I think a lot of my interest in tech was probably influenced by Michael Crichton movies, Magic School Bus, Critter Gitters, and the like. What little tech cont

I think a lot of my interest in tech was probably influenced by Michael Crichton movies, Magic School Bus, Critter Gitters, and the like. What little tech content there was in the media really set me up for embedded systems. I liked the idea of making video games for a bit, until the gaming scene changed and I realized how hard it is to do anything at a pro level. But mostly, I was interested in how devices could integrate with the real world. Cold dead pixels on a screen aren't that interesting unless you're a true intellectual and have a lot of understanding of math and algorithms, probably more than average coders. Even the early internet, and remaining unshitty forums, are mostly only interesting because there's a real person on the other end, and it gets boring again if all anyone talks about is tech with no connection to anything but more tech. I think that's probably a lot of what happened and why the internet isn't that exciting to a lot of us anymore. When all day is JUST phone scrolling, nobody is doing anything to write about. It's like the "AI models eating their own shit" problem, but WE are the being like the AI models and have been since 2008 or so. Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with my mind, since I don't get into the really abstract stuff as much as other devs, I don't spend weekends learning LISP just for fun or writing my own sorting algorithms, everyone else seems to be motivated by logic and simplicity and ideas a lot more.