Is it 2024 yet?

Whoa, long time no post on my funny little half-forgotten "OG" (as the kids say) Bloggger blog!

Not that I have much to say, I just wanted to check in, update the TLS settings, that sort of thing.

And yet, one ought to write something, oughtn't one?  Mercifully, I shall be brief.  And illustrated!

Here I sit in the middle of 2024, a year of many challenges and also of many adventures, intellectual and otherwise.  I have a view of the river; it's 35 degrees centigrade; rain is likely.  The walls of my home office are covered in art, mostly; but there is also a giant map, and a Buddha of Significant Size, both property of the landlord.

It's tempting sometimes to wax nostalgic about the Old Web, let's say the Internet of the 1990's.  I was there, with the others, building it, and dreaming big dreams of a more open, more democratic world.  Knowledge accessible to all, freak flags flying high, an end to ignorance or at least a noticeable dent in it.  In a nutshell, the opposite happened.  The knowledge part sorta worked, but overshot the mark by miles: you can find any fact, and also any falsehood, in less time than it takes to prompt an LLM.

Also fun to think of the pioneers, people I thought of as my peers back then, in a way probably no engineer ever thought of Mark Zuckerberg as a peer.  Some of the greats, like Andreessen, got filthy rich and just kept on nerding out, a little crypto grift on the side perhaps but basically still enthusiastic dreamers of a better world for all, e/acc techno-optimists.  Long may they live, at least once may they be in power.  But also the little guys: what ever happened to Ev?  I mean, billionaire, sure, but single digits. Oh, right, crappo, after Twitter he started Medium, whose business model is "paywall for Blogspot."  Can't win 'em all.

I've reached the point where some of my friends are probably quiet billionaires.  Well, acquiantances anyway.  I'm quite sure a few are over the 100M mark, I could probably even name them.  Funny, I think in tech you reach that point pretty fast now, but as far as I know none of my peeps was stone-cold rich until they'd been in the game for a couple decades.  Excluding the ones who started off rich, of course.

It's all down to the inside connections and owning those appreciating assets.  And yes, hard work, if you're the builder type, which I am.  An artist of the builder type.  But I've never been good at networking, and I've never been good at hoarding anything other than art.  Is it too late to become a dealer?

Well on that note of strained optimism, I introduce you to one of my favorite little paintings on paper from my days in Budapest.  Title:  "I am a victim of the Science Age."  Helps if you say it in your best DLR voice.  It's on my wall as I write this.  And I think I'll use it as an avatar for a while, it seems to fit.