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Media Ecologies 57I just searched on Google and I just went to . . . because I bought myself a videocard. I had no idea what a video card looked like. I typed in video card image. BeforeI went to searching for it, image. I wanted to know what it looked like first. I seendifferent pictures. So Google sometimes gives you different pictures. If you typesomething in, it gives you . . . So I’m confused. I’m like, “I thought it looks like thisbut it looks like” . . . so I typed something in and I seen on Google what it lookslike. So I looked at mine and I seen exactly where’s it at. If you smart you don’t gotto search out, “How do I put in and put out.” It’s simple. It’s just take the piece out.Have your computer off. Take it out. When you get your new one if it has a fan youcan’t have your sound card too close to it. So you’ve got to put your sound card inanother slot and I bought myself a sound card too. I had no idea what none of thoselooked like. I thought a sound card was called a sound disk. I learned a lot on myown that’s for computers. . . . Just from searching up on Google and stuff. . . . That’swhy I like Google.As Derrick makes clear, looking around online and searching is anim portant first step to gathering information about a new and unfamiliararea. Although many of these forays do not necessarily result in longtermengagement, youth do use this initial base of knowledge as a stepping-stoneto deeper social and practical engagement with a new areaof interest. Online sites, forums, and search engines augment existinginformation resources by lowering the barriers to looking around inways that do not require specialized knowledge to begin. Lookingaround online and fortuitous searching can be a self-directed activitythat provides young people with a sense of agency, often exhibited ina discourse that they are “self-taught” as a result of engaging in thesestrategies (see chapter 6). The autonomy to pursue topics of personalinterest through random searching and messing around generally assistsand encourages young people to take greater ownership of their learningprocesses.Experimenting and Play As with looking around, experimentation andplay are central practices for young people messing around with newmedia. As a genre of participation, one of the important aspects of messingaround is the media awareness that comes from the information derivedfrom searching and, as we discuss in this section, the desire and (eventually)the ability to play around with media. Often experimentation starts small,such as using digital photo tools to crop, edit, and manipulate images. AsGee (2003) has argued for games and other interactive technologies that