23

I was born on the 23rd. The 2nd fortnight of the 3rd month.

Alan Turing, born on the 23rd, asked whether machines could think and invented the field that would consume my career. William Shakespeare, whose life both began and ended on the 23rd, proved that language itself is a technology. Both shaped how I think during secondary school, and seeded the interdisciplinary instinct behind everything I build.

Shakespeare's influence wasn't abstract. I wrote my IB Extended Essay in English, did an internal assessment on Romeo and Juliet, and nearly pursued it at university. Computer Science, the other contender, had followed me since childhood. I'd spent hours researching Turing and the philosophical implications of machine intelligence. I chose neither. Settled for economics and management. Then in '23, CS pulled me back anyway.

A single decision changed everything. I took the CS elective over Maths during my first week of university. Without it, I could never have transferred into Computer Science. By the end of the year I had, and completed the first prototype for my career-defining product, brainful, which I've used and iterated on ever since.

I will finish my bachelor's the year I turn 23.

I don't know if the pattern is real. But noticing it shaped every decision after. It gave the product network its finite boundary. There are currently 13 remaining slots.

I find it not hard to believe that somewhere in an alternate reality there's a version of me that pursued English. Completely different experiences, completely different products. Maybe no products at all. And I will never know.

More facts about 23 →
  • —It is the first consecutive-digit prime number.
  • —It is a symbol of human DNA — 23 chromosomes from each parent.
  • —Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859, whose digits sum to 23: 1+8+5+9 = 23.
  • —Michael Jordan wore 23 during his basketball career.
  • —The Birthday Paradox states that in a group of 23 randomly-selected people, there is a greater than 50% probability that two share the same birthday.
  • —The Earth's axial tilt is 23° — the single geometric fact that gives us seasons, climate zones, and the asymmetry of day and night across the year.
  • —The "23 enigma" — the cultural belief, popularised by William S. Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson, that the number 23 appears with unusual frequency at significant moments. Pattern-recognition, or something older.