a friend asked me an important question today – “why are you doing this cs shit? it seems ahrdly what you really want to be doing..” and for the first time ever, i have an answer to that question.

but let me backtrack for a second as you may not even know that i have questioned this question before… for the first two and one-half years at my university, majoring in computer science, i wanted to kill all computing people and give up the direction that i was headed. at times, i thought that i wanted to be a buddhist monk, wandering in tibet; i wanted to major in women’s studies… i changed my mind weekly but all i knew was that i needed out of computer science NOW. yet, i stuck with it and every semester, i returned and told myself that this time i would leave. yet, it never happened. finally, i went completely bizerk and ran off to a foreign country… this is where i was last semester. but now, i am back in the states, and for the first time ever, have a motivation to do computer science.

my motivation is not computer education, it is not 3D computer graphics.. it is not even making money in some big company.. like it ever could have been. no, my motivation is simple: people.

i still hate coding.. in fact, i don’t think i will ever like the computer science part of computing… but i am finally accepting that. what draws me in to computing is what drew me in over 7 years ago – people. and not those computer geek types.. they don’t interest me. the ability to communicate, the ability to have a community, a newfound way of expressing oneself, finding oneself, exploring reality.. that is what interests me.. connecting people to one another in a new way. see, it finally dawned on me that all of my interests could be entwined into this computing thing… there is no doubt that the one person who really pulled me into the online community was the kind transsexual who explained this to me when i was in the seventh grade through an irc connection. for the first time, i started to understand things about myself that those nearby me could not explain. finally, i realized that i was different and this was ok. no, i am not different in a way that a label can clearly explain but this is ok too. anyhow, it was that connection, so long ago, that gave me the motivation to see beauty in technology.

so, recognizing beauty and wanting to help others do what helped me.. where do i go with this? well, i am also anti-industry and anti-dealing with “the man”. thus, one simple solution – academia. i want to do research.. to be a permanent and approved thinker. i want to find ways to improve connections of people, space and time. and i want to be good enough at it that no one makes me code when i come up with an idea. but in the meantime, i will deal with the bullshit of the computer industry.

you see, humans want to explore. they want to explore time, they want to explore space.. they want to explore. we have used up way too much of our physical space… very little is left and physically possible to explore in our current physical world. there is no unknown territory on our planet.. even areas that are not really explored are vaguely explored. outter space is not really realistic.. not in today’s state. we are always working on exploring the mind but that is less of a physical place for people to wander in and out of… well, we want places to explore.. we want ways of making time/space less dramatic.. technology has the potential to offer a lot of exploration.. exploration of a new kind of space, a virtual kind. well, i want to explore this.. figure out where we are going and make certain that our direction is not problematic for us as a culture. i don’t give a rats ass about what video games exist or what the best database is or how fast the currently computer is… i am concerned about the people and how we are connecting people and what we are giving them… i want to play with such concepts.. and it is the computer that will take me there.

finally, i have a purpose.. a reason to be doing what i am doing. and now, i want to end the bullshit and figure out how to avoid my last coding class as that is the least of my interests.