Google's AI Podcast When people talk about computers, they sound like priests reciting a code no one else can read. Everything is hidden under layers—kernels, stacks, caches, quantum foam if you let them talk long enough. It’s impressive, sure, but it builds the wrong mythology. The machine isn’t that mysterious. It’s just the modern mask of a very old impulse: to trap thought in matter. A computer is a physical argument. Someone once said, “if I push this and not that, I can make a pattern appear.” That’s all this has ever been. A chain of “if” and “then” baked into stone, then copper, then silicon. The words have gotten fancier, the voltages smaller, the loops tighter. But the logic hasn’t aged a day. The strange thing about learning computing now is that it’s usually taught upside down. You start with syntax before you ever learn what a state is. You’re handed a glowing screen and told to “write a loop,” as if you already know what repetition feels like to a machine. The fie...