Hi there, I’m Nicole! And, I’m super excited to be a DRC Fellow this year.
My relationship to technology has always centered around community. Beginning with the huge family PC my sister and I used to play around in the early 2000s Microsoft Paint (rip) to visiting each other’s Animal Crossing islands on our Switches from across the country, the ways in which digital technology can invite or foster community have evolved over time as technological advances have been made. Though I used to strictly view digital technology as something that connected people when they were physically together in a space, presently I view digital technology offering opportunities for community-building, solidarity, and social justice.
I grew up in a Nintendo household that spanned generations of GameCubes and a Nintendo DS or two, and my family eventually upgraded our clunky desktop computers to a shared family laptop. My mom was always down to play a video game, and I fondly remember playing Dr. Mario on her GameBoy for hours at a time. My dad, on the other hand, was always somewhat of a technology guy, tinkering with watches and taking things apart to (usually) put them back together again. Unlike my mom’s enjoyment of technology for entertainment and my dad’s desire to understand how things worked, I became interested in how using digital technology could benefit users and build community. Though I didn’t engage social media much until high school and it wasn’t until I began college in the mid-2010s that I purchased my first laptop, I was increasingly drawn to the affordances of digital technologies and its counterparts.
An image of Dr. Mario in gameplay on a GameBoy from Nintendo’s gallery (link).
Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine not using digital technology to do anything. I am always online—be it scouring the web for blogs on how to build my first PC, locating relevant texts for a research project, or simply searching how to make a meal from the odd assortment of things in my fridge. In my view, internet and technology are constants in contemporary research, and this belief gradually drew me towards digital rhetoric and digital community as a prevailing research interest.
Currently, I’m a PhD candidate in Rhetoric, Writing, and Cultures at Michigan State University. My research interests include technical communication, digital and cultural rhetorics, and Asian/American communities. Another major interest of mine is writing center studies and administration. My dissertation is focused on developing a theoretical framework for technical and professional communication that centers Asian and Asian/American communities.
I’m excited to share and develop these interests with other fellows in this year’s cohort! As a DRC Fellow this year, I hope to explore multimodality, digital culturing, and digital rhetoric alongside the other fellows in this year’s cohort. Because I believe that research is stronger when engaged in collaboration, working alongside other DRC Fellows is really exciting to me! Feel free to connect with me via email at goldenn2@msu.edu.
