Davide Di Pumpo

Well, first of all, because I'm afraid of dying.

All jokes aside (though it's not entirely a joke anymore), one of my biggest fears is that my kids won't remember me. They're still little. And since becoming a father, the thought that I could be here one day and gone the next has taken on a different weight.

But there's another reason, and what better way to explain it than with a story? If you know me, or get to know me, you'll know people call me "Papà Castoro": Papa Beaver.

Of green beards and briefcases

When I was a kid, back in preschool, two things made my dad instantly recognisable in my drawings. I'd put green dots on his face (I was convinced that my dad's beard, which he always kept shaved, was green) and give him a briefcase. My mum started to worry because even when I drew him at the beach, by the sea, or anywhere else, he always had a suit, a tie, a green beard, and a briefcase. Why? Well, probably because he spent most of his time at the office. I rarely saw him: just an hour or two in the evening, and on Sundays.

What did my dad do all day? What was he interested in? Who did he talk to on his lunch break? What the hell is a lunch break?

And even when my mum convinced my dad to take me to work with him... well, he worked in a bank, and French-style loan amortisation and interest rates aren't easy for a kid to understand. Or interesting. But I'd love to know what Dad did back then, what was on his mind. Things I could only have understood once I'd grown up.

So, kids, this blog is mainly where you'll find out what Dad was doing all day, shut away in his little backyard shed in front of a computer.

I owe a big part of my life to the internet

The internet changed my life. Really.

I discovered the internet (or, okay, the web, to be precise) in 1997. My first website went live in 1998.

My longest-running friendship started online. I met my other half through an app. Even my choice of where to live was tied to wanting to become a web designer. I wanted to build a life around making things on the internet.

Oh, the web was so damn cool back then. I'm sorry for anyone who discovered it late, but it really was an ocean to explore. Full of curious people, of people making things. Sure, we were mostly tinkerers at first, but you could build something, put it online, and meet other people doing the same.

Then the big companies arrived. Then the people who wanted to make money from it. And little by little, we found ourselves spending more and more time in spaces that belong to someone else.

We post, we talk, we share. But we're in their house.

Technofeudalism.

I've never been okay with that. I even tried working for one of those big companies (probably the subject of a future post). For now, let's just say it didn't feel right. It wasn't for me.

I don't want to get all nostalgic, though. I hate the whole "back in my day..." thing. The internet is still incredible, if only because it lets you talk to anyone. I have friends I talk to every day without seeing them. I work fully remotely. That ability to meet, exchange ideas, and make things together is still there, and it's part of my everyday life.

I just want a little piece of that space to be mine again. Somewhere I can decide what to publish and how, without having to be in someone else's house, without being at the mercy of algorithms, and without worrying that someone will delete it all.

That's another reason this blog exists.

Technology can also help us reclaim some space

None of this means I see technology as the enemy. That would be pretty absurd, given everything I've just said.

Take AI. It's changing our world, and it's changing my life too. But it's a tool: it can help us do things, it can free up our time. We don't have to see it as something purely negative.

I'm dictating these very thoughts to an AI. Then there'll be work to do: add some bits, cut others, put things in order, edit. And I'll probably get help from AI with that part too.

The work of figuring out what I want to say, though, that's something I want to do myself. I'll still spend a good chunk of my time in a text editor, with a nice Markdown file, copying and pasting sentences, words, and ideas around.

That's how I want to use technology. Also to reclaim something that technology itself has helped take away from me along the way.

For me, starting a blog is part of that attempt.

What you can expect

So, as someone who was shaped by the web, who became who they are partly thanks to it, I thought: fuck it, a blog sounds like a good idea.

I'll write about the things I'm interested in and about my life, mostly my working life, because that's the side of me my kids know the least. But there'll be personal stuff too. Maybe not the spicy kind. I already have a few ideas: the times I've burned out, my kids, how I work, what a typical day looks like. AI, obviously, which will probably be the subject of one of the very first posts. And cycling, because sooner or later there's bound to be a cycling post.

I wanted all of this to be written down.

I didn't want to start a podcast. Another white guy with a podcast: no thanks.

And I didn't want to make videos of myself talking to people while cycling.

I wanted to write because I want some mental effort to go into what I publish. To sit with a thought, try to explain it, read it back, and maybe realise I hadn't really understood it myself. Just putting something out there isn't enough for me: I want what comes across to be my thoughts.

Then again, maybe nobody will read it. Who knows.

But at least there'll be a trace. A drop in the ocean. And maybe one day my kids will stop by and find a little bit of me.