What drives me?

goal

I believe in life it is important to have goals. And I also believe that everyone, although unconsciously, has some. For some, there are goals, such as certain career aspirations, or to have five children at a certain age. For example, I have a good friend who wants to travel all continents until he is 30.

I've decided for myself somehow, and that sounds dreadfully cheesy, world-enhancing, and naive, to leave a positive footprint on this world.
Something that helps humanity as much as possible and that they remember even when I'm no longer there.

For example, almost every person knows Einstein and his accomplishments. Of course I do not want to compare myself here with Einstein and most likely not even so many people will remember me or my actions as with this gentleman. But he and his achievements are a good example or role model.

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corporate mission

Regarding my goal, there are a few companies that go with their mission statements in a similar direction as I would like. The mission statement of a company describes framework conditions under which they want to reach their goals and above all what their actual goal is.

In Google's mission statement can be, for example, the sentence "The goal of Google is to organize the information of the world and make it accessible and usable for all at any time."
The mission statement of Wikipedia goes in a similar direction "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and encourage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or public domain, and effectively and to distribute worldwide...".

Both companies have made it their mission to distribute knowledge. I think that's a good idea.
But I also have to say at the same time that there is one aspect that is neglected.
There are situations where it is not enough to have only this knowledge available. It is also important to know how to use it.

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A small example:

[Scene from the series Big Bang Theory:
Lenard: "Does anyone know how a combustion engine works?"
Group: Unanimous: "Of course!"
Lenard: "Can someone repair a combustion engine?"
Group: *incomprehensible mumble* = Everyone must meekly admit that they can not.]

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It is one thing to understand the function of a thing but another to work with or even repair it.

I want to try to close this gap. Not only to communicate knowledge, but also to make it practically applicable. There are countless cookbooks that explain step by step how to "assemble" food. I would like to transfer this concept to all other areas of life (of course with a penchant for technical matters).

And (now we come back to the world-improving part), I believe that it can casually solve more problems. For example, if you can repair your TV yourself, you will not buy a new one. He or she contributes to environmental protection. Anyone who builds something completely new from existing but useless components saves money. This way technology is also accessible to people who otherwise could not afford it.

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Skills as a tool

Besides, and this is almost my favorite "problem" that could be solved by the way: these newly learned skills are like a tool. These newly acquired skills expand the possibilities of one's own creativity.

Just imagine what sequential inventions have become possible because someone invented the screwdriver. I believe that knowledge and the resulting skills as well as the screwdriver can lead to new inventions that are still unthinkable today.
The more people have as many "tools" as possible available, the more people can let their creativity run wild and invent new inventions.

Of course you can ask, "how? Want to write repair manuals now for everything in the world? “Of course I don't want that. I think it's impossible.
But I also think that if knowledge in one area is practical, then you have trained this, then it is easy to apply these new skills in other areas.

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open source

Open source technology is in my opinion a good example of the above problem but also of the resulting possibilities. The technology is available. The use is not always easy. First of all, it takes time to familiarize yourself and quite often also some prior knowledge. Both can make the operation considerably more difficult or even impossible.

I would like to change this in the future by explaining various open source projects in detail and in small steps.

I hope this site will fill up with many practical "cookbooks for technology" over time.