How do you add an infinite money loop to something that has real value?

Investors only care about money but things of value are slow and limited in return, so they will not invest.

For example; how do you create an infinite money loop on something truly valuable such as clean drinking water in developing nations, education for displaced children or ending homelessness? Nobody has. There is no ROI in ending homelessness, if there was, there wouldn’t be homelessness.

(Markets are perfectly efficient, remember…ahem!).

Does that mean we couldn’t end homelessness? No it does not. We could solve a lot of social issues if we (or should I say “they”?) stopped measuring success by Return On Investment and started measuring it on a baseline quality of life for all.

But trying to bend the world to your own vision instead of bending to the way of the world is probably one of the fastest ways to misery. (Unless we build a community that chooses to do things differently. Shall we? Do you want to? I am up for it if you are…).

Anyway, this is what I set out to do, design something that would generate large returns for investors so that they would give the business the start-up money required to deliver real-world value and social impact.

I started looking at how to wrap the idea in computer code to encourage investors to do the right thing, but first I needed to learn to code and understand computers.

I started with a few YouTube channels. Crash Course in Computers was a great series. Network Chuck was another one. I have made a list of Computing Resources That Helped Me So Far.

Then I started looking into Raspberry Pi’s and ESP32s. I had no idea what they were or how to use them but I was fascinated by them nonetheless.

It is through the Raspberry Pi that Linux blipped on my radar. There was something I started to love about the command line interface (CLI). It was functional and beautiful to look at, and it made me feel like a pro even though I had no idea what I was doing.

All of the things I loathed about computers and Big Tech dissolved as I started to use Linux. I didn’t feel like I was being used, tracked and monetised, I felt like I had a tool with huge capabilities and all I had to do was understand it and I could make it do anything that I wanted it to do.

That was a key concept that I learned. If you dismiss computers like I did, it is worth realising this yourself. That is, a computer only does what you tell it to do. If it is not doing what you want it to do it is because you are not telling it the right thing.

It was this realisation that inspired me to not just to learn how to use a computer but to understand how it worked. I found Khan Academy, a free resource, and started following their computer science modules. This was another fun learning experience, starting at bits and bytes, logic gates and transistors.

I was genuinely interested which meant I never had to force myself to learn and I never put myself under any pressure. I knew my approach was lightweight but that didn’t matter. It was a welcome relief from the burnout I had been experiencing.

But what inspired me and excited me the most was the community and “scene” around computers that had nothing to do with Big Tech. The community surrounding Linux and Open Source Software was mind-blowing. It was another world to me. All of the things that I thought the internet should have been was actually happening. It had just somehow been buried and hidden to me.

Not just to me. It is hidden to most people. By design.

Think about how most people use a computer. It is basically an email machine, web browser and word processor at the most. There is only so much time in a day and only so much of that time is spent on a computer. How much of that time spent on a computer is not spent on a major Big Tech platform by most of us? I would guess almost all of it.

I love the idea that I can build a system from the ground up that fits my needs perfectly and that cuts away all of the noise, distractions and advertisements of Big Tech. I can stop being spied on, tracked and processed, overwhelmed and manipulated. I can make my life easier with a computer and live more freely because of it.

I also love the idea of Free Open Source Software (FOSS). It is such an incredible concept. People all around the world collaborating together to build things of value, for no other reason than that. Building together to solve problems, not for financial gain but because problems are worth solving. Then, hopefully, people are rewarded because it has intrinsic value but that is not the motivation.

This blog is about my experiences transitioning from Big Tech to the wonders of Open Source Software. It is me trying to build in public, learn in public and hopefully inspire more people to liberate themselves from the toxicity that has turned people away from one of the most profound inventions ever created. In doing so, maybe I can add a little value to the community too.