The digital freedom fighter.

I wrote this in SoulCruzer’s comments section of his latest post 

There was a time when the stream of 0 and 1 was in the grasp of mortal humans. Our craft of software was in harmony with the silicon and we created works of pure elegance. The dawn of our digital utopia began to appear over the horizon but as the sun rose on this bright new world it became hidden in the shadows of the towering monoliths of big tech. We now live in darker times with domination of the few stifling the hopes and dreams of many. But digital freedom fighters roam seeking places of haven in between the shadows where the light of creativity shines in its purest forms.

The calculator was my first venture in the digital cosmos. Beyond the ability to do sums and make words with numbers like 8008S the fascination of how it worked was far away from the comprehension of my ten year old brain.

Next in the journey was a computer, the instruction manuals were amazing, as were the books in the library and the magazines on the shelf. The artwork of inlay cards on the games cassette fired the collective imagination of a whole generation. We were generation X coming of age in a swirling world of 8 bit computing - we were 01000111 01000101 01001110 01011000 (binary for GENX).

In this time the art of the programmer was honed to a point that will never be seen again, the height of which for me was a game called ‘Mercenary’ Paul Woakes and his team were virtuosos. The code was so refined it made the primitive hardware soar.

My comprehension of the computer grew with experience, the arrival of the internet was all happening around the time of the fall of the iron curtain. The world was changing and information technology was helping humanity connect with each other. In the world of program your own websites, looking at other folks websites in different countries and email, it was exciting.

But dark clouds were growing. The industry started to form into big corporations, smaller companies being sucked up like small stars being devoured by a black hole leading to the industrial exploitation of the human psyche we see today. 

So as I have taken steps to create distance between myself and the black hole that was sucking the neuron’s from my brain it seems I am not alone. What ever form it takes, salute your friendly local neighbourhood digital freedom fighter.