A fork in the road
A Journey from Code to Culture Technology captivated me from my earliest memories. While other kids played outside, I lived in digital worlds, forging friendships through screens and learning the intricate languages of computers. My online community became my sanctuary—though I’ll admit we occasionally pushed boundaries in ways that, looking back, could have led to serious trouble. I was fortunate to escape any lasting consequences from our digital adventures. For years, I operated under a fundamental misconception: that technical prowess was the ultimate currency of success. I dismissed the humanities—literature, philosophy, history—as antiquated relics with little practical value. This was particularly ironic given that standardized tests and academic assessments consistently revealed these “soft” subjects as my greatest natural strengths. Yet I stubbornly clung to my belief that only code and algorithms mattered in the modern world. ...