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Your interests seem to lie closer to the systems and hardware side. Can you elaborate on why your career is in CRUD apps? What about working for SpaceX?

zackmorris 3y ago
Well I wanted to say "solve warp drive" but didn't want to sound eccentric. I'll lump the comment by ghufran_syed in with this. I'm fond of SpaceX and deeply admire what they're doing. But honestly my heart is in helping people, rather than taking humanity to new heights. I originally wanted to be a genetic engineer back in the '80s during the AIDS crisis, and because progress on cancer was glacial then. Prejudice was a lot higher than it is today. So the powers that be didn't want to do a moonshot for genetics like they did with the X Prize in the '90s, and I went into tech instead. Today if I could do it all over again, I'd like to see a moonshot to cure all genetic disorders by 2030 with tools like CRISPR and mRNA vaccines. Loosely that just means that from the context of a show like For All Mankind, I identify more with NASA than I do with Helios. Although Dev Ayesa's non-hierarchical work structure resonates with me more than what Elon Musk is doing. Ayesa's was the original vision of the '90s tech scene that we've lost today under wealth inequality. On that note, I'm concerned about Musk's embrace of center-right politics and the cognitive dissonance we're seeing around free-speech-for-some. Humanity is moving the opposite direction towards egalitarianism. I hope that he comes around, but until then, I can't really endorse any of his companies anymore. And that makes me sad on a profound level. I'm sick of losing my heroes. Anyway, the gatekeeping around medicine is so high that maybe I let myself give up on the dream of genetics. Which is sad too, because AI is what will solve it. We don't have large epidemiological studies or a simulation where we can rapidly iterate on cures. Although we do have a mountain of data in Ancestry and 23andme. I don't think that medical researchers have any idea what programmers would be capable of in that space if we were given autonomy. Ethics aside, I see that as the last frontier until we move out into the stars. Sooo, with my passions out of reach, I turned towards basic survival, mostly CRUD apps to make rent. It's hard to climb a corporate ladder when getting to the top doesn't mean anything to oneself. I don't want success, I want financial freedom so that I can start getting real work done outside of external expectation. To invent real solutions that would help free people from their day to day chores and bills so they can self-actualize. That's why I'm such a proponent of UBI. When any of us struggle, we all struggle. So far none of the projects I've been involved with have won the internet lottery yet. And my body/psyche won't let me work through burnout like I used to. Somehow I have to start over, and that's daunting. I suspect I'm not alone in that feeling.

zackmorris 3y ago

Well I wanted to say "solve warp drive" but didn't want to sound eccentric. I'll lump the comment by ghufran_syed in with this. I'm fond of SpaceX and deeply admire what they're doing. But honestly my heart is in helping people, rather than taking humanity to new heights. I originally wanted to be a genetic engineer back in the '80s during the AIDS crisis, and because progress on cancer was glacial then. Prejudice was a lot higher than it is today. So the powers that be didn't want to do a moonshot for genetics like they did with the X Prize in the '90s, and I went into tech instead. Today if I could do it all over again, I'd like to see a moonshot to cure all genetic disorders by 2030 with tools like CRISPR and mRNA vaccines. Loosely that just means that from the context of a show like For All Mankind, I identify more with NASA than I do with Helios. Although Dev Ayesa's non-hierarchical work structure resonates with me more than what Elon Musk is doing. Ayesa's was the original vision of the '90s tech scene that we've lost today under wealth inequality. On that note, I'm concerned about Musk's embrace of center-right politics and the cognitive dissonance we're seeing around free-speech-for-some. Humanity is moving the opposite direction towards egalitarianism. I hope that he comes around, but until then, I can't really endorse any of his companies anymore. And that makes me sad on a profound level. I'm sick of losing my heroes. Anyway, the gatekeeping around medicine is so high that maybe I let myself give up on the dream of genetics. Which is sad too, because AI is what will solve it. We don't have large epidemiological studies or a simulation where we can rapidly iterate on cures. Although we do have a mountain of data in Ancestry and 23andme. I don't think that medical researchers have any idea what programmers would be capable of in that space if we were given autonomy. Ethics aside, I see that as the last frontier until we move out into the stars. Sooo, with my passions out of reach, I turned towards basic survival, mostly CRUD apps to make rent. It's hard to climb a corporate ladder when getting to the top doesn't mean anything to oneself. I don't want success, I want financial freedom so that I can start getting real work done outside of external expectation. To invent real solutions that would help free people from their day to day chores and bills so they can self-actualize. That's why I'm such a proponent of UBI. When any of us struggle, we all struggle. So far none of the projects I've been involved with have won the internet lottery yet. And my body/psyche won't let me work through burnout like I used to. Somehow I have to start over, and that's daunting. I suspect I'm not alone in that feeling.