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Work 317And so one day they got me a Game Boy for my birthday, and I sat in the corner andplayed games all day.As his parents prospected for gold, Zelan began his trajectory of engagementwith digital media, one that would lead him far beyond gaming as onlya way to kill time. As Zelan recalled it, this incident occurred when he wasfour or five years old. He was sixteen at the time of our interview, and for thepast eleven years his family has lived in a secluded rural town near wherethey used to go digging for gold. In pursuing his passion for games he hasdeveloped pragmatic strategies for making and managing money, he hasacquired unique technical skills and knowledge, and, lately, he has configuredthese resources into his own form of prospecting, one that enacts and imaginesmodes of work that defy local tendencies and expectations.This pragmatic sensibility partially stems from, and continues to mix with,his passion for video games and digital media. After immersing himself in theGame Boy, he pursued newer and better consoles. As he did so he also learnedhow they worked. His parents did not like buying him gaming gear, so hebecame resourceful. When his neighbors gave him their broken PlayStation2, he took it apart, fixed it, and upgraded from his PlayStation 1 in the process.Soon he started devising ways of making money to support his hobby. Helearned that the technical knowledge he was developing could be applied asemployable labor. When he was in middle school a teacher asked him to helprun the audiovisual equipment. He soon transferred this knowledge into a DJbusiness. In another case he made two hundred dollars fixing a teacher’scomputer. More recently, the high school has hired him to help maintain“the empire” of more than two hundred computers on the school’s network.In addition to selling his labor, Zelan has begun to realize that he can be avaluable broker in markets for used technology goods. In several instances hehas acquired broken computer equipment or game consoles, fixed them, andthen sold them for a profit (see figure 7.2).Since these opportunities have built up, he now imagines starting atechnology-centric business after he graduates high school:I wanna start a business about, you know, just like computer repair, gaming, just anythingcomputerwise. So I can get it all started and hopefully start another business andget two businesses going and, or two chains going or whatever, and hopefully just beable to sit back when I’m older. Not to just sit there and do nothing. Have the businessesgoing around me.This vision of work differs considerably from the manual labor practiced byhis parents and many others in his local community. His town is one of themost remote and blue-collar of those feeding his regional high school. Bothof Zelan’s parents make money by performing manual labor; his mom cleanshouses and his dad is a freelance handyman. Zelan seems to understand that