At our computer club, we talked about it being a revolution.

Host: The warehouse was lit by the faint glow of forgotten monitors, their screens flickering with dying pixels, casting a pale blue light over the dust-filled air. Old circuit boards, motherboards, and coiled cables lay scattered like the fossils of a different kind of age — an age that once believed in liberation through technology.

Outside, rain whispered against cracked windows, and the neon sign across the street blinked erratically — “TECH REVOLUTION,” half-burned out.

Jack sat on a dented metal stool, sleeves rolled, a half-finished coffee beside an open computer tower. His eyes were steady but tired — the kind of tired that comes not from work, but from disillusionment.

Jeeny stood near the far wall, tracing her fingers along a dusty poster of a younger Steve Wozniak, grinning beneath the bold headline: “The Personal Computer Will Set You Free.”

Jeeny: “Can you imagine what it must’ve felt like, Jack? To believe in that kind of future? To think machines would make us freer?”

Jack: (smirking faintly) “Yeah. And now look at us — machines don’t belong to people. People belong to machines. We log in, we submit, we scroll. The revolution happened all right — we just picked the wrong side.”

Host: The rain intensified, the sound merging with the low electric hum of a forgotten server somewhere deep in the building. Jeeny turned, her eyes glinting with the soft reflection of the old screens.

Jeeny: “You make it sound like Wozniak was naive. But his dream wasn’t about ownership — it was about access. He wanted the mind of every person to have a tool as powerful as the institutions that controlled them.”

Jack: “And what happened? The tools became the new institutions. The promise of freedom turned into dependency. We were supposed to escape the corporations — now they live in our pockets.”

Host: The light from an old monitor flickered across Jack’s face, half-shadow, half-glow, his grey eyes sharp with quiet irony.

Jack: “They said computers would ‘free’ us. But now every choice we make — what we read, buy, love, vote for — runs through their algorithms. Freedom’s just another service now. Subscription-based.”

Jeeny: (gently) “You’re being cruel, not honest. You forget what that revolution did give us — voices. Artists who could publish without permission. Activists who could speak across oceans. Students in remote villages learning from the same material as Harvard kids. Isn’t that freedom?”

Jack: “It was — for a while. But every open gate eventually gets fenced. You think YouTube, social media, open forums — they’re free? They’re marketplaces now. The digital commons got privatized faster than the land did after the Industrial Revolution.”

Host: The wind howled outside, rattling the metal doors. A faint blue spark jumped from an old circuit on the table, briefly lighting Jack’s hand. He didn’t flinch. Jeeny watched, her expression tender but unyielding.

Jeeny: “So you think the revolution failed.”

Jack: “It didn’t fail — it evolved. Into control. Into addiction. Into comfort disguised as connection. Wozniak thought we’d use computers to break free from systems — but all we did was build prettier cages.”

Host: His voice was low, almost reverent, as if mourning something sacred. The rain softened, and the air filled with the faint mechanical sigh of cooling metal.

Jeeny: “You talk like freedom is impossible. But maybe the revolution never ended. Maybe it’s just... quieter now. Inside people. In the way they use the system against itself. The hacker who exposes corruption. The teacher who gives away lessons for free online. The coder who builds tools for justice.”

Jack: “And for every one of them, there’s a thousand companies harvesting their work, their data, their lives. You can’t out-hack the architecture of profit, Jeeny. The revolution died the moment someone realized information was more valuable than oil.”

Host: A silence fell — heavy, human. Jeeny stepped closer to him, the old poster still in her hand. The ink had faded, but the smile on Wozniak’s face was still bright, almost innocent.

Jeeny: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was naive. But isn’t that what revolutions are built on — naivety? The belief that the world could be better, even when it never has been?”

Jack: “Belief without realism is a hallucination. Wozniak and Jobs started out talking about freedom — and ended up building the empire they wanted to overthrow.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “Empires always start as ideas. But some ideas outlive the empires that betray them.”

Host: Her words landed softly, like the slow drop of rain returning after a pause. Jack leaned back, his hand brushing over the computer’s open circuitry, wires like veins running into the metal heart.

Jack: “You think there’s still meaning left in this?”

Jeeny: “I think meaning is what we put back into it. The machine isn’t the revolution — we are. It’s still ours, if we choose to use it that way.”

Jack: “You sound like you still believe in Wozniak’s dream.”

Jeeny: “I believe in its soul — not its outcome. The dream that knowledge should be shared, that power can be distributed. That connection can heal as much as it corrupts.”

Host: The old clock on the wall ticked faintly, marking the slow rhythm of thought. Jack looked toward the glowing screens, their faint blue light reflecting off the puddles on the floor — like artificial constellations scattered in shadow.

Jack: “You think the Internet can still save us?”

Jeeny: “No. But I think we can save ourselves through it — if we remember why it was built. It wasn’t meant to sell things, Jack. It was meant to connect souls.”

Jack: (half-smiling) “And yet here we are — talking in the ruins of that dream.”

Jeeny: “Ruins are where revolutions begin.”

Host: The light shifted as the rain cleared, a dull silver moonlight spilling through the broken glass above them. It illuminated the scattered hardware, the worn posters, and finally their faces — both tired, but alight with a quiet recognition.

Jack reached forward, brushing dust off a single keyboard, the keys yellowed, letters faded. He pressed one — the screen flared to life, flooding the room with blue-white light.

For a moment, both of them were reflected there — two faces, side by side, framed by the glow of something once called progress.

Jack: “You know, maybe Wozniak was right in a way. The revolution did happen. Computers did belong to everyone. The tragedy is — no one realized that ‘everyone’ included the powerful too.”

Jeeny: (softly) “Then maybe the next revolution isn’t about technology at all. Maybe it’s about remembering who we are when the machines are off.”

Host: A stillness fell — not defeat, but understanding. The hum of the screens became almost melodic, the sound of electricity dreaming. Outside, the storm had passed; the city lights shimmered on wet asphalt like a map of new possibilities.

Jeeny set the old poster down beside the glowing screen. The young Wozniak smiled up at them through the decades, his eyes still full of that impossible faith.

Jack and Jeeny stood there, framed in the electric light — human outlines in a world of code — and for a moment, it felt as if the revolution was still alive, quietly, within them.

Host: And as the last drops of rain slid down the glass, the warehouse glowed — a cathedral of circuits, a graveyard of ideals, and yet, somehow, a cradle of hope. For even in a world ruled by machines, the oldest revolution remained the same:

The will to remember that power begins — and ends — with the human heart.