that, it was a Social Network. This was 3 years before MySpace went live! It was a place for people to post their art, traditional or digital, and to get valuable feedback.

Users had to option to maintain blogs, and had a wall for comments that weren't related to specific artworks. Each artwork was given a page within the artist's profile, and you could 'like' any piece you wanted, which would then show up on your profile. I still can't help but feel that DA doesn't get the credit it deserves as a forefather of the Social Networking boom.

Some of the art on DA blew my mind. As a teenager I dabbled in black & white photography, often accompanied by my own thoroughly depressing poetry and prose, and the feedback and tips I received were invaluable. I later learnt the fundamentals of Photoshop through friends on the site, and became an avid "artist" in the field of Photo-Manipulation. I continued to regularly contribute to the site for many years, although by the time I turned 18, the attention-seeking poetry had all but abated.

Four-

LiteStep (2001-2003 - 16-18 years old)

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via DeviantArt

From my passion for DeviantArt, came my obsession with LiteSTEP. LiteSTEP was a replacement shell for Windows, which took its design cues from NeXTSTEP. What made it different from the regular windows experience, and so important to my development as a geek, was its completely customisable UI.

There were thousands of themes created for LiteSTEP, many of them were shared on DA, and after coming across many a strange looking desktop, my interest piqued, and I decided to dive into it.

It essentially gave a "linuxy" feel to Windows, together with freedom to modify as you pleased. After trying out a few ready-made themes, I took to making my own themes, initially by modding and "frankensteining" bits and pieces of other people's themes, and then by crafting and coding my own from scratch. This was the first of many experiences with UI modification, and in my mind the most important.

Five-

HTC Canary (2002-2003 - 17-18 years old)

Htccanary

The second phone in my list, the HTC Canary was a life-changer. Sold originally as the "Orange SPV" in the UK, this was the first phone I know of that ran "Pocket PC" (which would later be renamed to Windows Mobile).

Having used feature phones my whole life, this was my first smartphone. Actually, this was the first smartphone released in the UK, at least by my standards. Windows Mobile was incredibly powerful for its day. It allowed me to browse most sites with Pocket Internet Explorer, chat on MSN Messenger on the go, sync and reply to e-mail, play mp3s and videos, load third-party apps, and, with a little time and effort, play Doom.

Back in 2002, it was miles ahead of the game.

As the platform matured, I wrote a few themes and tweaks for Windows Mobile, and got used to changing the 'look and feel' of the phone on a weekly basis.

The HTC Canary transfered my desire to make things look different, in every way possible, from desktop where it began, to mobile, where it still exists today. I've owned a new phone on average every 6 months since my Canary, and I've not left a single handset untouched.

I cannot look at a stock phone without feeling sad now - do my mods, tweaks and thematic choices improve the phones I use? Probably not. But they make them mine, and only mine, and that's what I've always seen my phone as - a part of me.

I'd love to hear what technology defined, or defines your adolescence - please share :-)