Just for Fun : The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary by Linus Benedict Torvalds Read Free Book Online Page A

understand the atmosphere is much more convivial in Finland’s lesbian bars.
    Since Finns are loathe to converse face to face, we represent the ideal market for mobile phones. We have taken to the new devices with an enthusiasm unmatched by any other nation. It’s not clear which country actually does claim the most reindeer per capita—the title might go to Norway, come to think of it—but there’s no question which nation on Earth has more cell phones for every man, woman, and child. There’s talk in Finland of having them grafted to the body upon birth.
    And they are used for more purposes than anywhere else.
    Finns routinely send each other text messages, or rely on mobile phones as a mechanism for cheating on high school tests (send a friend the question and wait for his text-message reply). We use the calculator function that few Americans even realize exists on a mobile phone. The obvious next step is for folks to start dialing up the number of the lonely person at the next café table and strike up a cell conversation. The phenomenal success of Nokia notwithstanding, mobile phones have changed Finland like nothing since the introduction—long forgotten—of the sauna itself.
    It’s actually no surprise that mobile phones would find such a warm reception in Finland. The country has a history of being quick and confident in the adoption of technology. For example, unlike practically everywhere else on Earth, Finland is a place where folks routinely pay bills and conduct all their banking electronically—none of this wimpy pseudo-electronic banking that takes place in the United States. There are more Internet nodes per capita in Finland than any other country. Some credit this technosavvy to the strong educational system—Finland has the world’s highest literacy rate, and university tuition is free, which is why the typical student sticks around for six or seven years. Or, in my case, eight years. You can’t help learning something by hanging around a university for such a large chunk of your life. Others say the technological edge got its start with the infrastructure improvements made in the shipping industry as part of war reparations paid to Russia. And others say it has something to do with a population that is (at times, unbearably) homogeneous.

Linus and I are sitting at the diningroom table. We have just returned from a car-racing/batting-cage place. Tove is putting away groceries, Patricia and Daniela are in a tussle over a book I brought for one of them. I brush aside a stuffed penguin and a huge jar of peanut butter, turn on the tape recorder, and ask Linus to talk about his childhood.
    “ Actually, I don’t remember much of my childhood,” he says, in a monotone.
    “ How can that be? It was only a few years ago!”
    “ Ask Tove. I’m lousy at remembering names or faces or what I did, I have to ask her what our phone numbers are. I remember rules and how things are organized, but I can never remember details of things, and I don’t remember the details of my childhood. I don’t remember how things happened or what I was thinking when I was small. ”
    “ Well, did you have friends, for example?”
    “ A few. I never was very social. I’m way, way more social now than I was back then.”
    “ Well, what was it like? I mean, do you remember waking up on a Sunday morning and going somewhere with your sister and your parents?”
    “ My parents were split up by then.”
    “ How old were you when they split up?”
    “ I don’t know. Maybe six. Maybe ten. I don’t remember.”
    “ What about Christmas? Do you remember Christmas?”
    “ Oh, I have some vague memories of getting dressed up and going to my paternal grandfather’s house in Turku. Same thing for Easter. Other than that I don’t remember much.”
    “ What about your first computer?”
    “ That was the famed VIC-20 my maternal grandfather bought.
    It came in a box.”
    “ How big was the box? The size that would hold a