Welcome to my Substack.
A little about me: I grew up in a typical suburban town along the Jersey Shore. As a teen, I was drawn to technology, particularly cybersecurity, and often found myself lost in computer-related tinkering while my friends were out on the town. What began as a curiosity and challenge-driven fascination evolved into a full-time career.
You see, when I was younger, it always seemed like I was the last kid to get access to the latest craze. Whether it be flat screen TVs, CD players, or ultimately, computers. Finally, when that Packard Bell made its way into the house when I was around 15, I couldn’t resist learning everything I could about how it operated. This often meant breaking it in some way to my family’s discontent.
Not long after, when the Internet age took off and AOL and Yahoo chat rooms paved the way for the Discord channels we see today, online communities were created, and information could be shared in ways that were previously unavailable. For a curious, slightly rebellious teen, the underground corners of the web were irresistible.
I stumbled across things like the Anarchist Cookbook and hacking forums. I watched in awe as people in chat rooms manipulated others using little tools called "booters." Most of them didn’t work, but the possibility was thrilling. Once, someone tricked me into downloading a file, and seconds later, my CD-ROM tray started opening and closing on its own. That would be the last time I’d allow a bit of social engineering to get the best of me, I thought.
I’d never stop learning. At the time, I didn’t know where this fascination would take me, but I knew it was what I wanted to do with my life. Technology has been a gift to me. It’s provided a stable career and a catalyst for my analytical mind.
Years passed, and then the pandemic hit—a mysterious virus first identified in China began making global headlines, spreading rapidly and reshaping daily life in ways no one could have imagined.
As an introvert, isolation didn’t shake me much. But it did reveal something that had been simmering under the surface: the way technology had quietly reshaped our world—and our minds. The social media algorithms, the endless feeds, the notifications designed to tug at our attention. I’d always known the power in the systems we build. But now it felt different.
I was part of the great escape. I left New Jersey and settled in a small rural town in New York’s Catskill Mountain range. The feeling of disconnect was great. Still, work required me to stay online, and like everyone else, I had bills to pay. But immersing in nature gave a much-needed disconnect from the digital world I was already submerged in.
Living in the Catskills, it seemed fitting to both get some exercise and nature exposure through hiking. That’s when I first heard of John Burroughs—his name etched into the landscape of Slide Mountain’s summit. Later, I found his books in a local shop, and what started as curiosity quickly became a connection. Burroughs, writing in the 19th century, saw what many still miss today: the growing tension between technological progress and our connection to nature.
While the country surged into the Industrial Age, Burroughs chose stillness. He wrote about migrating birds and rustling leaves, about walking as a sacred act. His words weren’t just poetic—they were a warning. He, like Emerson and others of his time, saw how machines might reshape not just our cities, but our very sense of self.
Reading his reflections, I felt an odd kinship. More than a century apart, we’d arrived at the same unease: a world where attention is currency, where presence is rare, and where solitude has been replaced by signal strength. Burroughs didn’t have smartphones to contend with, but his concerns echo louder than ever in a world obsessed with connection yet often devoid of real connection.
As someone who’s spent a career surrounded by technology, I understand the allure. But the further I go, the more I see what Burroughs saw—an urgent need to disconnect, to walk, to look up. Not because nature is nostalgic, but because it's necessary. The true danger isn’t in the tools we build—it’s in forgetting how to be without them.
That’s what this Substack is about: the hidden dangers of the digital age. When we think about cyber threats, most of us picture malware, fraud, phishing emails, scams, or denial-of-service attacks. But there’s another threat—quieter, subtler, and far more personal. The algorithms. These invisible systems curate our information, shaping what we see and how we feel, often feeding off our anxieties and curiosities. They create feedback loops of fear, anger, and misinformation—all while pretending to give us control. Here, we’ll explore technology’s impact on our mental well-being and uncover practical ways to navigate the digital world with greater clarity, calm, and peace of mind.