Writing about L4 and the future Information Society

[John van V.]

Hello all,

I am presently starting to write about L4; I was an admin in financial
technology from 1999 to 2002 and I specifically worked to integrate OSs to
enable the workforces of the world, and I also attempted to help talented
youth learn to operate systems, and also hoped to help impoverished nations
join the Information Society.

Here is my personal website where my writing will be presented.  You can see
my motivations: http://thinman.com (it is presently in its "capstone degree
project" format, which earned me an A.  I will be attempting to evolve it in
the near future into a mix of operating systems, hardware platforms,
education, and fine art to create the kind of mental diversity we find in a
healthy society.

In 2000, I strongly felt that Linux needed to evolve, and that new OSs
needed to be introduced to the public domain.  I looked at ExOS, and I liked
it a lot, but it had the problem of being tied to only a single CPU
architecture.

In 2002 I got fired along w/ all my technology collaborators and fellow club
members because of the tech crash, and then I also started to suffer the
traumatic after affects from being a volunteer rescuer during the terror
attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001.  Probably a hundred or more
people I knew were killed, including 1/2 of my local fire department whom I
knew personally.  Also former coworkers of mine as well as many of the Sun
techs and sales staff I knew had perished.  The Sybase meeting rooms that
had been frequent meeting places for my various clubs has also been
destroyed.

What I did afterwards to get past my grief issues was become a long haul
truck driver, and I drove the roads of the US for a few years, which
actually was an incredibly enlightening experience.  In 2005, when I was
about to start investing in my own truck fleet, I had an epiphany -- to
teach middle school kids science, and especially technology.  I believe that
middle school and high school students, from my experiences, are the best
potential technology core from the perspective of the future-- and they work
for free.

Also, I should mention that many people are saying that OS development in
general has slowed to a near halt.  This appears to me to be so, though all
of you involved in L4 are not to blame!  I feel that L4, as the leading new
OS, can be a focus for, or perhaps locus of, all the things we need to do,
and all the reflections we need to make based on the nearly two decades of
successful, yet ultimately heartbreaking experiences, in the new Information
Society.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance, John


-- 
Empathy
http://thinman.com/empathy

Photography
http://thinman.com/photography

Technology
http://thinman.com
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