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When we are growing up, its not possible for us to understand the world completely. The way we interact with the real world is like making a 'scale model' inside our minds.
as we learn to understand how things interact in the real world, we are able to use the concepts we have learned to predict what will happen, so we can plan what we want to do next, before we try it.
The problem with fiction (TV, movies, cartoons, video games) is that the dont contribute to our internal mental model of the world - we dont know how much of the fiction is real, or which parts could be real if enough time and research is spent on it. Fiction leaves you feeling empty, wishing for things that are not real, things that may never be real, with no starting point or direction.
By contrast, if you read science and technology history, if you read biographies, then you are learning useful information about realiity. When I read about the Wright brothers, taking on the other (government funded) inventors of the time, and beating them to the prize
when I read about Ken Olsen, taking on IBM head-on, to create Digital Equipment Corporation
it boggles the mind to see what people have REALLY done
and it leaves your mind open to the endless possibilities - not based on the fantasy of movies or games or fiction - but on what can really be done.
That is usefull information - that reinforces our mental model of the world - we can put little check marks next to things that these people have proven: "this CAN be done!" That is pure inspiration.
Get out there and fill your mind with real experience. Your own real experience, and those of others.
Then you will hold onto that mind of a child - when you walk into a machine shop, and look at the tools, and catch that smell of cutting oil in the air, and sense that you could build just about anything here
or you sit down with a bareboard computer, and a SW compiler, and sense that there is no limit to what you can program
or you sit at the helm of a sailboat up in drydock, close your eyes and feel the wind in your face, and realize that, once you choose your destination, you can go anywhere you want to.
that is the mind of a child that we must never lose - the REAL knowledge that the possibilities in life are unlimited.
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