Code, Mathematics, and Science

I’ve been interested in numbers and foreign languages for as long as I can remember, mainly for their ability to represent other things. Code is somewhat of an amalgam of the two, it combines numbers and weird symbols to create functioning products transforming the ways in which both individuals and organizations live and operate.

My first exposure to code was through Microsoft Visual Basic and some simple calculator tutorials I worked on with my dad, I can still remember their excessively bland designs. This was the early 1990s and although the Web was beginning to gain ground as a popular medium for information sharing, it was nothing like it is in 2014. It was in 1997 when I first learned that someone, anyone, could make a website of their own. I had been spending my lunch hour with a group of friends in our science teacher’s classroom when he asked if we wanted to see the world’s smallest website. He had a simple landing page comprised of a white background with a single pixel near the center of the tiny screen, he moused over the pixel and clicked to enter another page explaining how the previous page represented the smallest of websites. Needless to say, I was floored. “You mean I can make a website myself and just put it online?!” I was hooked and have been ever since.

However, life isn’t a simple one-way street and my interests began to spread. I started to become more and more interested in mathematics, physics, and science in general. All the while, though, still maintaining a certain level of interest and desire to work with the Web. I began college as a Computer Science major immediately after leaving the US Army Signals Intelligence Corps. Eventually I switched majors to Physics and began envisioning myself as a theoretical physicist. Fortunately for me that changed and I soon discovered Anthropology and started to see how I could benefit greatly from this balanced approach.