> CASCADIA BIOS v95
> POST ............................. OK
> CPU : Salish 686 @ 95 MHz ....... OK
> RAM : 65,536 KB ................. OK
> video: detecting adapter ........ VESA
> mount /dev/cedar ................ OK
> mount /vol/puget-sound .......... OK
> net : inlet uplink ............. OK
> init window manager ............. OK
> spawn taskbar ................... OK
> restore desktop icons ........... OK
> Cascadia OS ready.
Across this work, I keep coming back to the same design problem: the
systems we're entrenched in shape the models we build to navigate the
world, constraining the choices we notice and thus the actions we take. I
work to make those constraints visible enough for people to see where a system ends and their agency begins.
I design career readiness and technology curriculum across robotics,
digital fabrication, immersive media, and applied computing, moving students
from guided exploration into real project work. I also build tools to
rectify systems that feel too brittle or indifferent to how people move
throughout their day.
I am an educator, curriculum designer, and technical builder with a
B.A. in Cognitive Systems from the University of British Columbia, where
my education bridged computer science and cognitive science to study how
cognition can be modeled in machine learning and intelligent systems.
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▤A Means to an End[ cover ]
A Means to an End
Before I had language for systems, I had the problem of limits.▌
── I ──
The summer of my seventh-grade year, my mother offered that she could afford either a cellphone or an internet plan while I stayed home. In my hands sat a Samsung Rant, a week later—a slide-out keyboard, unlimited texting, live TV, and pseudo-WAP webpages on a two-inch screen— and I was ready to conquer my social life.
As for the internet…I found a way to packet-sniff and crack a WEP key for my neighbor's Wi-Fi. Not because I cared about networking or hacking (I actually hated it, my father was a network engineer), but because I needed Wi-Fi to play World of Warcraft and Miniclip on my HP Pavilion.
▌
── II ──
Then I fell in love with smartphones. My first, the HTC Hero, turned tinkering into something closer to obsession.
I found a forum called XDA-Developers and began rooting my Android device, flashed custom ROMs, and taught myself whatever tools were required: IDEs, GIMP, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.
I made themes other people could download. I spent a part time jobs worth of time every week recoloring, texturing, or recreating hundreds of interface files—Not because I primarily loved bootloaders or layer masking—so that I could create real interface looks that either me or others wanted.
(On the side, I had an iPod Touch that I would also jailbreak for custom packages through Cydia. But, I never admitted it because my friends knew me as the iPhone hater.)
── II · themes ──
Some home screens I themed. I cringe. But I also love that I even did it.
A run of home screens I themed, 2012.
The tree-of-apps theme on my HTC One. As I got older, I like to think I started to develop some actual aesthetic taste.
── III ──
The XDA community became a form of education. I was a kid on XDA talking with adults (I know…) across the world through forums, instant messenger, and IRC channels. I begged my dad to take me to a convention called The Big Android BBQ. I ended up with a plethora of Android devices throughout the next five years, mostly HTC. Every new device became another surface to open, modify, and push past what it was supposed to do. At 14 years old, I was even given the highly coveted title of "XDA Developers "Recognized Themer""
Devices I remember owning: HTC: Hero, EVO Shift, EVO 4G, EVO 3D, One M7, Jetstream, Nexus 5, Nexus 7, Note 5 , and Google Pixel.. My last Android phone was in 2020…
The Big Android BBQ, 2012. The closest thing to a tech conference I had at that age: keynotes, the session board, and a lot of inflatable Androids.
── III · devices ──
The lineage: phones I owned, hacked, and a couple I only got to play with.
── IV ──
During high school, I started growing into app development. I built a basic web wrapper for my school district's grade system so students could check grades on mobile. I built a quiz game for an AP US History project. As college grew closer, the teachers, peers, and adult figures around pushed me towards computer science.
StudentConnection: the grade-checker I built so my district's students could see grades on their phones.
Where I built it: Android Studio, the SDK manager, GitHub, Photoshop, and XDA always open.
── V ──
When I got to college, I entered the University of British Columbia with a scholarship and direct acceptance into computer science. I struggled. My heart wasn't in it. Without everyone encouraging that path, I realized I didn't love coding. What I loved was what coding helped me uncover. My passion was not graphic design; It was understanding how we interact with and are affected by user experiences—being able to manipulate them and learning whatever tools I needed to get there.
▌
── VI ──
In 2016, I ended up taking a semester to explore: my identity, what my teenage passions meant. How they were a means to an end. And to what end did it serve now? I am so lucky I found Cognitive Systems. At the time, a very early program that explored intelligent systems, both natural and artificial. It bridged computer science, linguistics, cognitive science, machine learning, and the study of how minds model the world. It gave me language for my impulse.
── VII ──
I am passionate about understanding and deconstructing systems as a means to an end. As a means to make constraints visible enough for people to see where the system ends and their agency begins
Elisha Lucero educator · curriculum designer · technical builder irving, tx