Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Welcome, and thanks for your interest in Coding the Wheel. My name is James Devlin and I'll be your host, for the next thirty seconds at any rate.

What is Coding the Wheel? I had posted in this very spot a rather bizarre and long-winded answer to that question. After some thought, and by employing a healthy dose of Strunk and White, I've managed to boil it down to one sentence.

Coding the Wheel is a continuous, never-ending discussion of the science and art of using technology to manifest your ideas in a concrete or physical form.

Now, if that sounds like a lot of mumbo-jumbo to you, all it really means is: we'll be talking about how to do stuff using the tools we have at our disposal. Here are a just a few of the topics we'll be discussing in-depth:

How to make money online by blogging
How to use technology to achieve an advantage in every day life
How to play online poker and other Internet or software-based games of skill
How to become a (better) programmer
How to make technology purchases wisely
How to have a fulfilling career in technology
How to "cheat" the system, in minor, completely legal, ways

If things like making money, or playing poker for a living appeal to you, you can subscribe to this site's content via any major newsreader or over email (no registration or any other messiness required).

Another thing: when I say technology, I don't just mean software, computers, or electronics. I mean the sum total of human invention, from the screwdriver to the particle accelerator. That's after all what technology means:

Main Entry:
tech·nol·o·gy
Pronunciation:
\-jē\
Function:
noun
Inflected Form(s):
plural tech·nol·o·gies
Etymology:
Greek technologia systematic treatment of an art, from technē art, skill + -o- + -logia -logy
Date:
1859

1 a: the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area : engineering 2 <medical technology> b: a capability given by the practical application of knowledge <a car's fuel-saving technology>2: a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge <new technologies for information storage>3: the specialized aspects of a particular field of endeavor <educational technology>
— tech·nol·o·gist \-jist\ noun

And at any rate, I think there are enough blogs dedicated solely to programming and computers as it is. I'd like this one to have a more universal appeal.

What about the title?

That one's hard to explain. Suffice to say it's my metaphor for scientific progress. Ultimately, everything we're doing as humans - creating, learning, mastering our environment - comes down to a sort of reality programming in which we remake the world, or tweak it, according to our needs and desires. Every invention which we've ever dreamt up ultimately goes to accomplish this end: make my life easier, safer, happier, more meaningful. In this respect the Wheel is simply the infrastructure of the world as we're building it: the sum total of all our tools and technologies applied to everyday life.

Of course, the Wheel can also be thought of as a gigantic hamster wheel, created by and intended for humans. It's purpose is to extract maximum productivity out of you and everybody else, with supreme efficiency. The Wheel isn't fully implemented yet, but rest assured that it will be. And when that happens, we're going to have some difficult decisions to make. Technology has always been a double-edged sword, but lately, those edges are a lot sharper than they used to be.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Coding the Wheel in a nutshell.