Technologists have a keen ability to push the limits of technology to maximize the difference it can make. We aren’t born this way. However, we all develop the curiosity to tinker with technology long before we make a career out of it.

This journey started for many when they got their first computer. My brother was this way. He learned to program our Atari ST computer and push it to the limits. Surprisingly, this was not my start. I saw our home computer as more of my brother’s thing. Sure, I used it to type papers and play games, but I didn’t tinker with it much.

The mind needs a machine

Early in my childhood, I really struggled with math. I conceptually knew how to do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, but I wasn’t nearly as fast as my peers. My struggle led me to conclude that I wasn’t that good at math, and really wasn’t all that smart in general. For the smart kids, this stuff came easy.

Something amazing happened when I reached junior high school. For math class, they let you use a calculator! Up until that point, doing so was cheating. Calculation was your job, not the machine’s. Now, the teachers figured that you could use a calculator to do the easy stuff, so you can focus on the more abstract work.

This changed absolutely everything for me. I was in remedial math. I started doubling up on math classes so I could catch up. By the time I made it to my senior year, I was acing AP Calculus.

I remember when I bought my TI-85 Graphing Calculator. I was glued to it. It made me feel smart for the first time in my life. I learned absolutely everything about it. I became fluent in the TI-Basic programming language and made efficient use of the 28k of available memory for programs. I even developed my own video games. My peers played with Game Boys. My dad said that the TI-85 is a Game Boy for intellectuals. I brought it with me everywhere.

In 11^th grade, I took a statistics class. I noticed that in each lesson, we learned a new formula, then the homework was to calculate the formula over and over with different variables. I thought this was a waste of time, so I developed programs for each of the formulas. My teacher saw that I was quickly getting the right answers on my tests, but I wasn’t “showing my work.” I modified the programs to display on screen various intermediary calculations, so I could copy the output onto my paper.

The machine needs a mind

After a few years, I hit the limits of what the TI-85 was designed to do, but then I discovered how I could enhance it to do what it wasn’t designed to do. This was the very early days of the text-based internet. An online community of TI-85 enthusiasts and hackers emerged on a forum called TICalc.org. This opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. I found a way to load an alternate shell on the calculator, bypassing the slow TI-basic execution run-time environment, and entering the fast world of assembly programming.

I found a method for tripling the processor clock speed, by desoldering a capacitor from the system board. What was that capacitor for? I don’t know, but 20+ years later, the calculator still runs fine without it. The display on the TI-85 was monochromatic, but I found a way to get greyscale graphics to display on it. I even found a way to get it to play audio with the help of some spare parts from radio shack. I wasn’t just a user, I was a maker.

Circa 1995, downloading apps from the Internet onto my #mobile device before it was cool. @ticalcorg @TICalculators pic.twitter.com/uIgwacU2aP

— Zach Hughes (@mr_zach_hughes) November 9, 2017

The power of this story is the interaction between the machine and the mind. First, the machine came along and unleashed my mind. I went from dumb to smart in a hurry. I was able to leverage a machine to do a task my mind wasn’t able to do well. Then the relationship flipped. I used my mind to enhance the machine. I leveraged the power of the community on the burgeoning Internet to amplify what I could do alone. I pushed the technology well beyond what it was originally intended to do.

This is what it means to be a technologist. I didn’t invent the TI-85. Texas Instruments did that. The machine pushed my mind, then my mind pushed the machine. This is what I do every day at work. I don’t invent brand-new technologies. In enterprise technology, the majority of that work is done by tech companies.

My team of technologists and I bring in technologies to fill our organizational gaps. Then, we unleash our talent on the technologies to make them work together. We enhance, integrate, customize, extend, and hack our way to a valuable outcome that just isn’t on the marketing brochure. Enterprise technology isn’t turnkey. If you treat it that way, you leave half the value on the table.

How did you first learn to be a technologist? Share your story in the comments below.