Aspiration and Inspiration with DIY Crypto and Computing

Not being a miner myself, I knew nothing about the competitive dynamics before I read this article.  

https://qz.com/1160667/the-secret-lives-of-students-who-mine-cryptocurrency-in-their-dorm-rooms/

"Exploiting a crucial competitive advantage and motivated by profit and a  desire to learn the technology, students around the world are launching  cryptocurrency mining operations right from their dorm rooms. In a  typical mining operation, electricity consumption accounts for the  highest fraction of operational costs, which is why the largest bitcoin mines are based in China.  But within Mark’s dorm room, MIT foots the bill. That gives him and  other student miners the ability to earn higher profit margins than most  other individual miners."

The author seems to believe, and is probably right, that the DIY nature of this situation is more important than the immediate wealth or fraud aspects,

"Though dorm room mining may seem trivial, it’s creating a new generation  of cryptocurrency experts. Many miners say their experiences taught  them crucial lessons about the technology,"

which is weirdly resonant with this book I found a couple of days ago in the Little Free Library at HQ Greensboro, about a kid who spent all of his homeschooled high school years teaching himself networking protocols because he wanted to run an Internet Service Provider out of his bedroom closet in Raleigh.  Then when his parents pushed him to go to evangelical Liberty University, he helped build their network and coded their first web pages.  Not because he was training himself to get rich, but because he was passionate about the work.

Jake Gilliam's story is summarized in this 12-minute talk at the Personal Democracy Forum in 2011.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4WKle-GQwk

Again, the self-directed nature of this seems to be important.  I know that I personally learned more statistics from playing Dungeons & Dragons than I did from my one crappy stats class in graduate school.  A couple of recent pieces on the resurgence of D&D, which in my house at least has been inspired almost entirely by Stranger Things.

• https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-uncanny-resurrection-of-dungeons-and-dragons
• https://brightthemag.com/how-dungeons-and-dragons-is-teaching-group-of-students-patience-and-probability-statistics-3b4ea45e7df7

The second is about parents and other adults setting up camps to play, which is one thing that might kill the buzz.  For some of us, the whole point is doing something our parents don't want us to do.