by Vicky L. Oldham, May 31, 2023

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The brief autobiographical account that follows was completed for an assignment for a sociology class, answering the question: how did technology change my life. Specifically, how did it change my life in terms of relationships, social identity, the workplace, and community involvement.

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How Technology Changed My Life

Technology, especially computer and internet technology, changed my life.  In the mid-1970s, how those changes would take shape would have been impossible to foresee.  Still, during that timeframe, the best-selling book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler (1970) offered a popular topic of discussion on wide-ranging predictions, including the highly prognostic "much of the work of society will be done at home via computer-telecommunications hook-ups" (p. 246).  Most of the book's ideas seemed exciting but a long way off.  When I was a fine art student at Tyler School of Art (Temple University's fine art school) in 1973, there were no computers, cell phones, or digital cameras.  No one would have dreamed of creating art in any way other than using traditional methods.

Figure 1.  Moonlight in Platinum.

Note: Moonlight & Platinum.  Sculpture prototype designed for The Franklin Mint in 1987 by Vicky (Victoria) Oldham.  The Franklin Mint, Copyright 1987.

Before finishing school, I began to create prototype sculptures for the fine porcelain giftware market, making original designs like fantasy lady figurines (see Figure 1), floral and bird sculptures, and carousel animals for companies like Lenox and Franklin Mint.  I started as a freelance artist but soon signed an annual contract with the promise of a commission on sales over a specific limit.  In the early 1980s, porcelain figurines resulting from my prototypes were produced domestically.  Just a few years later, things began to change, and by the early 1990s, the businesses I worked for sought cheaper labor (and costs) in offshore factories (in places like China, Thailand, and Indonesia). 

Porcelain figurine production was, by nature, labor-intensive, each by-hand step hailing back to the dawn of porcelain making thousands of years ago in ancient China.  At about the same time I lost my livelihood as a sculptor, personal computers were entering the consumer market, and I found them intriguing and exciting.  Fearing that I would have no more income if I didn’t acquire new skills, I decided to learn to use a computer for creating digital art and "desktop" publishing.  I found fresh off-the-press how-to books at the local Borders Books with step-by-step instructions on the new software for digital illustration and photo-editing, desktop publishing, and website design.  The limited self-education process was just enough to help me find employment as a graphic artist and technical writer for a local company that manufactured remote monitoring systems.  Soon, my new occupation began to impact all areas of my life, including personal relationships, group memberships, social identity, the workplace, and community involvement.

Personal Transition and New Relationships

While prototype sculptors faced the demise of their jobs, the US graphic design field was reinventing itself—and growing.  A revolutionary new set of design tools included software programs that offered vast improvements over traditional, by-hand methods (such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator). 

During the mid-1990s, website portals like America Online became popular.  With my IBM PC (personal computer) running Windows 95, I dove in and created my first website using the new website builder AOL Press.  As simple as it seems in hindsight, AOL Press was revolutionary online software that reflected the profound transformations happening in cyberspace. 

In my new role as a graphic designer and technical writer for the remote monitoring systems company (Phoenetics Inc., located in Aston, Pennsylvania), I communicated with print shops previously used for publishing the company's manuals.  I was invited to visit a presentation by a well-established print shop that had just invested in the latest digital “workstation."  Its hard drive could hold, for its time, an unimaginable five gigabytes of client publishing projects (laughable by today's standards).  During the tour of the shop’s other work areas, technicians were busy hand-cutting strips of film to produce magazines and other publications without computer technology.  I recall one technician saying how their jobs will soon be obsolete due to the new digital approach to publishing.  I immediately related to his sentiment since I had already lost my occupation to its obsolescence.

Not giving up on sculpture completely, my husband (also a professional sculptor) and I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1999 and Sedona, Arizona, the following year to explore opportunities for producing fine art bronze sculpture.  By then, I had created several small websites.  It was the year 2000; realizing how long ago that was, I feel amazed to remember I also used PowerPoint to create a promotional CD for my new venture, BioNet Solutions.  The CD, made on my PC, featured audio with short, animated segments to show how biological illustration could be used to explain (and promote) the drug discovery processes.

Following a referral by a product manager at a startup biotech company in San Diego, I received contracts for website and graphic design for several small biotech companies.  Beyond websites, the companies often expressed the need for comprehensive corporate identity projects, keeping me very busy.  Design software continued to improve at an epic pace, and I was able to make websites using Macromedia Dreamweaver and its graphics companion, Fireworks.  Soon, all the biotech companies wanted "Flash intros" for their websites.   I learned the software known as Flash, a necessity for fast, creative web animations and graphics software like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Freehand to create printed corporate identity materials. 

Social Identity

My social identity shifted when I found work as a graphic and website designer.  My new skills presented opportunities through projects that enabled fascinating inside views into previously unknown worlds.  I think of how fortunate I was to become acquainted with the exciting world of startup biotechnology in San Diego in the early 2000s.  As a graphic and web designer,  most people would not imagine my previous twenty-five years as a professional sculptor using traditional methods.   Settling into my new occupation, I was invited to join the BioCommunications Association and submit my work to their annual competition, BioImages, where I received honorable mentions for several digital creations for a client biotech company, Althea Technologies.  It was the first time I had received recognition for graphic design work in a scientific context.  Then I received more referrals to businesses outside the biotech field.  It was a time when many companies began to realize they needed a website or corporate identity package to stay competitive. 

The Workplace and Community Involvement

Although my graphic and website design business focused first on biotech, it soon began to include websites for tourism-based ventures in Sedona, Arizona.  After creating websites for bed and breakfasts, resorts, and tour companies, I realized the lack of websites representing Sedona in photos.  I decided to design an online magazine featuring the beauty of Sedona in pictures, highlighting its various attractions.  The result was Gateway To Sedona, a photo-essay style advertising portal for businesses catering to Sedona’s tourist industry.  By now, I had one of the new digital cameras (with 5 megapixels, a pitiful amount by today’s standards, but perfect for the relatively slow internet in the early 2000s).  Digital photography would be used to document unique aspects of each tourist attraction.  I became personally acquainted with many owners of the hotels, restaurants, and other tourist attractions and gained an awareness of the challenges facing Sedona’s niche tourism industry.  By now, my business had hired additional talent, and our team used both Macs and IBM PCs in our office.

Over about ten years, my vocation had transitioned from a traditionally working sculptor to a place among the publishers and promoters of one of America’s top tourist destinations (Touropia Editors, 2022).  According to Sassen (2002), digital technologies resulted in previously unimagined business opportunities for women.  Women-owned online businesses included firms “...in four distinct categories: (a) portal, content and community ventures; (b) web-based services; (c) e-commerce; and (d) e-business applications and web-technology ventures” (p. 376).  My business reflected a synthesis of these categories, while community involvement reflected the evolution of my self-identity, a transition made possible by embracing new technology. 

Figure 2: The Gateway To Sedona Visitor & Web Guide.

­­Note: The Gateway To Sedona Visitor & Web Guide.  Published by Oldham.  Gateway To Sedona.  Copyright 2008.

The Gateway To  Sedona team, or "The Gateway," as it became known, had an office in West Sedona and accepted walk-in businesses who wanted to buy advertising, keeping us very busy for several years.  The Sedona Chamber of Commerce gave us a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and a few years later, in 2009, we won the honor of “Best Website” in the Verde Valley, Arizona.

In addition to the tourism portal, we published a 200-page printed tourism guide that included Sedona attractions and resorts alongside visitor information with maps to hiking trails and red rock formations, a reference to the area’s natural history and wildlife, and destinations popular with Sedona visitors.  The printed guide also depended on cutting-edge digital design tools, including Adobe’s In-Design desktop publishing software.  Completed digital files in pdf format were sent electronically to an Asian printing company.  We received the finished guidebooks a few weeks later, perfectly bound and delivered to our Sedona storage facility.  The completed project depended on significant advances in computer memory, software capabilities, and internet technology, with the know-how to pull it all together. 

Conclusion

Technology, specifically computer and internet technology and its associated products and services, greatly influenced my life.  The development of software and cyberspace helped me transition from an occupation marked by relative isolation and no financial security to a new business with the ongoing demand for digital products in a wide range of industries, from biotech to hospitality. 

According to Nye (2006), a common misconception when new technology emerges is how it could homogenize us and limit our choices and freedom.  This assumption has been attributed to the “assembly-line” origins of early 20^th-century technological products, referring to how the first cars, telephones, and other technologies presented only one model or color option.  Later, people realized that technology actually enables diversity and creates opportunities for businesses and individuals that never existed before.  That outcome reflects my own experience.  I consider how the computer age has allowed me to reinvent myself.  I can only wonder about the next phase of technological innovation with the development of AI (artificial intelligence) and the unprecedented ways it could reshape society.  How will it alter what I know or what I do?  There are so many unknowns.  Despite fears about the dangers of AI, I believe that if the focus remains on human creativity and an excitement for learning, AI may prove itself a fantastic tool (or possibly, one day, a sentient partner) that enhances workflow and changes the paradigm for what is possible, just as the personal computer and internet proved decades earlier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

BioImages (n.d.). BioImages. BioCommunications Association. https://bca.org/Home. 

Nye, D.E. (2006).  Technology matters: Questions to live with.  Chapter 5: Cultural Uniformity or Diversity?  (pp. 67-86).  MIT Press.

Oldham, V. & C. (2008).  The Gateway To Sedona visitor & web guide [Photo].  Gateway To Sedona.

Sassen, S. (2002, May).  Towards a sociology of information technology.  Current Sociology, 50(3), 365-388.

The Franklin Mint (1987).  Moonlight in platinum [Photo].  The Franklin Mint.

Toffler, A. (1970).  Future shock.  Random House.

Touropia Editors (2022, January 16).  25 top tourist attractions in the USA.  Touropia. https://www.touropia.com/tourist-attractions-in-the-usa/