Computer

Your computers are tools you can use to produce valuable content in our global cloud of information. Productivity causes prosperity. There is a whole new world of information we are creating in the global cloud of artificial intelligence. Most people are influenced by the AI. A few people participate in creating it.

Creating digital art is one good way to produce valuable content. Learning how to code and creating applications for computers and smart phones is another valuable skill.

You do not need any credentials to be a computer scientist. You can learn how to do computer science by reading manuals and tinkering with your computer. It will take time and effort. Self-motivation is required. No one is going to force you to be productive.

Spend at least an hour taking care of your spirituality every day. Then, get busy being creative and productive. Read the manual. Focus your attention on a few skills and get really good at those skills.

Get your computer set up as a high-performance development center. I’ve been buying and reading a lot of books about various aspects of computer science. I’m learning this stuff by reading books, watching videos and using the software. My objective is to make it as easy as possible for you to learn how to use your computers to amplify your creativity and productivity.

I’ve been interested in and tinkering with computers for at least 50 years. I do not need to have any credentials to write about computers and creating your own private enterprise in your own home office, using free and open-source software. I’m not a doctor or lawyer. I am a teacher. My stories are valuable information that you can read and watch to help you improve yourself.

I approach computer science from the graphical desktop, because I do not understand how to use the terminal very well, yet. I figure a lot of other people are in similar circumstances. I am slowly learning how to use the terminal, and I will write about what I learn as I go. I will focus on the graphical tools you can use to create content in your holistic home-office. KDE is a powerful, graphical desktop environment.

My stories will probably not be the most up to date and accurate information you can get, at least to start with. My stories, both written and videos, are pretty rough. They are good stories, with valuable information for anyone like me, who is willing to seek the truth and work fast, smart and safely to create your own private free enterprise.

Knowing what questions to ask and how and where to find the answers is valuable information. I’m working on making it a lot easier for you to get started using free and open-source software in your free enterprise, than it has been for me.

Some applications have good documentation, and some don’t. I do not want to duplicate the documentation that is already available about individual applications. I will work on improving the documentation. What I intend to describe is how to use the applications with each other, in your high-performance, holistic home office.

HomeLab

You can use an old desktop computer, or you can purchase server blades on eBay to set up a rack of servers in your home office. You can also use Akamai Linode to back up your files. Use NextCloud or OwnCloud to set up your network filesystem on your own homelab or on your remote server, such as Linode.

This is a long-term project. It is a complicated puzzle of complicated puzzles. Study, learn and have fun building your own custom platform for your artificial intelligence. Build a high-performance computing ecosystem with and for your whole family. Set up a BitCoin mining operation with your excess capacity. Investigate Ansible and learn how to automate a lot of the routine procedures you need to do to maintain your platform.

You can do just about everything in your homelab. You can host your own websites. Set up a development environment, with a git repository for recording your work and collaborating with other developers, for building applications and creating content. The one thing I recommend doing on remote servers is backups, in case your home office is destroyed in a fire or flood, etc.

Proprietary Software

Having many options for commercial software is a good thing. Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Google each have their own private cloud of artificial intelligence that you can subscribe to and use in your holistic home office. If you want to use them, then investigate them and learn how you can use them in your own free enterprise. Big corporations make some really cool technology.

Creators of software deserve to get paid for their work. Respect their private property and their creative freedom. What they don’t have a right to do, is lock you into a culture of dependence, where the corporation has power and control over the software and can use the software to control and manipulate the people who use the software. Gathering your private information and selling it is a grievous violation of the universal human rights of their customers.

Free and Open Source Software

The free and open-source alternatives are another option you can choose from. There are many different distributions you can use. The main benefit of using free and open-source technology is that you get to be the artist. And you do not have to trade your private information for the subscription to the proprietary software.

Free and open-source software is kind of communistic. No one owns free and open-source software. You still have to have a subscription to a particular distribution or application, which is updated regularly by the maintainers of the software. Thankfully, there are thousands of volunteers working on improving all kinds of free and open-source software.

The benefit of community ownership is that the community keeps the software up to date and many computers using the same software enables the computers to understand each other. They are compatible with each other because, they are using the same language.

Your Own Private Software

I would still like to see an operating system that recognizes the purchaser as the owner of the software. The license would designate the software as private property, sold to the purchaser. There would have to be some mechanism for keeping the software up to date and compatible with all the other computers.

The BSD license comes closest to doing so right now. During the last month or so, I’ve been noticing a lot of videos about FreeBSD on YouTube. Perhaps soon, I’ll be able to make the move to BSD. Take control of your computers by owning your hardware and your software.

I’m also hearing that Microsoft is pressuring computer manufacturers to lock the hardware, so that it will only run Windows. It’s a good thing that Pop!-OS, Kubuntu and KDE Slimbooks, et. al., are coming out with computers with Linux installed natively.

We ought to have the option of getting any combinations of subscriptions to one or more big tech proprietary software ecosystems, or one or more distributions of free and open-source software, or you could buy your own private computers and develop your own private cloud of artificial intelligence. You can create your own customized instance of NextCloud on Akamai Linode, so you can log into your own private, centralized file system from any computer, anywhere in the world. In any case, your privacy and free enterprise should be defended, nurtured and cultivated by law.

I’m not advocating anarchy. There needs to be some form of the rule of law governing computer science and artificial intelligence. The rules of law just need to protect the interests of individuals, families, small businesses and big businesses.

Computers are just tools you can use in your free enterprise, to help you create something valuable. We can use them to amplify our free enterprise, or we can use them to try to control each other. Holistic Home Office can teach you to be a, do it yourself, computer programmer, digital craftsman and artisan in addition to whatever your specialty is. Read several of the stories at homeoffice.studio and watch many of the videos to benefit from this very advanced education.

You are the CEO of your own free enterprise. You can be a farmer or network marketer, you can work for a big corporation or a small business. No matter what your professional circumstances are, exercising your holistic home office skills is valuable activity.

Sometimes you will hire a specialist to do these skills for you. That is okay. Improve your interdependence. Maximize your independence from anyone or anything except God. Minimize your dependence on anyone or anything other than God. Continuously improve yourself. Be a high performance, do it yourself, holistic home office based, capitalist entrepreneur.

Photo by Victoria Gnatiuk - iStock
Video by Bob Mccoy using Samsung Note 9