Offer the World Refreshing Alternatives to Tech That Fight Existential Crisis
For 45 years, I have been playing with digital technology, from the Atari 2600 to developing a highly technical approach to SEO and other tasks using Linux VMs. I am excited for the future of digital technology, and I believe I am getting closer to having something meaningful to contribute to the world. Join me as I explore my journey through digital technology and the possibilities of the future.
Exploring 45 Years of Digital Technology: My Journey Toward Making a Meaningful Contribution to the World
By Michael Levin
Friday, March 17, 2023
I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it! A big splash is coming as I bring my seemingly highly technical approach to doing SEO and… well just about everything else professionally using Linux VMs as the great interoperability layer, down to Earth so that the uninitiated can take the leap and enjoy many benefits that were previously out of reach.
Okay, my first version of Pipulate crawled websites directly into Google Sheets merely by clicking a Bookmark in your browser (technically, a javascript: bookmarklet). This was back before there was a formal Google API console and we used something called GData. I’d call this the Long Ago were it not for the fact I go back to the Atari 2600 and pre-digital. So this all still feels new.
Stuff’s come a long way since no-computers to computers only usable by nerds to anyone can jump on the bandwagon and design their own custom little miracles by talking an AI into doing the programming for them. Let’s see, Atari 2600 was released September 11, 1977. I was 7 years old, but my family didn’t get one until I was 8 or 9, so I’ve been playing with digital tech for some 45 years.
It will be nice for it going from no digital tech from my under-10 youth to fully sentient and mobile machine children by the time I’m 60. Even if I’m not one of the big brains behind it and am so full of jealously that I didn’t move earlier on this stuff and make myself some tycoon or something. But then sour grapes and cognitive dissonance kick in, and I justify it as all being just the “warm up” before the actual show.
Sometimes it takes awhile being exposed to something, subject-matter like Science Fiction literature (of which I’m a fan) and the actual science shaping our world for the better part of a lifetime before you finally have something worthwhile to contribute or say. I think that’s where I’m inching towards. I still have plenty of time to work with: the 2nd have of my life, as far as I’m concerned. And if lives are extended because of science & tech, then even longer.