I first came into the digital space back in the early 2010s, and my main mission at that time was to search for games and download it on my Samsung Galaxy, marveling at how games could fit in my pocket.
This was coming from the background of being exposed to online games back in 2007.
I can't remember the name but it was a casual strategy game played on a Windows laptop, quite similar to the generic pre installed games on Windows like Hearts and Mahjong Titans.
At that time, this space seemed more or less like a foreign uncharted territory. I was just curious but didn't understand or knew that it is a global platform that's almost limitless and is visited constantly(or simultaneously) by many people in different parts of the world.
I liked geography back in school, and knew that there are many countries out there, some forming continents.
This mental model was quite undeveloped at that time, since I didn't grasped yet the East, West, North, South of the geographical map and my relation to it, as in where I'm located.
Now, whenever I visit the Atlantic Ocean, I tell myself that South America is ahead of me and north of that is North America.
Onion Layers
I think it was in 2014-15, when I created my first social media account(Facebook) that I began to form an interpersonal relationship with the digital space, in the sense that the space facilitated a way for me to get to know individuals from different parts of the world, which by extension made me start viewing the space differently.
Curious as I am, I didn't bother searching or looking up people that I already know in the physical world on Facebook. I searched for people in China, Europe, Australia etc. to tangibly compare and contrast my preconceived ideas of these places and their inhabitants against this new lens I'm developing through this new medium.
I was both impressed and unimpressed by this exploration. I was impressed because the world is much bigger than I had imagined.
But I was unimpressed because these people are not fundamentally different from who I am as a person.
Granted, maybe my expectations were high in this regard. But I had this preconceived idea that these hundreds of countries with a diversity of cultures implied a huge difference of human personalities and approaches to daily life.
Lightbulb Moment
Five years later, as in 2019-2020. The financial aspect of the space started becoming apparent to me. Not that I didn't knew previously that businesses where built on this space, some huge ones.
I just didn't grasp how it works really on a fundamental level or better yet how it applies to me. I couldn't see the whole process from point A to point Z.
This changed when I earned my first "paycheck" in this space, during the era when buying and selling of goods on online marketplaces like eBay and Amazon were relatively popular.
Like a lightbulb moment, my mind started expanding on the possibilities this could unlocked and I stopped viewing the space as some foreign uncharted territory.
Probably, more than 50% of this space has been mapped now, and although I still don't consider myself a full on digital native, I can navigate the trenches to discover new frontiers and find my way back to the basics when needed.
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