Where Do We Go Now?

 As you may already know, I have been traveling this summer, and I am doing lots of acupuncture and speech therapy.

Today I learned that Kevin Mitnick passed (RIP), and I’m left wondering what to do. I feel like the initial rise and fall of video games had a profound impact on modern life in the 1980s.

Kids who were born after that have a dramatically different experience than people who were kids before it. Then add in software like Linux and Docker, and we are suddenly living in an entirely different world.

When I was younger, it felt that we (Americans? Humans?) were generally living on the same planet, but as computer technology has matured, we are able to pursue our individualized interests to a greater degree.

On one hand, this improves the human experience. On the other, it makes it easier for humans to have little in common, which makes things like governance more of a challenge.

Truth be told, I thought Mitnick was a bit of a dork. Obviously he had a place in Computer History, but I had the impression that he was a sad story or cautionary tale. Specifically, it seemed like computing changed a lot during his ban. While he was uhhhh involved with the justice system, he got left behind. And so he came out of jail / probation talking about baud and other stuff that was no longer relevant. And so he could find speaking gigs, but his knowledge was not relevant to the direction computers and society were going.

Play the man, not the puck.

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