Lo Etheridge: technology bio

LIS 638: Technology Equity and Society | Dr. Velez

INTRODUCTION

I was born in 1982, which puts me in that in-between micro-generation, called “Xennial,” where the first part of childhood was mostly analog, and then my teen years and young adulthood happened right as the internet became public and mainstream. I grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in a Black middle-class family. I can see now that the timing of my life and the resources in my household shaped my relationship with technology in ways I didn’t fully understand back then. When computers started becoming something people could have at home, I asked for one, and I got one. I was curious immediately, and I was all in.

AOL & Dial-up internet

I remember when I first got access to dial-up internet using a 56K modem, and that feeling of pure amazement that you could look up information, explore interests, and talk to people anywhere in the world. It felt like magic, like suddenly the world was right there at home. Because the internet was through the telephone line, our house phone would have a busy signals. What’s wild to me now is how completely unmonitored I was on the internet. My parents were not careless people. They had boundaries, and they were generally safety-conscious and moderately strict. But when it came to the internet, it was basically, “Lo is doing computer stuff.” Nobody was checking what I was doing, who I was talking to, or where I was going online.

Unfiltered, unmonitored access

My parents got frustrated because every time they picked up the phone, it was a busy signal, because I was online. Their solution was to get a second phone line and put it in my room, along with the computer, so they could use the phone whenever they wanted. It didn’t seem to occur to them that this also meant I had unfiltered, private access to the internet, with zero supervision. Looking back, it’s one of those moments where you can see the gap between adult authority and actual understanding of a technology’s risks and reach.

Parental Reflection

As a parent now, I’m almost the opposite. I’m much more restrictive about internet access, even for my 16-year-old. We actually have two internet services in our house, Google Fiber and AT&T Fiber, and we use the AT&T line specifically for our kid because I have more monitoring tools on it. I can see patterns of use, I can set rules, and I can shut access off at night. The internet is on a schedule; it goes off around 10:30. Part of that is just parenting in the reality of overstimulation, sleep, and attention, but part of it is also me knowing, from experience, what it means to have unlimited access and no guardrails. I lived that version of the internet, and I know how easy it is for it to become all night, every night situation. Also, you have no clue if the person you are talking to on the internet is who they say are.

Tidewater Gardens - Norfolk VA

Cousins

When I was younger, I didn’t think of myself as privileged in relation to technology or anything at all. I just thought my life was normal. It didn’t really register as privilege that I could ask for a computer and get it, or that my parents could add a whole second phone line to support my internet use. That’s the thing about privilege, it often feels like the default when you’re inside it. It became clearer to me when I spent summers in Norfolk visiting my cousins. I loved it there. My aunt and uncle were fun, my cousins were fun, and it always felt like family. But they had considerably less money than we did, and they didn’t have a computer at home. I remember genuinely asking, “Where’s the computer? Do you have the internet?” And they didn’t. In some cases, they didn’t even really know what it was yet.

Structual Violence: Access & class

While spending time with my cousins in Norfolk (predominately Black city at the time), I found out that they had only one computer at their school. Meanwhile, in Virginia Beach (predominately white city at the time), we had whole computer labs and computer classes. We could make things, explore, learn, and build confidence with the technology just by being around it regularly. At the time, I didn’t have the language for what I was seeing. I just knew it felt strange and unfair. Now I understand it as a reflection of how resources get distributed, and how technology access is never just a “personal” issue. Technology access sits inside of existing opporessive and structurally violent systems. Funding, segregation patterns, city and school budgets, and the long history of which communities get investment and which communities get leftovers. Norfolk was historically a majority-Black city, and the lack of resources in schools wasn’t random. It was structured.

That’s where the course themes so far really clicked for me. Technology isn’t neutral, and access isn’t evenly “available” just because the tech exists. Even within my experience as a Black person living inside an oppressive system, where discrimination and racism function as tools that hold up a structurally violent and covert caste system, I still had a level of financial and infrastructural access that shaped my opportunities. And my cousins, who shared my family and my community, were positioned differently because of where they lived and what their schools were resourced to provide. Those differences weren’t about effort or interest; they were about systems and the way inequality gets built into everyday life.

Hackers (1995) - Movie about teens who were Hackers who take down an evil oil corporation. Huge influence in my life and what got me intrested in coding.

Music & tv

My relationship with technology wasn’t only about computers, either. TV and radio were huge parts of my childhood, especially because two of my special interests have always been music and movies. I watched MTV back when it actually played music, and I remember being exposed to so many genres and aesthetics, grunge, ’90s hip-hop, and everything in between. That kind of exposure shaped my identity, but it also trained a habit in me; I’m a deep-dive person. I would hear a song and start noticing samples, realizing artists were borrowing from older music, and then I’d go hunting for the originals. Technology, for me, wasn’t just consumption. It was a pathway into research, context, and curiosity.

General access to technology

Beyond music and TV, we just had a lot of technology in our house. TVs in multiple rooms, we had the latest available house phones including push-button phones and early cordless phones that felt futuristic to me, and I though we were so cool when we got a cordless. I didn’t have many barriers to technology, and I can see now that “no barriers” shapes you, too. It made technology feel like a language I could speak. It made me comfortable experimenting. It made me less afraid of breaking things. I had the space, and the resources, to try, fail, learn, and try again.

conclusion

When I zoom out, I can see how all of this formed my technological biography in layers including wonder, freedom, and experimentation. In addition, I developed a growing awareness of inequity and the way access is structured by race, class, and geography as an adult. I didn’t understand those connections as a kid, but I can name them now. I can feel how this shaped the way I navigate technology today. I have confidence in the tools and I'm not afraid to get in there and break stuff! I think this confidence set the foundation for me to be more conscious about what those tools enable, who they leave behind, and what it costs to pretend that any of this is evenly shared. This is particularly true as I learned more about digital ethics, history, and peace & conflict studies.

Page updated

Report abuse