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⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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date: Fri Mar 5 04:11:17 AM UTC 2021
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.
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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