Oct 29

About Me

English English, Misc. Add Comment (3)

I suppose it’s about time I wrote a little bit about myself here. I’ve just signed up for the course Open Source/Free Software: Philosophy and Theory at Göteborg university, department of Informatics and our first assignment is to write a little bit about ourselves so I figure I might as well write something that fits here as well.

I was born in 1976, went to school, played some football, table tennis and heavy metal. My parents got their first computer in the eighties, I guess. It was an Amstrad PC running DOS. I was not that impressed. My friends had Commodores and there were far more games available for that platform. Some time in the early nineties my father got access to the internet. Again, I was not that impressed by the early web (which, sadly, was the only part of the net I found) in black and white on a Powerbook with Netscape 1. I have fond memories of the early OLGA, however.

In 1995 I started my “career” at GU by studying English. In 1996, I spent the spring term studying English at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. Since then, I’ve been studying here in Gothenburg. So far, I’ve managed to take various courses in English, Literature, Law (my main subject), Political Science and Informatics.

When I returned from Brighton, I suddenly had my own computer (a 486 which was already old by then) and my parents (with whom I lived) got a dial-up internet connection. Around this time, I started “surfing” the web, I discovered Usenet and, like everyone else, I made some pointless homepages (which, thankfully, the archive seems to have missed).

Then, around the time of Red Hat Linux 5, I heard that open source was some new cool thing to check out. Being somewhat unsatisfied with Microsoft Windows 95, I jumped at the chance to try something new. I managed to install Red Hat Linux and I have been dual booting ever since. Around Red Hat 7.something, I felt that GNU/Linux was good enough to be my main OS. I still have Windows installed but I rarely use it.

Throughout this process, I started hearing more and more about “open source” and “free software”. I think Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture speech was what really won me over. I remember sitting in my bed, very late, with a laptop and a pair of headphones listening to that speech. It all made sense! Here was someone who could explain a lot of things that I had always felt, but not really understood or been able to express.

Since then, I’ve read quite a bit about these things. Some of the things I’ve read are listed on All Consuming.

• Books I’m reading now
• Books I’ve read
• Books I’ve read parts of
• Books I plan to read

Well, that’s about it for now. Obviously there is a lot more to say (like something not computer related . . .). I will probably update this page some time.

Oh, by the way, my e-mail address is kj at this domain (without the www part). I have a GnuPG key that you can use to encrypt mail to me.

Photo copyright © 2004 Karin Jonsson, not covered by CC-license (yet?)