Inside of our heads, numerous ideas are born every minute of our lives. We strive to implement those ideas. We strive to enhance those ideas. Those ideas lead our lives as much as we lead our lives trying to bring them forth. They are our children, our creation, our form of art.
Many do not understand this art. Many do not even recognise it as art. They reject it, they degrade it, they despise it. They do not understand it. To them it is an infinite source of boredom, infinite source of boring natural sciences. To some of them it is the source of wealth to feast upon, a resource which they try to take advantage of with their greedy primitive brains.
To us, it is a world to explore. A world that we create as we explore it. A world we bring to life as we create it. A world we share with each-other through millions of connections and protocols of the information era. We enjoy dwelling in this world. We enjoy the fine threading which those ideas constitute, the millions of lines of formulae and code.
They spend their lives taking advantage of our art. They are numb in the use of our art, they see it as a common thing. They refuse to admit it is us who created this world for them. They refuse to say "thank you". They refuse to understand the glorious dance of the atoms and bits, electrons, molecules, of all those wonderful things they so easily take for granted. They refuse to respect. They despise us the same way they despise our ideas.
We ignore all of this and move on. We struggle. We fight for our ideas. We fight for ourselves. We try to make a better world. We try to make a happier world.
Inside, we are hurting.
We are geeks.
on #
It is indeed. However, we, the makers of "glorious dance of the atoms and bits", forgot that someone long before we were born invented the very essence of the platform we use today (from the wheel and cave -images to electricity, phone and first "room sized" pc). Do we ever remember them? Do we express our gratitude? Or we just took it for granted...
I understand the author and couldn't agree more. We are making, and others are exploiting - from our point of view. But we are exploiting as well. You 'll find many people wearing ties and talking about information systems and services - knowing nothing beneath the surface. Despising it. Not wanting to know. And it hurts us.... People see us as "technicians" and "intelectual physical workers". What should we do about it? Should we form IT alliances world wide and start hacking systems down as our personal 'vendetta'? Until we receive a recognition? Or we should learn to give without asking anybody to say "thanks"... As many before us did... Greater than we will ever be...
"...Don't ask for gratitude. Because you've done what you were obliged to do..."
(Bible verse)
Branko Majic on #
It may be true that we forgot of what some people had done in the past ourselves, but I think that the technologically proficient people tend to remember things more than others. Even when we do not remember who created some device or who devised some algorithm, we still have more respect for such knowledge and devices. We're aware of all the intricacies with such simple principles like the number zero, or negative numbers, even though we might not know who created the concept.
I think that most geeks are capable of understanding how great are all the technological achievements that happened before, and I consider all those who came before us, who were visionaries in their art/science, pretty much very close to what we ourselves are (most famous artists were not appreciated in their time, many scientists were taken advantage of and died in poverty - like Nikola Tesla, for example).
Finally, as I said - "We ignore all of this and move on. We struggle. We fight for our ideas. We fight for ourselves. We try to make a better world. We try to make a happier world."