My brother @pdcull has been going through his papers and we found that 1982 was the year he first started studying computing.
1982 was a good year.
I was ten. I met the Commodore PET (CBM, to be precise) and the PDP 11/10 with MUBAS (Multiuser Basic) that year.
The world of pixels and bits was magical to me, and in a way still is. The ultimate Lego set.
Its just what we've built on top of it - and especially the trillion-dollar culture of greed and psychological abuse - that makes me sad.
In my pre-teens I used to dream about escaping into a world of pure software. Because we could 'do everything over, and do it right'. Make a world without pain, fear, death. This was without even reading any of the cyberpunk writers.
But now I know that we wouldn't do it right. Because we had the chance, and we didn't.
What we put into computers is what's in our heads and our hearts, and those contain... things we need to work on.
@natecull It’s amazing that the doctrine of original sin is not even 2000 years old!
Do you believe there is such a thing as magic?
... perhaps it is magic, the magic of the human heart, focused and made manifest by technology.
@natecull
Phenomena are preceded by the heart,
ruled by the heart,
made of the heart.
If you speak or act
with a corrupted heart,
then suffering follows you —
as the wheel of the cart,
the track of the ox
that pulls it.
Phenomena are preceded by the heart,
ruled by the heart,
made of the heart.
If you speak or act
with a calm, bright heart,
then happiness follows you,
like a shadow
that never leaves.
~Dhammapada Yamakavagga, 1-2
(trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu)
@natecull You too, huh? For me it was accompanied by a deep depressive episode and quite a bit of existential angst.
Much better these days.
If you're particularly unlucky, I'll manage to dig up a piece of (probably) really bad poetry I wrote during that time and send it to you. 👿
@natecull what would you have escaped? you.
we are not machines. machines are not us. machines are our children.