ABSTRACT
Technical identities, digital literacies, and learning opportunities are intimately intertwined. It is hardly possible to talk to kids about what they learned about video and computers without understanding how they learned it and why they chose to learn it that way. Kids’ learning opportunities are shaped in part by how they view themselves with respect to technological values and practices. Kids who see themselves as technical may not recognize mediated moments of learning or mentorship because they deeply espouse a technocultural value to learn on their own. Yet, as detailed across the prior chapters, most kids are not solely self-taught but rather rely on many social resources such as peers, family, tutorials, and socially encoded sources of information that help develop and negotiate what constitute digital literacies. Performing technical affiliation refers to displaying in words and actions certain beliefs, values, or practices that are assumed to be associated with particular techno-cultural groups. In the ethnographic study informing this book, kids often performed technical affiliation to being self-taught. In so doing, they often elided what they learned when growing up amid peers and families that provided techno-cultural values, equipment, knowledge, time, and emotional support so that kids can cultivate media skills and find new confidence in public self-expression.
