Author: Tricia Stream

An algorithm is a self-contained step-by-step set of operations to be performed. Simply, it’s a procedure or formula for solving a problem. We teach our technology the basics and expect that ingenious marketing algorithms will continue to learn, thereby creating loyal customers who just can’t get enough.

Here’s how it really works:

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Wake up the following morning forced to sift through 45 spam emails received between the hours of 6 a.m. and 6:03 a.m. “You have asked to receive emails from Victoria’s Secret. If you have received this email in error, please unsubscribe here.” I DID NO SUCH THING!

But where is the information you actually want to receive? Silly you – you’ll have to go spelunking for the desired “promotion” under the filtered eponymous tab in the user un-friendly interface that is the Gmail web login.

I am TechMom. I am a mom. Because of technology.

Search and Destroy (the TechMom tots) were born 13 weeks too soon (because who needs a third trimester when you have technology). I did not get to meet my sons the day they were born. A team of doctors immediately surrounded them, gently placing them in computerized incubators. A team of nurses hooked them up to sensors – the critical results to be displayed on the monitors above their isolettes.

It was technology keeping them alive from their first breath of air.

And it was the help of technology that helped drive me forward with a purpose, to share my story and deal with the emotional fall out of prematurity.

About a year ago, I saw the call for submissions to a book on mental illness. I laughed.

Because sometimes they only way to survive is to find the humor of the situation. Or, at the very least, make inappropriate jokes that diffuse the situation in your mind (your mentally misfiring mind, that is).

Over the last few years there has been a push to end the stigma of mental illness. One way to end the stigma is to begin talking openly about mental illness. I couldn’t agree more. (Although I did have second thoughts when I shared my affliction with ABC World News Tonight back in 2012.) Increasingly, I discovered that those conversations occurred with the friends who lived in my computer.

Personally, I’m fighting against depression and anxiety.