Go On a Journey

by r0b0h0b0  (r0b0h0b0@proton.me)

I want to shed light on a couple of matters that I find interesting, as they have affected everyone in my generation.

Since you are reading 2600, you probably already understand what I'm going to share, but I want to reiterate what I have discovered because I believe it's important for any hacker to understand.  For those of us in Generation Z, we have always known the Internet.  For some, it has always known us.  It has always been the primary tool in our computational toolbox.  What has it done to the way us kids understand information?

I recently bought a copy of an amazing book: Linux 3D Graphics Programming by Norman Lin.  At two chapters into the book I got fed up with the pace.  The nature of the subject matter being graphics programming, I had some fundamental roadblocks that I had hoped the book would help me to overcome.  I desperately wanted to move on to more creative endeavors, however there were still five chapters until the book explicitly stated how to do what I initially set out to do.

I flipped to chapter seven and tried to read some example code.  I was utterly lost!  The author was utilizing Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) techniques and mathematics that I didn't even understand!  After a few minutes of harsh scolding by the C++ compiler, I decided to do what many would do in my shoes.  I know a lot of people do this in situations like mine, because if they didn't it wouldn't be a common verb in our modern language.  I "googled" my question.

My exact search was: [simple way to calculate the distance between two vectors using OpenGL]

I was greeted with pages of results related to my question.  A few hours and a couple of dozen searches later, I had constructed a rudimentary 3D engine.

I didn't mess with my project for a while, but one day I decided to open up the book and pick up where I left off.  As I read, I began to notice how robust Lin's knowledge of 3D visualization was.  He was trying to impart to me every ounce of important knowledge related to 3D through the pages of his book, so that I could know exactly what my computer was doing at every step of the way and I could have the power to fine tune and control the process as granularly as possible.  Evidently, this guy is an elite who spent several semesters of study in this area.  There was so much to learn here!

You can imagine my surprise when I got to the end of the book and realized that my project had already surpassed any examples found in the book in the ways of functionality.  Normally, that would have been a good thing, except the code was a clunky monstrosity.  Everything was being recalculated on every draw call and the result was a bogged down CPU and a laggy program that eventually crashed if you sat there long enough.  It became apparent to me that I didn't even know how half my code worked as I had simply stitched together a Frankenstein of samples from Stack Overflow.  I believe I even had a few lines written by ChatGPT.

I consider myself to be different from most people my age.  I graduated high school a week ago, and I have no social media accounts.  I never have.  My parents restricted my Internet access until I turned 14.  Really, my only knowledge of the Internet came from 2600 Magazine.  I do most of my coding on a Linux desktop computer with no Internet connection.  I use my Windows school laptop for Internet queries and the rest of my computer hacking life.  For someone as disconnected as I am, I was heavily inclined to use Google to "teach" me 3D graphics coding instead of actually dedicating myself to the only worthwhile ways to learn: book and PDF, study and the scientific method, a semester or two or three of scholarly devotion.

I spent the next several weeks and my entire spring break rewriting my program based on what I had learned.  I actually had learned it too.  Not just the cheap kind of "learning" that Google serves up that goes to our mind in one ear and out the other.  True learning.  The kind of learning I could only get from spending my nights and weekends in Lin's book.

It might just be my perception, but I find that many others my age with whom I converse lack interest in any particular subject matter.  I never see a book in their hands.  They seem preoccupied by these tiny computers with apples on the back that keep their eyes glued to the LCD and flash erratic images and videos in a never-ending scroll.  When you ask them a question, if it's not immediately obvious to them, they activate their preferred web browser.

I don't believe anyone is to blame for this state of affairs, but it's tempting to blame people like us.  Us hackers.  After all, we're the ones exploring the last frontier, advancing technology, and oftentimes trying to make a buck in the process.  Behind the evil corporations are folks with the hacker mindset, but they used our mindset against everyone else by creating applications and technologies intentionally weaponized to enslave the mind.  Their innovations are depriving a generation from the ability to innovate.  These new computers that are only about as old as me, the ones with the apples on them, they seem to like to tell us what to do.  I don't like being told what to do by a computer.  I'll be the one giving orders from now on.

Not everyone in my generation is lost.

There are still a number of us in Gen Z who understand the true joy and power of learning.  Information may be free to us, but it's not cheap to us.  I'm not sentencing Google or ChatGPT to the "do not use" list because they will always be used, regardless of how I feel.  What I am doing is asking the reader to put yourself on trial.  Ask yourself, "When was the last time I sat down and read a good, educational, non-fiction book?  How long has it been since I trusted the process and stuck with something until I knew it inside out and became an expert?"  Ask anyone in the hacker community if you're at a loss for something to learn.

We always have questions, and we all have different expertise.  Some of us know how to code real well, many of us are experts with pen-testing and Linux, and there are those us who just like building machines with microcontrollers and making them come to life with assembly language.  Go to a 2600 meeting.  It will be well worth your time.  Afterwards, go to a Barnes and Noble.  Grab a copy of your favorite magazine and any other book that catches your eye.  It too, will be well worth your time.  The cool thing about the learning process is that it will never go away, in spite of our technological advances.

Its journey, challenge, and treasure will always be there, should you choose to partake in it.