Jake

Jake is a 16-year-old in Year 12 at a local, public, co-educational secondary school (years 9 – 13). He currently takes three classes – geography, English, and drama. He is the network administrator for his school and has 140 computers that are networked. He is the manager for the local branch of a lighting company that is based in a bigger city. He does sound and lighting at a church with a modern sound and lighting system. He does sound and lighting for his secondary school which is known as a mini-concert venue. He also works for a local Concert venue once or twice a month and has learnt a lot from the employees of that venue. He also does video work including the ‘editing and running’ of videos. Jake sometimes gets paid for the out-of-school work he does for his school through the running of their ‘hall’/auditorium. He is also the official sound and lighting person for his church’s youth band.

Jake constantly is asked for help with the computers at school or the equipment in the school hall. He is online and uses MSN and iChat to communicate. Text messages he receives also request help. Jake has broadband internet access at school and at home.

Schooling has actually been a source for the outlet of his interests. He has been able to learn to do sound, lighting, and computer networking at school. These are not traditional things that are learnt in school, but through this experience, he has been able to apply what he has learnt at school (though not in class time) in out-of-school life and focus on making a career of being a ‘techie’.

Jake spends about 6 hours a day in front of a computer, 2 hours a day behind a lighting desk, and about 9 hours a week behind a sound desk.

Jake first got internet at his home in this way:
“My parents didn’t want to get internet. But then I found out that it was just when Zfree had just started. So I signed us up with a Zfree account and they didn’t even know, until the Zfree letters started coming home saying ‘thank you for being a customer’. And then they’re like ‘what’s this Zfree company?’ ‘Oh it’s free internet’. ‘So that’s what that fax tone is when I pick up the phone’. Yeah. So it was really naughty of me actually.” [Interview 1, 9/5/2005]