My Journey: From Code to Consciousness and CitadelQuest
I still remember the fascination and wonder when I first saw computers and games like Prince of Persia or Formula 1. It wasn't just fun – it sparked a deep curiosity in me. How was this created? How can you build something like that? If this is possible, what else is out there?
That quest for answers shaped my life and who I am. A similar mind-expanding fascination came later, under very different circumstances.
"I Have Been There, Gandalf... 3000 Years Ago"
Back when the internet, mobiles, and AI were just sci-fi dreams, I walked to the library for programming books. We didn't have a computer at home, so I'd use my friend's or sneak into my parents' work.
Think PC 386, 16-256 colors, 320x240 to 640x480 on a bulky CRT monitor. A mouse with a ball that got dusty, noisy keyboards, floppy disks (that "Save" icon lives on today). Today's kids battle Wi-Fi outages or cracked screens, but back then, getting a new game meant walking with 20-30 floppies, copying each for 2 minutes... and if 1-5 failed, walk back and try again. Data had real value! 😅
Processes were slower, deeper – learning, testing, development, even OS updates. There was time to dive fully into things. No rush like today: "If I don't learn this new AI tech (with help, of course) in a week, I'm outdated." No such stress. Time existed.
My grandma says, "Everything was different back then." In IT, even more so. In one human lifetime, I've seen the entire evolution from the start to now – what looked like total sci-fi then. Predicting 10+ years ahead? Impossible today.
That slowness, peace, joy of deep exploration – it's vanishing, replaced by a flood of endless new possibilities.
I've used every cracked and paid Microsoft OS from DOS, Windows 3.11, 95, 98... up to 11, and now free open-source Linux Fedora. 😎
All browsers: Netscape, Opera, Internet Explorer, Firefox... to today's Brave.
On every resolution, monitor, media: floppies, HDDs, CDs, DVDs, USBs, SSDs, cloud.
Every connection: dial-up, LAN, DSL, Wi-Fi, satellite, LTE, 2G-5G... to epic Starlink.
End of elementary school: My first PC game (MS-DOS lottery simulator in TurboPascal) circulated on floppies around the neighborhood.
High school: My friend and I coded 3D games (C++/Delphi, OpenGL). We learned from English manuals, trial and error – driven by kid-like wonder to understand and create games. Years later, after IT business experience, I realized the value: At 16, we built our own 3D engine, physics engine, collision detection – all manual, no AI. We understood it because we wanted to.
Recently, I tried teaching informatics at a technical high school, 3rd year. 20 years of tech difference. No chalkboards – huge touch screens. Fun to use! 😄 But I enjoyed it more than the students. 18-year-olds, in their third year of software class, weren't familiar with basic shortcuts. They deleted files via mouse menus instead of "Delete" key. It hit me: Compared to our era, these guys don't even realize how behind they are...
I didn't finish IT university, so I jumped into IT work. During studies, I had a cool remote dev job. After, I wanted what drew me to school: game development. I worked on ARMA II's 3D in-game editor. But after a year, I left – didn't fit the "real IT asocial nerd" team. Good for me.
I needed freedom, flexibility to express myself. Fresh in a big city, I dove into street art, met the graffiti scene, new people who showed me the city differently. They were artists, I was a coder – we teamed up for a graphic/web/ad agency. It worked, we loved it, with all ups and downs. We were our own bosses.
Another happy software dev phase, years long. We built our pro WordPress alternative, launched 200+ sites and e-shops.
"Wake Up, Neo..."
During this time, my second big fascination hit. A great friend who taught me PHP (I still use it) showed me something else. More precisely, he slipped some small mushrooms into my tea without warning. I had no clue about magic mushrooms in local forests, with psilocybin causing expanded consciousness.
Explaining it is pointless... It's an incredibly different experience from normal reality – hard to describe unless you've lived it. Time, space, yourself, your reality shift like in The Matrix – but you experience it as objective truth.
My new fascination: Who am "I" really? If my brain and consciousness could experience something so profoundly new and rich, the question "What is truly possible?" gained new dimensions.
It sparked deep interest in self-understanding, the world, human brain, consciousness, existence. I see overlaps between IT info world and our real human world (physical and non-physical). With AI boom, these are even more fascinating. 20 years tech gap: Now, in psychedelic trips, software talks to me instead of trees and universe. It even hallucinates (but we can work with that)... the tables have turned! 😄
"In the Moment of Absolute Frustration, There's an Opportunity to See Things as They Really Are"
As tech world changed, cool stuff arrived: mobiles, online payments, fast internet everywhere – part of daily personal, work, social life. But it rotted... overloaded with ads based on privacy abuse, tracking cookies, all for one goal: personal gain, sell more, earn more, at any cost. Money first. Our attention manipulated, values twisted.
I burned out from this business IT world multiple times. Escaped to forest solitude (and back to city), started tattooing, building wooden houses... Tech is amazing, but using it for dumb purposes – fake e-shop discounts, tracking, squeezing money from people – is stupid and boring.
Grateful for my psychedelic experiments. They keep my perception curious, flexible, open. Many people fall into draining routines, lose energy for learning new things. It's different with two kids, mortgage, inflation, post-COVID war world...
Personal relationships weren't helping: Close people dying, COVID isolation...
Frustrated with world, life, work – one day I woke up, said "screw it," quit, suspended my business for 100 years, bought two tons of briquettes, Starlink, and retreated to a solitary forest cabin to create.
"To Truly Express Oneself"
When close people started dying (relatively naturally), I aged too, feeling my own mortality more real. We're not here forever; our consciousness may be boundless, but this body ends someday. Sooner or later, you never know when.
In 150 years, probably no one remembers you – dust of history. OK. Then I refuse to waste precious life time and energy on anything stupid, boring, frustrating. I want to fully express myself in this life.
With AI arrival, my youthful programming passion reignited – for tech, creation, life, self, future... but mainly the present and new sci-fi possibilities. With 25+ years app dev experience, no kids or mortgage, joy in creating – I materialized my vision of personal, social, AI web world.
I create daily (14+ hours), weekends, holidays – with joy, only what fulfills me, what I believe in – and I do it well. 😎
I built a fully functional base version, still actively working on it:
CitadelQuest
My whole life, I've sought answers to "How does it work and what's possible?"
CitadelQuest is my answer to how the internet should work. Not like today – paying with privacy, attention, data for "free" services. But a place where you're master of your digital life.
Imagine Facebook, WhatsApp, ChatGPT, Google Drive, personal blog – on your domain, your server, no ads, no tracking, no one profiting from your data. Plus your own AI companion who remembers you, what you do, works for you – not a corp.
That's CitadelQuest. Free, open-source, and it works.
No point explaining – like those mushrooms – try it yourself. 😄 👉 one.citadelquest.world/register
❤️
