Technology is still magic

I grew up in a have-not area of a have-not province. Money was short. Family was not, and a lot of that family read. What I didn’t have was technology. I had books, the outdoors, two fuzzy English channels showing nothing meant for a kid my age, and one crystal-clear French channel I couldn’t understand a word of. That was the whole window onto the wider world.

So when I finally got my hands on a computer, it landed like magic. Not a tool, magic. A box that could do things those two channels never hinted were possible, that could answer a question the moment I had it, that could be taken apart and made to behave. That feeling never left. I still think technology is magic. I love what it lets people do, I love what it lets me do, and I love fixing it when someone else has broken it.

Once the door opened onto a world of information, there was no measured version of me walking through it. I went in head first, ankles deep, and that’s still how I learn. I don’t read about a thing and call it known. I climb inside it, take it apart, break it, and put it back together until I understand it instead of just recognizing it.

Along the way I figured out how my own head works. The more emotion I attach to something, the more of it I keep. Get me excited about a subject and I’ll go deep and it sticks; leave me cold and it slides straight off. So I don’t fight that, I use it. I find the part of a new thing that’s genuinely exciting and let it pull the rest along behind it. Immersion is the method, and emotion is the fuel.

The newer skill has been learning to feel that same excitement about how everything works, not just the machine. The wonder started with books, blossomed with technology, and kept spreading: into the things I build, the food I grow, the radios and sensors that fill the lab. Once you know the feeling, you can go looking for it anywhere, and almost everything rewards the look.

The kid with two channels has more access now than he could have dreamed of, and his answer to it hasn’t changed: dive in. The TryHackMe streak, the certifications, the home lab I run to understand things rather than just use them, none of it is for a resume. It’s the same hungry kid who finally got online and couldn’t believe his luck.

From the outside it can look like discipline, and in a field that punishes standing still it passes for necessity. It’s simpler than both. I decided technology was magic and never grew out of it, and I learned the same wonder works on almost anything if you bring it. Stay curious about how things work, and you don’t run out of things to learn.