Biography
My name is Christopher X. Gerber. I’m a 27 year old living in Vancouver, Canada, and I like to drink green tea. I have interests in many fields: I write, paint, fix, build, listen, lead, write code and analyze numbers, people and myself. I owe success in these areas to patient observation and research, and a strong belief that anything can be accomplished with determination and confidence. I have been referenced as a prodigy, but I believe that humans are far too diverse to be neatly seperated into classes according to intelligence. Everyone is a prodigy, it just depends on your definition.
In 1992 I began to write code with Q-Basic, an early ancestor of the modern programming language Visual Basic. At that time, Bill Gates was marketing his new product, Windows 3.1. I remember working on a DOS program to fool my sisters (who were nine and six years old) into thinking that the computer was semi-conscious; when a command was typed into what appeared to be the command prompt, the “computer” would refuse in hilarious and uncharacteristic ways. By 1993 I was spending summer days in the cool basement of our townhouse unit in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb, dialing local Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) with a modem, keeping myself connected with consecutive one-month trial accounts. An online text-based game titled Crimson MUD motivated me to hunt for internet access, in light of my mother’s refusal to buy access from a provider like most everyone else. My mother was a few years into a divorce at the time, working at the hospital around the clock to feed us and send us to private school – her frugality with money was well justified.
In 1994 my high-school adopted a reading-incentive system. A computer in the English classroom used a database of multiple-choice test questions to verify whether or not a student had read a book. At the time reading was a weakness of mine. Conversely, I was working on a novel since writing came second-nature to me. The following year I formed an agreement with my English teacher whereby I handed in my written work every two weeks for marking instead of reading books. I was told my writing was at a higher level than any of her senior students who were three years older than me. In 1998 I gave my first public speech – the thesis: Grades don’t accurately measure intelligence.
Experiences like these anchored my faith in the road less traveled and in the power of an open and inquisitive approach. Even still I can be skeptical of the norm and put off by mindless conformity. More importantly, I believe that with enough confidence, research, and hard work, every goal can be achieved. I hope you’ll agree with me that possibility is enormous.
In the years following high-school, I struggled to keep my mind active. A year to myself and three semesters in Engineering had me bored and unmotivated. I moved to a quick-paced Programmer/Analyst degree, but was again bored as I aced the modules with minimal effort. I needed to be challenged. I began to study Einstein and his theory of relativity in my spare time, and this finally engaged me. Over the next four years I pursued a degree in Physics, into which I incorporated a large number of electives across many fields to keep my mind feeling fresh and excited.
In the two years following graduation, I continued working as Network Administrator, Programmer, and Research Engineer at Structured Surface Physics, a research laboratory at UBC. In addition to the computer help I offered, I was given a number of experiment-projects to work on: Movement of a Salt Solution using Magnetism; Wireless Power Transfer using Oscillating Magnets; Study of Human Perception of Contrast and Spatial Frequency. In my opinion the most important thing I learned in the lab was how to effectively and efficiently work toward a solution. The winning method involves not only a great sense of direction, but also a great deal of self-awareness. For instance it pays to know when you are frustrated, and how to remedy it.
I am routinely asked whether I will return to school to pursue a Master’s degree or a PhD. Currently my answer is no for two reasons: One, I owe the government a good chunk of change for my two degrees already; and two, I feel that the understanding of oneself is more important than knowledge of science, or philosophy, or mathematics (or any type of empirical knowledge). Some people look to pieces of paper (degrees) to prove to themselves or others that they are qualified to do certain things. Some people look at their bank accounts. I think we really only have to look to ourselves to determine whether we can or can’t do something. Also it doesn’t cost much to figure things out the old fashioned way: experiment.
