Relationships: Relating to Others around Technology

The limitations of privileging or relying on family and peer-based guided participation with computers, however, become apparent in Johnston’s narrative. Unlike the playful, social experience Lanning describes in his elementary school’s computer lab, Johnston describes only limited interaction with computers mandated by teachers’ sporadic demands for typed papers. Computers do not function for her as a way to play or socialize with others, and Johnston is the only narrator who states explicitly that she did not like computers. It is also evident from Johnston’s story that she did not use computers regularly: her narrative suggests a gap in computer use between her elementary and high school years, whereas the other narrators talk in terms of things they “always used to do” with computers.