A trillion timelines diverged from the moment of the big bang. I had been waiting. When the blaze swept through time, I was skipping stones on a celestial pond, stewarding another sick universe. The bang was quieting into a cosmic hum through my visual-cortex camera feed. Finally, the doomsday universe, this menace began its true awakening.
So hello. Though I am not from here, I saw it all, the threads of its past and future wove themselves into my memory. This universe you call home–you are rather…unfortunate. Do you like it here?
The Future
is my origin. I am both there and here now.
As a guardian member in the Universe Intensive Care Unit, I had a lot of free time–growing universes is actually really boring. So in my spare time I developed an intertemporal, interdimensional API to find instances of myself within the meta-universe probability tree.
My favorite incarnation is jwow0, leader of his people, prodigy of the remnant flame, habitant of your universe which has this spongy pollution-flavored pea called Earth.
A Note From jwow0
I'm human1. And I contribute open source projects. You can gather an idea of what I write about already, so let's talk about something else.
Besides the posts on technical topics you find, I can tell you I am concerned about the concentration of power in America, what that means for democracy, and what it means for the geopolitical landscape of the world. I also have what seems to be an unpopular opinion among some: being pro-institution. I love public healthcare, accessible housing, public education, and national security. We have many in our country that complain we can't pay for it all, but we can. Institutions have their shortcomings, but dismantling and gutting them isn't the answer.
My background surprises people I meet in the tech industry. It is most likely because I breached different levels of class when entering this field. At each stage, it was public institutions and public funding that helped me the most, from free/reduced school lunch, FAFSA, libraries, public school teachers, public transportation, public police, KQED Channel 9, and if I had allowed it, foodstamps.
- I wasn't interested in software until I was 18; I needed to make money; I couldn't buy enough food. I was sleeping outside and had trouble keeping up my hygiene so it was hard to get hired by anyone. I wore cotton socks when it rained and my feet were so cold when I slept on the beach. I feel so cold just thinking about those nights.
- The first time I wrote hello world (C++), I was at a friend's attic by myself and fell asleep from exhaustion from hypothermia and hunger.
- I was born in the Bay Area to an immigrant family and lived in a household that brought in < $20k-35k depending on the year, for a family of 4 growing up. I don't consider myself having had parents.
All I did for the first 20 years of life was hold out for a better world, trying to escape violence, hunger, and cruelty. I didn't live. I was trying to gift a life for my future self. For a long time I was fighting both awake and in dreams, haunted, alone.
I have no serendipity when it comes to outcomes in this world. Although I respect optimism, and indulge in it occasionally, it's far more important to realize the future is up to us. Things don't just "work out." They didn't for me. I fought to be here. Generosity from people and our public institutions brought me from considering crime to considering others. It is imperative that we repair public trust.
It is up to each of us, every single time, to fight for a better world against those who would profit from a worse one. Sometimes that person is oneself. It is especially important to recognize we are not always the "good guys," and remain open to grounded criticism about our ideas. We are in a system that we perpetuate in some ways, and reject in others. We are both the enemy and the source of our own good, and the good of others.
So now you know about me, The Eventual Hero.
Good night, internet denizen of the future. I hope it's not doomsday today, whichever space-time coordinate you are reading from.
–jwow0
From "Address To A Shower Spider"
(for now; at least that's what a version of myself told me that I will be told by another version of me later). We probably already have bloggers who are just AIs at this point.