GoKawiil2026-06-06
I Love the Computer
In a recent discussion on the Aftermath Podcast about the ill effects of the current AI hype cycle, one of the editors said something that really resonated with me:
I love the computer. — Chris Person
This was in the middle of a rant about how these snake oil salesmen are ruining the space he loves with their insatiable avarice and, as much as I’d like to add my voice to the chorus of technologists who are legitimately angry at this social crime being committed, I’m going focus on that specific quote.
Because I, too, love the computer.
In The Beginning
It all began with a curious box that my mother brought home from work. Sometime when I was around six or seven we were living in Dølihagen, a suburban area near Jessheim, itself a small town in Norway. The area was less populous then than it is now, having ballooned in size since they opened the new international airport nearby, and my memories of it are a sparse mix of playgrounds, muddy fields, and a sea of homogenous buildings.
We had moved there after the death of my father, from a large house my parents had build next door to my grandparents, to a small flat on the lower ground floor where my mother, my brother, and I all slept in the same room. My mother flitted through a series of workplaces and eventually landed a job in the ministry of foreign affairs, a position that was going to send us to the Philippines. I don’t remember much of the preparations leading up to the move, but one experience is burned into my mind: the day she brought home the computer. From the moment she unpacked and set it up on the dining room table I was enthralled.
This daunting and foreign machine was fairly typical for the early 90s and was a tool she was given to aid in her new work. It was an IBM 486 DX6 running Windows 3.0 (later Windows for Workgroups 3.11), housed in a business-grey tower adorned with green LEDs and an beguiling turbo button. It came preinstalled with Paint, SkiFree, and Solitaire, and would become my portal into a new world wherein I would find friends, hobbies, and a career. It was eventually equipped with a sound card and CD-ROM drive—my mother damning whomever had coined the term “Plug & Play” during its installation—and I have countless memories of time spent exploring all it had to offer. Nearly two decades after that first introduction, a therapist would speculate that my interest in computers could stem from how it was a rare point of stability in a life where I ended up leaving my home and my friends every few years.
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