Growing Up On a Keyboard

date: Fri Mar 5 04:11:17 AM UTC 2021

Years and Years of... Breaking Stuff

I've been a computer user since about the age of three. This both dates me and

grants me a nice sense of youthfulness compared to several others I know on

the smol internet.

(like I used the word 'smol' just there. Can you imagine somebody born in the

70's doing that?)

And for that entire time, I think it's safe to say that I've enjoyed it the most

out of all of the hobbies that have come into and gone out of my mind's

Attention Zone over the years. I've certainly spent the most time with it. If

we're talking about the notion that 10,000 hours doing a given thing will

more-or-less have you master it, I've been a master of general computing for

quite a long time. And I'm getting there slowly but steadily for administrating

systems, and doing more advanced work with them. I'm certainly a lot further

ahead in 2021 than I was in 2011. And I'm happy with that progress over a

whole decade.

But why is it fun?

I suppose in a way it's nice to have a machine that does exactly -- exactly --

what you tell it to do, whether or not you intend it. As opposed to people that

are much more complex and demanding to think about and interact with.

But I also suppose it's nice because I'm able to directly interact with this

system and see immediate results. I guess my brain's just wired for that fairly

instant level of gratification that comes from seeing instantaneous results pop

up on a screen.

I think a lot of it is tied to the Internet: the vast, seemingly unchartable

wilderness that it used to be, anyway. Nowadays people think Google -is- the

internet. That saddens me.

Perhaps if we had never gone beyond the year 2003 - before Youtube's acquisition

by Google, before the iPhone, before Big Social - we may be in a very different

timeline. I'd reckon it'd be a happier one. Computing was... purer, back then.

But here we are. And I wonder every day about what to do with it now, other than

carry on and try to keep the simpler ways of yesteryear alive.

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