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| Personal background |
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To explain where I am from would probably fill a small book, so I will just call myself European. Before settling here in the UK in `72, I have lived, gone to school and worked in many places. These include Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Switzerland and even Santo Domingo, the eastern half of the island of Haiti in the sunny Caribbean.
At 61 I could almost consider retirement, but, having worked as a software designer all my life, I am too `wired` to simply curl up and die. That`s only figurative, of course, I just mean to say that the idea of dropping out of the daily adventure of creating, decision-making, debating or caring, that most would call work, and spending my time either in front of the box or tending a garden full of vegetation, would seem unthinkable, like giving up on life.
Life has been an adventure, full of excitement and wonder, when in the beginning, that is, after having finished school, I was learning to program room-filling mainframe systems while struggling under the strict 9 to 5 regime of a large company, then later on learning how to navigate under my own sails, being my own captain observing my very own schedule, while getting to grips with the tiny but equally powerful Sinclair Spectrum and BBC micros with their new languages and new operating systems.
But even that wasn`t the end of it, for just a few years later I became the proud owner of a new machine that could run rings around the monsters of only a decade ago, which only large multinational corporations could afford to buy. And not only did this unassuming little box sitting on my desk have a multitasking operating system, just like the £ million plus behemoth of yesteryear, but in addition to that, it could display animated 3D images at photographic quality, while at the same time playing my favourite albums in stereo through my hi-fi system. Ten years earlier this had been unthinkable, let alone available on a home-computer that most could buy and use! What in the past had been the domain of experts, whom no mere mortal could understand, could now be operated by a schoolkid or some old lady.
Naturally all this new technology was still mostly untapped, which meant that we, the analysts, programmers and software designers, had to play catch up. Effectively we had received a blank cheque, ahead of us lay the opportunity of unexplored, virgin territory, where only our imaginations were the limit and where the available possibilities were endless.
Two decades have gone by since that day. Additionally to refining those early capabilities and drastically increasing the speed at which they were executed, some new capabilities have been introduced, such as instant messaging, the web, and what I find the most exciting, Google Earth. The only downside of it all, at least for a single individual such as myself, the possibility of creating something original has decreased. Most projects now require a team - whereas during the 80`s a single programmer with some artistic skills could create a game, nowadays the credits-list of games resemble those of Hollywood movies. This leaves me with all the time for my hobbies, which are music, graphic arts and of course computers - allowing me to freely roam the web that is teeming with all sorts of fascinating life. I can easily travel around the planet on my Win-XP PC ( or Linux, when I need a break from the rather illogical quirks of XP), or indulge my creative side on the old Amiga, my favourite machine, that can emulate a PowerMac when I choose to be snobbish. The best of all possible worlds really - so I do consider myself privileged.
My website
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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1. I am convinced that we, as humans, are not alone. Also, connecting to the network makes me, as an individual, feel less alone as well.
2. Whoever came up with the idea of using thousands of machines on networks was a genius. It makes a lot of sense to use these mostly semi-idle computers for such useful tasks.
3. None - yet. |
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