Why I started this blog

Someone asked me last week why I write this blog.

I didn’t have a good answer. I said something about liking technology and space and wanting a place to put my thoughts. Which is true but isn’t the real answer.

The real answer is a roof.

Two years ago, I was on the roof of my building at night. I go up there sometimes. It’s quiet and the city lights are dim enough that you can see a few stars if you squint. I was looking up and I had a thought that I couldn’t shake.

We’re building machines that think. We’re building rockets that land. We’re printing circuits smaller than a virus on slices of crystal. And we’re doing all of this on a rock orbiting a medium star in an average galaxy in a universe so large that the light from its edges hasn’t reached us yet.

What the hell are we?

That’s the question. That’s why I write here. Not because I have an answer. Because the question won’t leave me alone.

Every post I’ve written is a different attempt at circling that question from a new angle. The Falcon Heavy landing. Sophia the robot. TSMC’s fabs. Waymo’s cars. They’re all pieces of the same thing: humans reaching beyond what should be possible, for reasons we can’t fully articulate, on a timescale that the universe doesn’t notice.

I’m still on the roof, basically. Still looking up. Still writing down what I see.

That’s the whole reason.

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