I was born in the late 70s when the global data transmission protocol (TCP/IP) was one-year-old. Although it took more than a decade for Tim Burner to invent World Wide Web!
The first IBM-PC was sold when I was two years old and the first Macintosh computer was sold when I was five.
Mosaic as the first web browser (before Netscape and Internet Explorer) was released when I was 14.
So as a teenager, I was observing the development of one of the greatest achievements of the human race on earth: an interconnected world.
As a student interested in mathematics, my hobby was reading books about chaos, fractals, complexity, pattern recognition, artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms. Most of these topics were considered theoretical and abstract science as there was no computational infrastructure for practical implementation of them in larger scales.
Looking for more practical fields, I have studied mechanical engineering and started my career in the railway industry. Later on, I returned to the university to study management also still had an eye on the old interesting topics.
I’ve started blogging in 2004 and continued the habit till now. Nowadays, owning the most popular personal blog in Persian language (excluding two blogs belonging to political figures) and the most popular personal skill development website in the country (shabanali.com, motamem.org), there’s more time to think about the old interests.
When I was a child, technology was the most serious barrier for building the next superorganism. Now, technology is far ahead and our imagination is the bottle-neck.
This blog includes my thoughts about the digital age. Nothing necessarily amazing or even new. But I believe in the power of writing and its crucial role in emerging new ideas. So I myself am the first audience of these notes.
Reza Shabanali