Is Ai The New Fountain of Youth?
What Building Six Apps Taught Me About the Future
By Edward Newbins
The news tells us to be afraid. Layoffs. Artificial intelligence. The economy. Water shortages. The cost of living. Every day there's another reason to believe the best days are behind us.
Maybe.
Or maybe we're standing at the beginning of one of the greatest creative revolutions of our lifetime.
Over the past few weeks, I've built six software applications with Claude. One has grown to more than 11,000 lines of code. Another is an Animation Theater Studio that brings together storytelling, animation, and AI in ways I couldn't have imagined just a few months ago.
Here's the funny part. Nobody hired me to do it. I wasn't trying to become a software engineer. I was simply curious. And somewhere between asking questions, breaking things, fixing them, and watching ideas come to life, I realized something.
At 50+, I feel like a kid again. The kid who loved technology and opportunity...maybe I never stopped being that kid.
I grew up programming on a Commodore 128, back when computers weren't designed to entertain you. You had to make them do something. That fascinated me. I've always been the nerd who wanted to know how things worked. I also loved video games. I used to organize Tecmo Bowl tournaments out of my mom's house.
Eventually she got tired of feeding what seemed like every kid in the neighborhood for free, so I did what any young entrepreneur would do. I started charging a small tournament entry fee to help cover breakfast. One of my friends cooked the food for everyone.
Today, he's a professionally trained chef.
Looking back, it wasn't really about football. It wasn't even about the money. It was about creating an experience people wanted to be part of. Without realizing it, I was learning entrepreneurship before I even knew the word.
I've always looked for opportunities to create something different. From Nintendo to the Dot-Com Boom...that curiosity kept opening doors.
I had the privilege of participating in one of Nintendo's early diversity internship programs, where I got an inside look at one of the companies that inspired millions of gamers, including me.
I also worked at Microsoft. That experience stayed with me long after I left. Years later, I worked as the creative director and film producer in producing content for a Blacks at Microsoft (BAM) Cybersecurity celebration with students from The Breakfast Group. I also became one of the first film producers for Amazon's Black History Celebration via the Black Employee Network (BEN).
There's something full circle about a kid who grew up programming video games on a Commodore 128 eventually working inside Microsoft and Nintendo and now building his own software with an AI tool while sitting at coffee shop tables.
During the dot-com era, I also worked for a company called Globix. Shout out to Mark Bell who was the CEO and Founder of the company. It was a Silicon Valley technology company helping businesses move toward internet-hosted infrastructure years before people commonly called it "the cloud." Globix was, in a lot of ways, a precursor to what Amazon Web Services would become. Long before AWS grew into one of the largest technology platforms in the world, companies like Globix were already imagining what that future could look like.
Over the years, my career expanded into business, finance, data analytics, media production, entrepreneurship, nonprofit work, education and economic development. Looking back now, every chapter was preparing me for this one.
AI Isn't replacing my curiosity. It's amplifying It. One thing that makes me laugh is where all of this is happening.
I'm not locked away in a billion-dollar tech campus. Most days you'll find me coding from coffee shops and restaurants in Columbia City, one of Seattle's most creative neighborhoods. There's something about the energy there. People talking. Baristas calling out drink orders. Music playing. Neighbors catching up. Artists creating.
And there I am, laptop open, coffee nearby, talking to Claude and other Ai tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Gamma and whatever latest one that pops up. One minute I'm debugging code. The next, I'm creating an animation platform or solving a problem I didn't even know I could solve that morning.
The people around me probably think I'm answering emails. They have no idea I'm building products that didn't exist when I walked through the door. I love that. It reminds me that innovation doesn't have to come from Silicon Valley. Sometimes it starts in your neighborhood coffee shop with curiosity, caffeine, and the courage to ask what if.
Don't fear the future. Build It. I know a lot of people are worried and some of those concerns are justified. Artificial intelligence will change jobs. Entire industries will be reshaped. The economy is evolving. Communities are wrestling with challenges that go far beyond technology...they are wrestling with concerns related to housing affordability, climate change and water issues that will define the coming decades.
These are real problems, but every major technological shift has also created extraordinary opportunities. I've lived through the personal computer revolution, the internet revolution, the dot-com boom, cloud computing, social media, streaming, mobile apps, digital content, and now artificial intelligence. Every one of those moments disrupted the marketplace. Every one of them also created people who saw possibility where others saw uncertainty.
Why not us? The future belongs to the curious.
One lesson has become crystal clear...AI isn't replacing human creativity...it's lowering the barrier to creation. You no longer need a massive team to build software, or create a film, or launch a business, or tell your story. You still need imagination. You still need perseverance. You still need to solve real problems...but now...one curious person with a laptop can accomplish things that once required an entire company.
That's incredibly empowering, especially if you've ever thought you were too old, or too late, or that technology had passed you by.
I'm here to tell you it hasn't.
The older I get...the less interested I am in pretending I know everything. I'd rather be the kid. I'd rather experiment. I'd rather play. Because that's where innovation lives. That's where businesses are born. That's where the future is created.
The motto of my company, Motivated Life, is to "Live a Motivated Life." So yes...you'll probably find me in a coffee shop somewhere in Columbia City. Coffee on the table. Claude open on my laptop allowing me to build another app nobody asked me to build. Testing another crazy idea. Learning something new. Not because I have to...because I can't help myself.
The little kid programming on a Commodore 128. The teenager running Tecmo Bowl tournaments. The gamer who dreamed big. The young techie fascinated by Nintendo and the early internet. They're all still here. Only now they have better tools.
Maybe that's the biggest lesson AI has taught me. The future doesn't belong to the people who know everything. It belongs to the people who never stop learning, who never stop playing...who never stop building.
Now...if you'll excuse me...there's a seat in a coffee shop in Columbia City with my name on it. I've got another idea to build. And I have a feeling the kid inside me is about to discover something amazing.
"Live a Motivated Life."
Is AI The Fountain of Youth?
