There is rarely a moment of any day when I do not have my purse in reach. What makes this bag so critical to living that I need to be near it at all times? Let’s take a look!

Itemized list of its contents:

• Keyring containing car key and fob, apartment building fob/remote for parking, apartment door key, mail key, file cabinet keys, and save-on-more points card.
• Parking ticket received September 5, 2019
• Bottle of Pepcid Complete antacids
• Bottle of Advil
• Pair of red Bluetooth headphones
• Cardholder containing drivers licence, health card, and various debit and credit cards
• $287 US cash
• 2 Canadian quarters
• Badge card and lanyard for my place of employment
• Print out from Ticketmaster for tickets to see Hamilton on Broadway June 15, 2019
• Not in photo: my smartphone, as it lives in my purse when not in use (it was needed to take this photo)

The contents of my purse weave an interesting story of who I am, what I do, where I live, and where I’ve been. The keyring indicates that I most likely live in an apartment complex due to the number of keys and fobs. The newness and branding on the car key fob indicate that I drive a newer model Volkswagen. You might question my driving skills due to the recent parking ticket, but I assure you this ticket is 100% a mistake. I have a monthly parking pass at work, but it appears Impark did not receive my licence plate information from the building manager. The parking ticket itself is text, as it tells a narrative of where I was at a specific point in time.

Antacids and Advil might indicate some health issues. Really, they are just necessary products for a busy life. Working full-time along with graduate studies lack of sleep and forgetting breakfast sometimes leads to a need for Advil or antacids.

Probably the most interesting contents of my bag are the juxtaposition of US and Canadian cash. The fact that there is more US cash would seem to indicate that I spend more time in the US. This would be incorrect, as I rarely use cash. Instead, I use the debit and credit cards in the cardholder. The US cash is a leftover from a trip I took to New York in June. The tickets to Hamilton also have not been cleared from the purse since the trip. Both the cash and the ticket are texts. I consider cash a text, as they have authority in how they signify value in most cultures around the world. The ticket is a text, as it tells a narrative of where I was at a specific point of time. Interestingly, the Hamilton tickets could also be seen as a text of a text, as the ticket is a text, but so is the play.

The sparsity of the content of my purse is a result of a digitally intensive lifestyle. Most of what I do, read, write is digital. Many of the items in the picture are part of the technological system of my life. My keyring contains two fobs, which use radio signals to unlock my apartment building door, garage, and car. The parking ticket, while not directly digital, was issued from a computer used by Impark to verify parking fees paid. My cards are printed using computerized technologies, and when I use them to pay, computers use encrypted digital text protocols to communicate with payment processors and banks to verify identity and adequate financial funds. My badge card for work  contains an RFID chip that when tapped on the reader in the building elevator, gives me access to my floor and secure office area. The cash money is designed and printed with machines. I consider both my badge card and cards a text technology, as they are designed to communicate encrypted text to machines designed to read the text. The fibres of the money contain a unique mixture of plastics, colours, and metals—a text technology implemented to prevent fraud. Finally, my headphones use Bluetooth technology. Typically, my headphones are used to listen to music, online videos, and various other audio texts—this too, would be a text technology, as it is designed to read certain kinds of text.