Disclaimer

By now I've mentioned two gaming systems, a couple of corporations, two smartphones and Segway. Is this product placement?


FUCK YOU.


Corporations are evil.
Let me check back on all those, Segways make you look like a wanker, Dreamcast was an amazing system but it came out at just the exact wrong moment in time. Google is evil and disguises it very well. Apple is evil and it has decided that instead of covering it up, it's going to turn it into a lifestyle. Smartphones aren't even evil, they're simply already outdated.
The DS is cool, though.


See, this was one of the greatest thing about blips, lenses and airtagging.
Take a look at all the fun sci-fi out there. Why is the Millenium Falcon so much better than the Enterprise? (Woah! Goodbye 50% of my readership! So much for taking stances.) I'll tell you why: hand-made tech!


The Millenium Falcon was mostly jury rigged by Han and Chewie using whatever they could get their hands on. Just like in the sixties in America you would see people working on their cars. They had control over the stuff they used, they could modify it and make it better. If you've read William Gibson's Neuromancer you probably realised that Case tended to treat the console as if it was an extension of himself, you can just imagine him writing his own programs, his own firewalls and hacker tools. I'm pretty sure he used Linux.
People pretend to make you believe that this is the future you deserve, by giving you really cool branded gadgets. Well, fuck that. As I said, that was the best thing with airtagging. Of course we had no idea how the blips were made, except that they came from somewhere in South East Asia, probably Malaysia, but they arrived clean. We were the ones that created all the software and stuff that made it interesting and that made it work as it did. We were pioneers, early adopters.


Do not believe corporations: Early adopter just means getting the worst tech at the highest price. But when it turns to underground hands-on tech, early adopter means... Well, it means you're really cool, doesn't it?
Point is, we were testing out this new stuff and it wasn't branded. It didn't have an Apple, Nike or Coca-Cola logo, it was just sent to us by this guy who none of us knew... Come to think about it, we probably should have thought a bit more about it, shouldn't we?
Still, it was an amazing experience and it was totally safe, we had the blueprints, we knew how it worked, how to tweak it. It was not a fucking smartphone that could only do what the guys at the phone's online store would allow you to do and what you could pay for.


So yeah, corporations are evil, underground is cool. Right? Right.


And no, I do not use Linux, (goodbye again, 50% of my readership!)