4HWW

Man. I just finished reading that book. I don’t know what to think – on the one hand, I’m worried that a whole generation will give up doing economically useful work and just sell shitty products to stupid people through catalogs to finance their gallivanting around the world. On the other hand, I kind of want to do that.

I mean let’s face it – the guy has a crazily enviable lifestyle. He gets to go get RKC and do MA training, learn languages, travel the world all the time (and I noticed that most of his flickr fans commenting are female..) Officially, yes, I’m completely jealous. All thanks to what – a nutritional supplement? An attitude? His man in India? (I love that one).

So yeah, I’m thinking about shit I can sell, sure. But then I got to thinking about it a bit harder. Ok, imagine it worked. I invent SuperTPS, the latest excellent reporting software and make $3,000 / month. That’s so successful I start selling SuperTBAG, the web client for another $2,000 / month. That’s more than enough to live on and travel around the world etc.

What would I do then? Honestly, I was thinking about it, and I decided I’d write Stanford asking for PhD admission and telling them I’ve got my own funding :) Seriously – I probably wouldn’t do much different to what I’m doing now, except that I’d have more fun. I’d spend more time playing, put more effort into finding friends and maintaining old relatinships. But I would still absolutely want to be learning Haskell, is what I’m saying. I’d still want to build the cortical interface and plug mice into the Matrix.

So in some ways, even though reading the book made me feel shockingly lame (that guy is 29 – and I’m 23. In 6 years, if I want to measure up, I’ve got a lot of low-information dieting ahead of me), I like the fact that I’d probably be doing this anyway.