About

Steven Lohrenz

—— Programmer, Architect, Technologist, Futurist

Hi, I’m Steven and I have been an avid science fiction fan since I was a kid. Reading Heinlein, Asimov, and Verne from my father’s library and feverishly consuming every month’s subscription of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Amazing Stories, and more.

I always had a knack for math and computers and I found myself programming more and more through high school. This passion led me to Bachelor degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from the tiny school on the hill, Montana Tech.

I spent the next 20 years working my way up the ranks, junior developer, senior developer, technical team leader, software architect, integration architect to where I am today an enterprise architect. The company I work for specializes in Salesforce, but that’s most definitely not all of what I do.

I love mentoring people and really that’s the purpose of this blog. Sharing my experience of programming and helping people get started or for those already on the road, help them through some of the pitfalls I may have encountered.

Along the way, I have given a lot of thought to the future – when would we get those flying cars we were promised? Living on the Moon? This led me to start a Master’s degree at the University of Houston in Foresight, which is the study of the future. Much like a historian studies the past from small fragments of what was left behind, futurists glean clues from tiny bits of information to imagine the future.

Alas, finishing the degree wasn’t in the cards for me. I ended up adopting 2 special needs children out of foster care and something had to give. I had to give up the degree.

That hasn’t stopped my curiosity about the future. I have read about and tried my hand at 3D and 4D printing, quantum computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. I’m creating digital art and exploring NFTs and the blockchain. I’ve explored systems and chaos theories. Permaculture and self-sufficiency.

And I think everyone is well aware of how a health crisis can cause drastic changes to human behavior (or not). The future of work – automation and artificial intelligence, and remote work has been accelerated by the pandemic. What old structures used to work, will no longer stand. My life was totally upended with a confluence of BLM (which especially hit home as one of my children is black), heat waves, major fires in the Western US, and the pandemic all hitting at the same time.

Climate change is forcing a reckoning with the old ways. They are still holding on by their fingernails, they won’t go without a fight, but they are already effectively gone as far as the future is concerned. I know we will need to create a new future without the old systems and without the old ways of thinking. We have to be more caring, more self-reliant, and more human. We are all interconnected, let us start acting like it.

Our Mission

Our mission is to create educated, resilient people who can deal with the coming collapse. People who are not caught completely flat-footed when the change comes knocking.

Related Websites

CastinarNotes.com

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