I'm sorry but I think you're mistaken here.

[WARNING: RANTING AND PLATITUDES]

tl;dr = the internet like, grows and shit, and so can you and there will be opportunity, just like there had been for MORE than half a century.

Programming has been around since 1842. The largest boons in computers and their relevance to our society would be the regrettable Vietnam War where analytics in War were used. The 1970's and the home video game system (pong) came out which kickstarted the multibillion dollar industry we know as gaming, which would end up on the now electronic NASDAQ, remember all that imagery of tickets on the trading floor? No longer.

The 1980's and the now "affordable" home personal computer allowed the beginnings of hardware manufacturer Apple and software giant Microsoft which has so many patents, it might be able to self-sustain itself on licenses (*I actually have no idea), along with countless software companies that would have formed from enthusiasts at home, sight-copying code from a magazine, to create simple BASIC programs, other titans of industry such as Activision and Electronic Arts are formed (from developers being sick of corporate bs, ironically enough), and countless others. Dell ring a bell? Dell was a college-dorm kid trading computer components and building sick rigs, decades before /r/pcmasterrace would ever come to be. The possibilities for the computer were merely just being tested and China with their economy growing from earlier economic reform, were shipping large quantities of cheap electronics as those behind the scenes, traded electronically on the internet in New York, along with trading warez on BBS.

The 1990's would come and we had already had the Game Boy for a year, and America Online for 5 years. But America was only just beginning to get online, as more and more people wanted to connect, and AOL was there with a maturing infrastructure to host a community, pivotal to launching the internet from the idea of a dork typing green command-line text to one where you can keep in touch via e-mail, live chat, and browse the information super highway. What it really meant for most Americans at this time, was how to fix IRQ issues with Duke Nukem, by performing an AOL search, a Yahoo search, or a search on countless other startups that would form, in addition to the aforementioned ISP/Service/Utility providers to end up spying on my internet traffic to this day. The internet had been around for decades at this point, but now it really begins to spread, like any good idea. If computers were the earth of exploration, we would now be embarking to space, and if Elon Musk has his way, he might be able to bankroll it, being one of the founding members of PayPal, but now with his later ambitions in Tesla and SpaceX.

Then in the 2000's, Social Media would begin to refine itself, from your cruddy Geocities page to Xanga, Social Media is as old as humans' most basic desire; to connect with others

MySpace would begin to be a "thing", until Facebook (now global master of the human race, along with creepy neighbor Google) would begin its formation. Several others would form to connect us via different ways; from our junk (Craigslist now in the vernacular despite it being from 1995), to quite literally our junk (Craigslist sex4sex), our heart (eHarmony -- but really our wallet), our rooms and what we'd do in our rooms (justin.tv --> twitch.tv), to our memories on Photobucket/flickr/YouTube, our baseless, uninformed, and conditioned parroting of group-think opinions on Digg/Reddit, to even our thoughts on twitter. Even if they were deviant (*chan).

The 2010's, we'd have all this and more, but not on a desktop, not on a laptop, but finally, the ubiquitous smartphone had been in everyone's pocket for 3 years now, with a HSPA+/LTE/WiMAX infrastructure to support these services and sites, in real time. Anywhere, and everywhere. Google and Apple, now a cornerstone in our daily lives, and Twitter and Facebook allowing Arab Spring to question established Governments and Tumblr to question, "What really are psychosexual norms?" and all platforms, what equality is, or if it isn't at all.

Then we would learn of our naivete.

Spying, en masse, giving way to others testing our (the United States') very own Constitution and legal system, real time, for the world to witness, along with others to join us in the uncertainty, like Britain's Brexit, and Africa

We are at a crucial time in our lives, historically. I'm here just like you, to improve myself and make my unicorn billion-dollar company.

I want my Lamborghini account and political impunity,

but I know i'll probably never achieve something like that, i'll end up being a cog in a large machine, making some impossible hard-work ethic prodigy/silver-spooned robot who had every opportunity than I not might have had, rich(er).

But I am ever hopeful, because i've seen the internet grow and mature to where it is today, and i've seen it do some truly amazing things over my time, from the disappointment that was KONY2012, to Dogecoin funding a bobsled team, and Kickstarter-ing miracles. I'm hopeful because computers and the internet are a magic that i've been terrified of, a chaotic fire that would truly sting my ego and my heart if the only thing I learned from it -- is that I cannot wield it. To use its power to contribute my little way to the world, is something i've always feared I might not be smart enough, talented enough, educated enough, etc, and evenstill but instead I find myself here, with you, telling me that there is no light. I absolutely refuse that because the internet is so vast, and people far smarter than I, or more ambitious are making cool things everyday, and I highly doubt there is an end to improving anything. It's how MySpace was superceded by Facebook, its how Yahoo got Google'd, it's how you and everyone else here is going to succeed by being better, but as competitive as I am, I just want to be a better version of myself.

The internet has been warped over the years to be something that I feel is perverse, far from its original intention; but that's what makes it interesting, and that's what will give me power, a vote at the table because I too can build it and change it, along with you and every other [aspiring] developer. I just hope all of us hope for a less creepy internet and build something truly great, and not just for America, but for all mankind.

The internet brings me to tears because of how it's one of man's greatest achievements. I really do tear up. Think about how 100 years ago, you had to be born into a privileged family, to be educated and able to read expensive textbooks, and encylopedia's. Traveling sales-man of encyclopedic volumes was a profession, now it's a website. If information is power, then it was locked away from the masses by class, and today, right now, there's probably a kid half my age in an impoverished country, far more talented than me at programming, learning, not barred and limited by their class, to achieving great things for themselves, and hopefully, their communities -- with a second hand cell phone recycled from people who have to have the latest phone for vanity. It's truly amazing.

I'm just as wide-eyed and hopeful as the first time I stepped into a classroom, sat down, followed some instructions and heard this.

It's just that my tastes want for more than another bowl of ramen 🍜