No answers, only opinions

My Future Ambitions

I've been trying to re-org myself internally at work. It was going well until it wasn't.

I've been out of office for a week or so while my mom and sister were visiting and took time to reflect. My manager asked what life after Netflix would look like for me.

I'm not ready to go yet. The pickle I'm in is that: I'm good at my job, but I'm not flexing the skillset I'm passionate about in it.

I wrote this email to myself and since I'm at a pivotal moment, it is worth documenting this publicly.

I choose to work at Netflix because we:

If I were to no longer be a member of the dream team tomorrow, my personal agenda is to:

  1. Reconnect with my former colleagues that are now at Disney
    • Inquire about their design technology division.
  2. Author “The Greatest 404 Page Ever Found: An Overview of Silly'z Computer”
    • Silly'z entire computer fits inside the 404 page.
  3. Partner with Epic Games, Valve, Roblox, Deno, Inrupt, Vans, Raspberry Pi
    • Market directly with artists, students, and educators
  4. Reach out to VC contacts
    • Leverage first-hand experience with semantic web technologies, decentralization, permacomputing, virtual worlds, live performance, and broadcasting.
  5. Relentlessly kickstart https://hackclub.com/ locations around the world.
    • Perpetual motion with a positive feedback loop.

Growing up I always wanted to be an Imagineer at Disney. However, I shelved that thought since my perception is that true imagineering died along with Walt. Selfishly, my former colleagues that are now there does change my calculus. Collaborating with them again would alleviate the burden I've been carrying at work— not having the agency to solve problems concisely at the intersection of design and engineering directly on the web platform.

Which brings us to Silly'z Computer. I've devised a wholistic approach for a web based operating system that I can teach to children. Unlike the alternative approaches to “The Metaverse”, I do not want to exploit the future children of the world. I want to empower them to liberate themselves. I've completed the initial proof of concept, now it just needs to be a book.

My total addressable market is not limited to just children though. Anyone that wants to have more fundamental control of technology without going through an entire slog of “back in my day” should be interested in my work. As Silly'z Computer was written to be loosely coupled with Solid Project, anyone that hates cookie banners or loves the spirit of the GDPR should be excited.

I've always been wary of Venture Capital. In my eyes, it is too easy to take a great idea and water it down until it is only a sad reflection of what could have been. The middle-out nature of Silly'z Computer also changes my calculus on this. The value to society is the transparency of the system. The value to the market is how it will make it easier to build harder, better, faster, stronger applications on top of the web.

And finally, my life changed dramatically at age 17. I learned Macromedia Flash and Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML). Flash was some proprietary technology that died in a corporate flame war. HTML is still the bread to my butter. In the past 15 years, I've gone from making $7.25/hour to making over half a million dollars a year (before paying more taxes than some presidents).

Silly'z Computer is a crucial demonstration of the modular system I always thought the web promised to be. I built this for myself at age 17, but I cannot go back in time. I can only pass it on to the next generation. I've also built it for myself at age 70. When my dementia sets in, I'll need a secure place to hang my hat in the digital world.

The only way I can ensure that I will grow old and die in a bright and optimistic future is to help build it.