Confessions of a Former Luddite

Like most high tech Luddites of the 1990's and early 2000's, I didn't really know where the term "Luddite" came from.  This short video explains it, if you're curious.

Here's what screwed up my thoughts about the internet.  In the late 90's, one of the guys I worked with was lead singer in a band.  It wasn't a huge band, they played good ol' rock n roll, and they had a hardcore local following.  He invited me to a party at the band's house after one of their shows.  It was a good party, guys and girls drinking an socializing, music playing and all the normal party stuff.  At one point, someone led me into another room.  In that room were several drunk party goers surrounding a computer screen.  On the screen were several small pics of other people they were communicating with.  "That guy's in Norway!" someone said, pointing to one of the pictures.  That was my introduction to the internet.  Drunk and stoned people in Anaheim, California typing messages back and forth to drunk and stoned people in other parts of the country and the world.  I wasn't very impressed.

A year or two later I became a taxi driver, and spent most of my time sitting in the taxi.  At that time, the Dot Com boom was in full swing, and it just seemed ridiculous to me.  I didn't like new technology.  I didn't see any point in changing.  It sure looked like this "whole internet thing" was a bunch of hype.  I decided to just wait it out for a few years, and see what became of it all.  Sure enough, the Dot Com bubble burst in the early 2000's, and things fell apart.  At that time, I was still working as a taxi driver, and couldn't afford a computer.  I spent most of my time sitting in my cab and waiting for calls.  I would occasionally go to the local library, rent a computer for $5 an hour, and check my email and look a few things up on Google.  That was it for me.  I still saw no point in the whole internet thing.I didn't get it.

Then, in 2003, the taxi company I worked for switched to a computer dispatching system.  Every cab had a $2500 computer mounted in it, and it KILLED our business.  Literally overnight, our business dropped to almost nothing, and I struggled to survive.  Like so many other people in other industries, I was minding my own business when technology came out of nowhere and completely changed my industry.  I wasn't able to escape taxi driving over the next few years, and I worked more and more hours, and eventually wound up homeless.

A year later, when I moved in with my parents in North Carolina, I had daily (and free) access to a computer for the first time.  I started playing around on it.  I was unemployed, in my early 40's, living with my parents, and really depressed.  The Great Recession was in full swing, and nobody was sure what was going to happen.  I started blogging about my early days in the BMX freestyle world.  I didn't think anyone would read what I wrote.  It was just a creative release for me.  After about a month of blogging, one of my posts went viral in the old school BMX freestyle community online.  I didn't even know there was an old school BMX freestyle community online.  Suddenly I started reconnecting with lots of old friends through the internet.  My BMX blog became the #1 blog in its niche in the world.  I did a follow up blog when the first one ran its course.  That blog became #1 in its niche.  I was still unemployed, but my blogs about BMX, and later homelessness, drew in over 160,000 page views.

One day someone emailed me and wrote, "you know some people make money with blogs, right?"  I had no idea.  So I started looking up blogging and learning more about it.  That took my life in a new direction.  I'm basically a writer at heart, and I started learning how technology had completely changed the writing industry.  I began searching for my place in this new and changing world.  I also learned that very few people actually make money form their blogs.  But blogs are really good even if you don't directly make money from them.  That led to this blog you're reading right now.  Millions of people in this country are now unemployed or under-employed.  One big reason is because technology (and social change) have completely changed the game where work and business are concerned.  This blog is to share what I, myself, have learned on these subjects.  Hopefully you'll get something positive out of this blog that will help in your work life.