As the decade changed, hair bands were replaced with grunge bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and the rise of Generation X and our supposed slacker attitude came to be. It was hiding what authors Strauss and Howe identified as the Nomad generation. One that was the loner, the fixer and the quiet builder. We struggled to find purpose and our parents often ignored and neglected us while simultaneously lamenting our lack of direction. During that time in college, flying airplanes became my passion but not my profession. I worked for a bank and found that I still had quite a natural skill with technology, eventually becoming the leader on implementing this cool new tech called a local area network (LAN). Pretty soon I had a fast track career in technology while I finished my college education. I continued to read science fiction, but what really blew my mind was the book “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson. It was during this time that virtual reality technology became available and his futurescape were virtual worlds that became known as what he called “The Metaverse.” I renewed my interest in futures and foresight and revisited Toffler, but began to expand by learning about other ventures like the Global Business Network started by X, who was part of the Shell Oil team that took scenario planning to a whole new level. I used this in my work, as well as horizon scanning, and became really in tune with the cutting edge of technologies and how to anticipate what was coming to benefit my career and the companies I worked for. Little did I know that I was actually becoming a futurist. As my technology skills grew, so did my interest in how to hack into systems and understand their flaws. I became obsessed with what hackers started in the 1970’s and how systems could be used for good and bad. I experienced online communities like bulletin board systems (BBSs) and networked games like “Doom,” and the telecommunications act of 1993 (I know, sounds so dry) allowed for commercial entities to use the Internet for business purposes. While it seemed uneventful at the time, a guy in Switzerland created a way to publish and read large amounts of information and link to other pages through a protocol called HTTP (yeah, that thing in the left of the browser address). At the same time, a researcher in Chicago created a program that allowed people to view this information and make it easy for the non-technical person to use the Internet. This Mosaic Browser eventually became Netscape and its IPO sparked the Internet boom of the 1990’s. I was caught in this boom like many of my fellow Generation X slackers who built the modern day Internet. And so the entrepreneur years began. As my technology skills grew, so did my interest in how to hack into systems and understand their flaws. I became obsessed with what hackers started in the 1970’s and how systems could be used for good and bad. I experienced online communities like bulletin board systems (BBSs) and networked games like “Doom,” and the telecommunications act of 1993 (I know, sounds so dry) allowed for commercial entities to use the Internet for business purposes. While it seemed uneventful at the time, a guy in Switzerland created a way to publish and read large amounts of information and link to other pages through a protocol called HTTP (yeah, that thing in the left of the browser address). At the same time, a researcher in Chicago created a program that allowed people to view this information and make it easy for the non-technical person to use the Internet. This Mosaic Browser eventually became Netscape and its IPO sparked the Internet boom of the 1990’s. I was caught in this boom like many of my fellow Generation X slackers who built the modern day Internet. And so the entrepreneur years began.