Hi, my name is Jesse. I'm 31 years old, and you might call me a Multipotentialite if you're familiar with the term. I've been a wire-sculptor, a fiction writer, a saxophonist, a cosplayer, a pokemon master, a Beatlemaniac, a... you get the idea. At no point in my life have I ever had an interest that had anything to do with my day job. My first Bachelor's degree (graduated from OSU in December 2013) was simply in "Art," and has proven to be a massive waste of money. I'm barely out of retail, and have very few marketable skills to my name. I have a wonderful network of friends, thanks to my involvement in the furry fandom, and a great many of them have careers in IT, specifically as software developers, programmers, coders, 1337 hackers... Hearing them talk about it over the years now and then, I gradually went from a baffled sense of awe, to a somewhat begrudging envy, to a cautious curiosity- a couple of aptitude tests seemed to indicate that I would do well as a programmer, but all my attempts to teach myself ran up against a brick wall when even the most basic of beginner's resources all seemed to depend upon choosing a language right off the bat! How can a luddite with no knowledge of coding be expected to pick a language arbitrarily?
I was already in a bit of a slump when the pandemic hit, and my usual social outlet (conventions) started getting canceled for the forseeable future. Thanks to an optimistic nudge in the right direction from my therapist, I was able to navigate through my employer's available tuition assistance resources and enroll back into school. Now I'm majoring in Computer Software Technology at Ashford University, taking courses remotely, and seeing if I can get a grasp on the field of coding. The creation of a blog was an assignment for my third course, Fundamentals of Information Technology & Literacy, and we were using it to journal about our progress in school. That's what the first few posts are.
For the process of learning how to code, I have been told by my coding friends that it is helpful to approach each lesson or topic with a “pet project” in mind, against which a student can compare each new tool and determine the practicality of its purpose. For several years now, I have simultaneously been interested in the idea of automation-based post-scarcity replacing our current system of capitalism. At one point, I had even started to put together the foundations of a podcast, intending to use it to explore the subject and the many sub-topics it would require. In the same vein, I would like to use the development of software and systems required for this infrastructure as my “pet project” lens through which to learn coding. My blog, therefore, will be a record of my learning progress, as I develop the criteria and goals for each system, and learn about the languages, programs, and tools that I can use to create these required systems. I’ve given my blog the title, “We Can Rebuild It (We have the technology)” - although I may not have seen any episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man just yet, this well-known reference seemed poignant and fitting; it refers to the rebuilding of societal structures, rather than a single man.
My initial focus or pet project is the development of an interactive program which could directly poll the general populace and render the representative elements of democracy even more obsolete than they already are.
Want to follow along with my studies? Check out my portfolio!
Want to find me elsewhere? https://neubauje.carrd.co/
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