The Leaning Ivory Tower

I run a Telegram channel called The Leaning Ivory Tower. People sometimes ask me what the name means.

The ivory tower is a metaphor for elitism, which, sadly, comes all too easily to people in tech. Why it is leaning hardly needs explaining (right, Claude?).

I once had a funny run-in with a taxi driver. Somewhere in the small talk I let slip that I was a programmer. The reaction went roughly like this: "You son of a b*tch! You people make politician money and you swindle everyone on top of it!" (What followed was a story about a relative of his who tried to build a startup, see the previous post about the three Fs.)

The irony is that back in '93, when I was choosing what to study, I went for electronics rather than programming. I had written programming off as a dead end, money-wise (who on earth would pay for thin air?).

In hindsight, I wasn't all that wrong.