SortedPC.net

Doing stuff with computers can become an obsession, yet to get the best out of them requires familiarity and that comes from taking time to play, but maybe that's just an excuse...

I can't compete with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg who, despite being the CEO of Facebook and worth some multiple of $1Bn, still likes to cut code with the geeks in his business (see a recent profile in the FT). However, I do have this urge to pull things apart and see how they work. Earlier in life I confined this to tinkering with cars and DIY, but when I became a technology investor I felt, as an arts graduate, that I ought to know something about the technologies being exploited by the businesses I was backing.

In the '80s this wasn't so hard. I bought a BBC model B microcomputer in 1985 - the flagship PC produced by Acorn Computers (founded by Hermann Hauser of Amadeus, inter alia, in 1978). The machine came with a manual that included a tutorial and language reference for BASIC as well as specifying all the primitives needed to handle the hardware. I went for the luxury of a 5.25" floppy drive (rather than using audio tape cassettes) and started to play.

I wish I could say that my play resulted in my becoming a competent developer of useful applications, but I never got beyond tinkering. As the years went by I nibbled at the edges, especially in systems administration after we installed GNU Linux as our server operating system in 2000, but remained a geek manqu?.

In 2003 I took the plunge and embarked on an Open University IT and computing degree - eventually finishing it at the end of last year. So, am I any better off - do I understand what I'm investing in any better now than I did before? Actually, the answer is 'yes' - as an investor in mobile technologies the degree did give me the background information to understand, for instance, the various forms of signal modulation and multiplexing. It didn't turn me into a geek, however, and every time I do decide to something bold - such as install a new operating system (Fedora 6 instead of Red Hat 9, for instance) - it takes me days, and sometimes nights, of frustration and effort.

The truth is that inveterate tinkerers have a profound psychological itch that has to be scratched - which is not about utility or the efficient use of time. Maybe I do now know more about the technologies in which I invest, but - more importantly - it's been deeply satisfying to scratch that itch all these years.

1 October 2007

Originally posted on CandidCapital - 24 May 2007

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