His wife was a public school librarian.
She kept the family finances organized.
And she occasionally reminded her husband that kindness did not pay the electricity bill.
He usually laughed.
Then promised to become more sensible.
He rarely did.
Their son spent much of his childhood in the garage.
At eight, he sorted screws and washers into little plastic containers.
At ten, he helped his father clean tools.
At thirteen, he could identify common engine parts faster than some new employees.
But he was more interested in computers.
He liked systems.
Patterns.
The way complicated things worked together.
One afternoon, his father found him sitting beside an old desktop computer pulled from a customer's discarded office equipment.
The machine had been broken for months.
Its screen flickered.
The cooling fan made an unpleasant grinding noise.
Several keys were missing from the keyboard.
The boy had removed the side panel and spread electronic components across the floor.
His father stood in the doorway.
"What happened here?"
The boy looked up.
"I'm fixing it."
His father studied the wires.
"Doesn't look very fixed."
The boy grinned.
"Not yet."
The older man laughed.
Then knelt beside him.
"What's wrong with it?"
The child began explaining.
At first, his father listened politely.
Then the explanation became increasingly technical.
After several minutes, he raised one hand.
"Son."
The boy stopped.
His father smiled.
"I understood the first three words."
They laughed.
Then the older man looked toward the machine.
"You reckon it'll work?"
The boy nodded.
"Eventually."
His father placed one scarred hand against his shoulder.
"Then take your time."
The child returned to the computer.
His father remained beside him.
After a while, the older man said something his son would remember for the rest of his life.
"There's one thing machines can't tell you."
The boy looked up.
"What?"
His father nodded toward the garage.
"Whether the person using them is doing the right thing."
The child frowned.
His father continued.
"A tool can help somebody fix a car. Same tool can help somebody cheat a customer."
The boy considered.
"Depends on the person."
His father smiled.
"Exactly."
Then he stood.
"Now come help me close the shop before your mother thinks I've forgotten what time it is."
The boy laughed.
And followed him downstairs.
Years later, after building his own technology companies and negotiating acquisitions worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the businessman would remember that conversation more clearly than many expensive business lectures.
Technology was not automatically fair because it produced numbers.
Systems were not automatically trustworthy because they displayed information neatly.
And power did not become legitimate simply because someone placed it behind a polished interface.
Every system reflected the decisions of the people who built and operated it.
He learned that first in a garage.