My relationship with technology started where many good ones do: with making things.
As a child, I was drawn to construction through Meccano, Revell, and Airfix kits. Nuts, bolts, rivets, parts that only worked if assembled correctly. I wasn’t interested in the finished object so much as the logic of how it came together.
That instinct carried naturally into computing.
My first computer wasn’t just a games machine. It was an invitation to build processes. Even early on, I was fascinated by how programs could be written to do small, repetitive tasks — the first quiet steps toward automating parts of life.
Code as Leverage
At thirteen, I was given an Acorn Electron.
That changed everything.
Suddenly, the machine wasn’t just something to use — it was something to instruct. Programming opened a new mental space: logic, conditionals, loops, outcomes.
I wrote a horse-racing predictor.
I built a gambling winnings calculator.
Crude by modern standards, but conceptually important. I was thinking about probability, structure, and automation long before I had language for those ideas. Some of that early work may still exist somewhere on the internet — a fossil record of curiosity.
What mattered wasn’t the success of the programs.
It was the realisation that systems could be shaped.
Education and Its Limits
That path naturally led into formal education.
Education is useful — up to a point.
It teaches tools, vocabulary, and baseline competence. But as I progressed, I began to sense something else running alongside the curriculum: conformity, narrative, and constraint. Less overt indoctrination, more gentle steering. Subtle incentives toward acceptable thinking.
I was ready to leave.
The corporate world, for all its flaws, at least dealt in outcomes. You either delivered or you didn’t. Ideas were tested against reality, not approval.
That suited me.
Data, Structure, and Flow
Databases became my speciality — which, given my interest in finance, was probably inevitable.
I enjoyed carving data up correctly. Structuring it so that information flowed cleanly and accurately. Poor structure produces noise; good structure produces truth.
That mindset mirrored my personal life more than I realised at the time.
My career took me through Brighton, London, Denmark, and on work-based travel to almost every continent — everywhere except South America. Different industries, different cultures, same underlying patterns: systems work when incentives align and break when they don’t.
Technology, used properly, exposes those truths quickly.
Turning Technology Inward
Eventually, I stepped away from building other people’s visions.
Not out of bitterness, but clarity.
Technology is leverage. Used blindly, it amplifies other people’s agendas. Used deliberately, it amplifies your own.
That shift matters.
AI and the Next Restructuring
I’m a strong supporter of AI — with conditions.
AI will force a restructuring of human work and productivity whether people like it or not. History is clear on this point. Arkwright’s steam loom and the spinning jenny transformed textiles. Bronze and iron displaced stone and flint. Productivity shocks are not optional events.
AI is another one.
Used as a tool, it is extraordinary. I use it extensively — for thinking, structuring, writing, analysis, and productivity. In areas that genuinely interest me, my output has increased dramatically.
That is liberation, not threat.
Where the Line Is
My concern is not AI itself.
It is delegated thinking.
If AI becomes a replacement for judgement rather than an amplifier of it, the consequences will be severe. A world where decisions are outsourced, identity is purely digital, and exclusion is automated creates a dangerous moral vacuum.
In such a world, someone can be locked out of life by a system — and others will walk past, saying “they must have done something wrong”.
That is not a technological failure.
It is a human one.
AI must remain a servant, not a schoolteacher. A collaborator, not a censor. A tool that respects human reasoning rather than infantilising it through guardrails and refusal to engage.
Why Technology Still Matters to Me
Technology, at its best, extends human capability.
It allows individuals to:
- automate the trivial
- focus on what matters
- escape unnecessary drudgery
- build independent structures
Used wisely, it increases sovereignty.
Used carelessly, it concentrates power.
I choose the former.
I don’t worship technology.
I don’t fear it.
I use it deliberately — in service of a life that is coherent, curious, and self-directed.
That has always been the point.