- technology
Computers are made of wood, infinitely customizable, and completely personal. Now everything is a metal rectangle. Can someone in her Los Angeles home help her get back to her old ways?
Photography by Vieran Pavic
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The computer on Keegan McNamara's desk is something I've never seen before. The camera is positioned above a bright, sun-drenched wooden table on the second floor of McNamara's house in Los Angeles. McNamara, tall and wearing yellow jeans and a khaki Carhartt jacket, sat down at the desk and reached out to press the power button. Then he stopped. He forgot something. He reached into his trouser pocket, took out his keys, took out a dollar and stuck it in the cylinder to the right of the 8-inch computer screen. The indicator on the left side of the device will turn red. McNamara then stood up and pressed a locked silver button, the light on the left turned amber, then green, and the computer came to life.
As I said, this is no ordinary computer.
McNamara refers to this device as the "mythical self". It's a wide, tortuous thing that starts with a tear in the skin of your palm and then loosens up gently like a sand dune on a beach. Oh, and made almost entirely of wood. McNamara spent months finding the right maple and walnut textures, slowly gouging them out with hand tools until the rough planks turned into soft waves in the final product. The goal of the Internet was to create a computer that needed the right keyboard, the right palm rest, the right screen, the right internals, and nothing more.
Of course, there is an easier way to build a computer. There are many easy ways. And McNamara's newly released machine can't play YouTube or Fortnite, has no video editing or web browsing apps, and is bigger and heavier than any other computer you'd buy. But for McNamara, this computer was perfect. Close enough, though: from time to time, unnoticed, his fingers traced the nicks and cuts in the tree or along the tiny cracks in the back, where two pieces of wood couldn't meet. But even these drawbacks are part of the problem. Because McNamara doesn't just make desktop PCs. He also tries to prove his point: a computer can actually look like this.
“For me, there is something very cold and dehumanizing in contemporary design,” he says. Take a look at the MacBook, for example. "It's a very well designed rectangle, but it's just a rectangle." It wasn't because he hated MacBooks. He loves it! But why has the world decided that laptops are the only thing visible?
In the world of music, a person who builds and repairs all kinds of instruments is a tinkerer, and McNamara considers himself a "computer tinkerer." The company wanted to be a maker of a new type of computer: maker of products built with quality and precision, not scale. He founded Mythic Computers, a sole company, and began making hand-built computers for anyone who wanted to order one.
For McNamara, building computers is more than just building computers. He answered my questions about instrument design with answers from ancient religious teachings and philosophers. A few minutes after we met, McNamara told me about the concept of "we," the divine spirit taught in Shinto. “These spirits live when done right,” said McNamara, confident that they would never live in a room damaged by electrical equipment. The whole time we were together, he tried to pretend he was a ghost inside the computer. And We think it might happen in Legend I.
This sounds a little ridiculous: a person starting a computer company can only produce two computers a year, and each computer of course costs an enormous amount of money. (Wood alone for Mythic cost McNamara about $600. Wood alone .) After spending two days in McNamara's second-floor workshop, he saw him take turns writing in Mythic I and spitting out blocks of wood. It was only his second computer, the first machine he built for someone else, so I couldn't help but think that he might have found something.
We probably don't need a multi-billion dollar company producing tens of thousands of devices. We may need to register more people individually for this workshop.
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Beautiful and practical
The history of the Mythic Computer begins with a collection of weapons. To be clear, "I'm not a gun lover," says McNamara. But one summer day in 2022, he went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and came across the Pistols and Weapons exhibit, which features thousands of items from gun history from around the world. “It sounds weird, but it really hit me when I was sitting in front of a bunch of very lavishly decorated pistols,” says McNamara. There's something beautiful about combining something that's moderately functional - shooting a weapon, whatever that function is - and thinking that still works makes it incredibly beautiful. "Three, four, five hundred years ago there were people who thought added value was, I don't know, beauty," he said. “I think the right word is beauty. They thought it was beautiful and only added to its usefulness.
McNamara's lamp idea went even further: the combination of craftsmanship and utility, a fully functional and overly beautiful object, just doesn't exist anymore. "And especially not for computers."
This thinking is the meeting point of many things about McNamara. Raised in Colorado, his father was an amateur carpenter, so McNamara appreciated craftsmanship and materials from an early age. Although he was somewhat ashamed of what he had done, he took guitar lessons in college. From a young age, he also loved computers: his first job was creating websites, and he did two internships at Amazon before working as an engineer at a startup. And the more code he wrote, the more he was drawn to grandiose philosophical visions of how computers and software could affect the world. Something similar happened amid the Covid pandemic, when many people suddenly saw life and their environment in a new way.
After a trip to the Met, McNamara began looking everywhere for similar projects. He began researching the auto industry and studying how stock Camrys and CR-Vs could successfully share roads with handcrafted Bugatti bodywork or exquisite Pagani Huayra leather interiors. He became obsessed with the guitars that Gibson and Fender sold and created beautiful instruments in their shop. “And it worked! It's a sustainable lifestyle." Of course not everyone can afford luxury goods and not everyone will. But for McNamara, excess is not the goal. You can see, feel and feel the care and attention that goes into creating something special just right in front of you. McNamara believes this is important and the computing world needs so much more.
Shortly after the Met meeting, McNamara decided to build his own computer. What started as a side project when he freelanced to build a fundraising tech startup became a full-time job in early 2023. He has no plans to start a company or make any announcements: he just wants to see if he can build a device. he asked. An object that is not a metal rectangle. Something that doesn't require a lot of time or endless attention at each stage. This is a computer with a unique and special feel.
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Start from scratch
Most people who build their own computer do so by selecting a series of components: this case, this processor, this RAM, this keyboard. Assembling a computer requires knowledge and skill, but over time it has become easier and more affordable. You can find everything you need with just a few searches on NewWeg or Amazon.
However, McNamara's journey began at the House of Hardwood in West Los Angeles. He went back and forth trying to learn as much as he could about the type of wood he was using, the jargon he wanted to buy, and the tools needed to work it. It's made of walnut and maple, two woods that look good together, cut into pieces large enough for the computer and easy to work with.
Finding the right piece of wood, he began to gradually carve the figure using only hand tools. Power tools are fast, but there's something about the reach and dexterity of shearing wood by hand, one at a time, that connects him even more to the process. On the wall behind him, taped to a handwritten note with orange ribbon, is a quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, which reads: "Man is the most skilled of all animals." McNamara cut out the rough shapes with a Japanese hand saw, worked out the grooves with a hammer and chisel, and used a word scraper and a paper scraper to smooth things out. He used super glue to glue all the pieces together. He had used some of these tools before, but had spent hours watching tutorials on YouTube, learning new tricks and tricks.
Meanwhile, McNamara was studying a new car design. First with rough drawings in notebooks, then with plasticine, he began to assemble something like a modern typewriter with a sports car. In her notebook, she wrote sentences like "one-use computer tool" and "craft computer." “It should look like the Pagani Huayra, but with the simplicity of a platonic form and the elegance of a functional programming software,” he wrote in red alongside the first image.
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Knowing the proper parts of a computer is very easy. Ultimately, McNamara wanted a typewriter: one that could run code, resume fresh sketches, and keep a daily journal. He didn't need something that could play games or run a web browser because that would ruin the ease and peace he wanted. “Are you going to find a crappy way to boot macOS and then remove a bunch of apps and narrow down the options to your needs?” he asked. “Or will you find another system that you can build and expand on?”
The first device he chose was a custom built-in Intel NUC based on a 4.1GHz Core i3 processor. “The easiest option is the Raspberry Pi; they have many contacts open, which simplifies work. But McNamara knew he needed power even for some of the things he wanted his computer to do." When you're doing something fun and interesting, electronics shouldn't get in the way. You want it to look blazing fast. That's why the 8 adds a gigabyte of RAM and 250 gigabytes internal storage, which is more than enough for the simple tasks you'd expect.
He bought an 8-inch high-resolution screen, although it's not that high-end. “If you are not a large enterprise, it is very difficult to get a high-performance display with a high refresh rate,” he said. "I don't even know who did it," he said. "I hope it's the guy working in the garage."
However, finding the right keyboard has become an obsession. He bought circuit boards from KBDfans, sat down on Glorious Pandas for the keycaps, and used two different keycaps to get the look he wanted. But this still didn't suit him, so he unlocked it and painted it by hand. "If the plastic scrub is hard, it won't look damaged. It is a sense of freedom,” said McNamara. "You can buy them worn out, but I believe in myself." He chose a cream-colored lock that reminded him of an old IBM machine. “This is a god-grade mechanical keyboard,” he laughed, but he wasn't even kidding.
For his computer operating system, McNamara chose to use NixOS, a version of Linux that uses the Nix package manager to create a highly modular operating system. NixOS can have many applications, file managers, and interface tools. Or it could be the command line, the way McNamara set up his computer. “I use it as a minimal installation of NixOS,” he says. All he needed was a text editor, so he fired up Emacs and was done.
Lastly, Mythic I runs NixOS for the same reason it's made of wood. “If you cross the line today, it's all over,” McNamara said. There will be something new, and it will turn into bullshit. But if you're doing things that last forever, like editing and reading texts... for something to last forever, build on things that will last forever.
In early 2023, after months of carpentry, software development, and electrical engineering, McNamara sat down in front of a new car, turned the key, and turned the key. The light on the left flashes from red to yellow to green, and the computer powers on. "That was the top ten of Keegan's life," he said. For the first message he typed on his new computer, McNamara typed the echo command on the keyboard: "Echo, hello, Brennie." He filmed the computer's response repeating the line "Hey Brainy."
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When the computer was turned off, McNamara decided to write about it. He did it just to let his friends and acquaintances know that he had been doing it for a few months, but from his posts it is clear that he takes pride in his work. “I was looking for a good computer and couldn't find one, so I built my own,” he posts photos of his new computer on various subreddits. He wrote the same. He also posted a link to his new site mytic.computer which contains articles explaining his process and philosophy.
Overall, reactions to Reddit and Twitter have been very positive. People love the old-school design, the retro-futuristic vibe, and the idea of extending the life of computers. They love this switch. But not everyone sees the world the way McNamara does: think Hacker News, a site focused on developer violence. “Oh my god hipsters again,” wrote one commenter. “For 4 years, the pace has increased.” "False intellectuals abound," said another. "Good thing this computer case update is 25 years old," said another laugh. There are many.
The answer must have come down to McNamara to some extent, even if he attributed it more to his perhaps somewhat pretentious style than the product itself. (Suggestions like "Faustian adaptations to unlimited expansion of power through software and hardware have a disastrous impact on the average personal computer user" probably didn't work for the development team.) "But I believe those things," he says. He says. “Of course computers are ugly and in my opinion they have gone down the design route and become something that is not aesthetically pleasing.” And here he once again reminds me that not everyone wants to agree with him. Bottom Line The aim of this project is to show that not all of us have to have the same thing.
And while everyone said McNamara was downright humble, there were others who immediately picked up on what he was doing, turning Mythic Computer from a summer project to the path McNamara thinks could become his career.
Mastery in size
One who likes the legend is Max Novendstern, who among other things is the co-founder of cryptocurrency startup Worldcoin. He had really dreamed of such a device for a long time. Shortly before McNamara posted on Legend I, Nowendster had tweeted that he wanted basically the same thing. “Give me an ebook with a chatbot and a reminder system and nothing else,” he wrote. “Give me the same typewriter. Get the dopamine tube out of their computer, save the crystal ball.
In fact, Novendstern and McNamara have known each other for a long time: they met a few years ago at Bitcoin Miami and dated from time to time. McNamara said he immediately contacted Novendster when he published Mythic Production and Vision. (Novendster remembered it a little differently when McNamara logged onto the Twitter e-book. That was good.) The two men immediately started talking about what they were doing together. No dopamine tubes, just crystal balls.
В конце концов Новендстерн решил, что ему нужны четыре вещи: хорошая обработка текста для написания длинн ых текстов; встроенный диктофон для быстрой навигации по офису и ведения заметок; Доступ к ChatGPT для исследований и вдохновения; И принтер чеков, чтобы он мог взять с собой списки или предметы, когда закончит. «Вы можете задавать вопросы, как машинистка или писатель, а исследователь ответит на эти вопросы открытым текстом», — говорит Новендстерн. Вы устанавливаете цену, которую они оба отказываются указывать, но думайте о деньгах подержанных автомобилей, а не о деньгах MacBook.
Student Council ге стал известен как Mythic II. 10 ,1 дюйма, 2 ГБ и улучшенный NUC. С чипом i7 4,7 ГГц - для воплощения идей Новендстера.
Оно было закончено в конце июля. Как и в случае с Mythic, на постройку ушло много времени, но постройка не заняла много времени, но с мастерством и внима нием к деталям я поехал из Лос-Анджелеса в район залива and поехал на Novendster в район залива.
Mythic II уже работает над другой комиссией, но я не знаю, смогут ли они найти тот компьютер, который им нужен. В мастерской используются такие же компьютеры, что показывает, что такое возможно. И, возможно, если он работает правильно, это может помочь.
«На локации его могут видеть семь разных людей. Каждому компьютеру нужен определенный процессор, он у них в гараже. У вас есть работа с деревом. Он большой поклонник Сэма Зелуфа, еще одного двадцатилетнего игрока, которого он строит. Конкурировать с Intel или новейшими разработками Apple невозможно. Макнамара «В большинстве случаев современные навыки не нужны, современные навыки не нужны. Компьютер, который может сделать меньше, на самом деле означает больше людей.
Возможно, существует мифическая версия этой истории. У него много идей, которые зачастую неэффективны или очень дороги. - производить продукты того же размера, что и продукт, но не впадать в тренд современных гаджетов.
Photo credit card сследование не планируется. «С деревом, кожей и ручными инструментами это может выглядеть вот так», — говорит он. «Но я не думаю, что ты что-то получаешь с точки зрения психологического веса после того, как это произошло - в конце концов, ты чувствуешь себя более личным». Я чувствую себя хорошо. "... не для всех. но это хорошо не должен быть компьютер
