Unfortunately what I’ve found in the past decade of working in the field is that we are no longer in the exploration era of computing. There is still much to explore, but the problem is that the metaphorical frontier has been largely bought up by large corporations and funding agencies, and thus exploration has been restricted. The days of unfettered research at places like Xerox PARC and Bell Labs are long-gone; it’s all about quickly delivering results in areas that promise to have a direct, immediate impact on the bottom line. Academia is no better with its “publish-or-perish” demands. Even working as a software engineer has less exploration today than it did in the past. The developed world is jeopardizing its future by relentlessly pursuing short-term gains at the expense of the long term.

It’s disappointing to see computing “colonized” by business interests who have no love for computing and who don’t understand that research and software engineering are creative endeavors that cannot be treated like an assembly line, but I’ve come to terms with this recently and started rethinking my career. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to separate my passion for computing with making a living; trying to make money from research leads to pressure from funders. I need to pursue my true research callings the way an artist pursues art.

But a thought just occurred to me when typing all of this. In a way, though, hackers and artists are back to the days of the Homebrew Computer Club of the 1970s, where hobbyists pursued their craft and showed off their work without any expectation of monetary reward. These hackers were distinct from the stereotypical IBMer. The rise of Apple and Microsoft changed this, but something interesting happened in the past decade; working for Apple, Microsoft, and other Big Tech companies today is akin to working for IBM in 1974. What was once the counterculture has become “the man.”

It’s not a perfect analogy; AT&T and Xerox were definitely “the man” 50 years ago, yet they ran research labs that offer levels of freedom that cannot be found today. But I believe that us hacker/artist types should take inspiration from the hobbyist communities of old. I’m unqualified to take on modern capitalism and its effects on research and the software industry, but if I could make a lasting contribution to society by doing great “artistic” computing, then I could die satisfied.