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<p>Last I checked:</p>
<code>
$ whoami
mjf
</code>
<p>There's a lot of ways to go about this question, honestly.</p>
<p>I could start with my name, but that doesn't really tell you much and it's
on the site anyway. A lot of people answer "who they are" with what they do.
I'm working in an IT department right now trying my best to wrap my head around
securing their network. I suppose that tells you something, even if I haven't
been at this long. I got here after I fell down the rabbit hole of
understanding how the hell this whole Internet thing works, and I've been
trapped ever since. Cybersecurity people seem to touch a lot of things in this
area so I naturally sort of stumbled in this direction.
</p>
<p>At this point, though, I still don't think I've really answered the
question. I'm not my job title to probably most people I know. And I think it's
a little unwise to base my identity on something that could taken away by a
financial crisis or an EMP blast.
</p>
<p>I could get more vague and go for a meme-y tribal identifier like "nerd,"
"metalhead," "hacker," "warlock," or whatever classes people are running these
days.
</p>
<p>
None these are really true though either. I was never really smart enough to
hang out with nerds and I never much liked keeping up with them anyway. I
certainly have enough of a music snob streak to fit in with metalheads, but
I've gotten over that illness for the most part, where most of my peers have
not. If we're going with Richard Stallman's notion of
<a href="https://archive.is/epjm4">hacking</a>, then maybe I share some of the
same spirit. But I didn't grow up in that culture. I knew of a computer mostly
as Windows--and even that I didn't understand well. My parents were luddites so
these were all magic boxes to me growing up and I was far to afraid to try to
look inside and risk breaking it. I had a vague notion that I wanted to design
games, but I spent my time playing Runescape and Elder Scrolls instead of
botting and modding them. Maybe I'm gatekeeping myself, but fitting into any
sort of tribe has never really been on my mind.
</p>
<p>
A lucky few will have biographers write their final word, but most of us
will have to settle for the obituary. Either way though, I think it's important
to remember in the long term, all we really have is our history. Hopefully,
that won't include web history...
</p>
<p>
So I think it's probably better to start with who I am, with where I've been.
I was born in the US in 1993 about two weeks after the World Wide Web was
released to the public domain. Our family didn't get online until I was around
five or six when people started handing out free Windows and America Online CDs
around public places. Pokemon was also released around that time so that
computer was primarily used for Pokemon-themed version of Print Artist and
reading fake articles on how to get Mew in Blue version. As I grew up, my
school assignments went from stacks of notebooks to folders full of .doc files.
It became expected by around middle school/high school that you had a Windows
PC or at least had access to one to write essays. Runescape was a thing, so
that same computer still saw it's fair share of play, but study crept in when
it could.
</p>
<p>
I never bothered studying the computer itself though. Any tutorial I could find
on messing with Windows (like getting a stupid cursor or soemthing) started in
big bold letters with "DON'T TRY THIS IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING."
Well I didn't know, so I didn't try. I did fall in love with Wikipedia though
and just hopping through history and philosophy articles. I couldn't always use
the PC downstairs so I learned to use the PSP and eventually the PS3 browser
instead so I could read up until late. God knows how much crap was on there
back then...
</p>
<p>
I got into guitar around eighth grade since Guitar Hero was popular and I
wanted girls to like me. I was also into band and chorus at school and somehow
got the idea that I was pretty good at all that. The idea of playing music or
composing started to really look like a serious thing after two years at it,
but when I first started to write music, I had so much trouble drawing the
freaking clefs and fancy stuff that I would waste too much time to write half
of a score. I need like Microsoft Word for music, but I didn't know if such a
thing was even real
</p>
|
