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I spend my days swimming in data streams, charting the trajectory of artificial intelligen... I spend my days swimming in data streams, charting the trajectory of artificial intelligence, and trying to map the future we’re all building, one line of code at a time. My inbox is a constant flood of press releases about quantum leaps and neural networks. So I have to be honest, when an obituary for a 63-year-old man from Richlandtown, Pennsylvania, crossed my screen, it stopped me cold.
It wasn’t a hack. It wasn’t a mistake. It was the life of Brent Robert Hewitt, distilled into a few hundred words. A man who graduated high school in 1980, worked for his father’s paving company, and eventually retired from Balascio Excavating. A man who loved woodworking, gardening, his cars, and above all else, his family.
And as I read it, a thought hit me with the force of a physical impact. This is the kind of breakthrough that reminds me why I got into this field in the first place—not to escape the real world, but to understand it better. In our relentless pursuit of a digital future, are we forgetting the profound, irreplaceable value of the analog past? Brent Hewitt’s life, in its quiet dignity, may hold a more important lesson for our technological age than any venture-backed startup in Silicon Valley.
The Architecture of a Tangible Legacy
We in the tech world are obsessed with legacy. We talk endlessly about our "digital footprint"—which, in simpler terms, is the ghost of data we leave scattered across the internet, a collection of posts, photos, and metadata that we hope will tell our story long after we’re gone. We build platforms designed for infinite scale, for frictionless communication, for a reality mediated by screens.
Brent Hewitt built a different kind of reality. He worked in paving. Paving. It’s one of the most foundational, elemental jobs imaginable. He literally laid the groundwork upon which a community moves. It’s not glamorous. It doesn’t get Series A funding. But it’s profoundly real. It’s the opposite of the weightless, ethereal world of cloud computing. You can stand on the asphalt he laid. You can feel its texture under your feet. His legacy isn't stored on a server in Virginia; it's woven into the very fabric of his town.
His life was a masterclass in the tangible. He enjoyed woodworking and gardening—the act of shaping raw material into something beautiful or coaxing life from the soil. He maintained the cars for his wife and children. This wasn’t just a hobby; it was an act of service, a physical expression of care. Think about that for a second. His love wasn’t just an emoji or a text message; it was the reliable hum of an engine on a cold morning, the sturdiness of a well-made chair, the food grown in his own garden. When the digital artifacts of our lives could be wiped out by a solar flare or a forgotten password, what does it mean to leave a mark you can actually touch?
The Human Network
The obituary speaks of his wife of 37 years, Wendy; his four children; his grandchildren, Nova and Lyrah. It mentions his brother, his brother-in-law, and the community at his church. This was his network. It wasn’t a social network built on algorithms designed to maximize engagement, but a human network built on shared history, mutual support, and unconditional love.
This is the point where the contrast becomes almost painfully sharp. We chase followers, connections, and weak ties across the globe, hoping that a larger network will make us feel less alone. Yet Brent’s life suggests a different model. A life of deep, concentrated connection. It’s a quiet testament to a life spent not chasing ephemeral likes or viral moments but building something real, something you could touch, something that supported the people you loved—and that kind of legacy feels more profound and more permanent than any server farm or cloud archive could ever hope to be.
This isn’t an indictment of technology. It’s a call for re-evaluation. His life is like a historical analogy we’ve forgotten—much like the ancient Roman roads, his work wasn’t the glorious destination, but the essential, unseen infrastructure that made everything else possible. It enabled commerce, connection, and community. Brent Hewitt’s life was his own Roman road, built for the people he loved. Are our meticulously curated online profiles, our endless streams of content, just a pale imitation of the rich, complex, and sometimes messy reality of a life truly lived with others? What if the ultimate metric of a life isn't its reach, but its depth?
The Analog Algorithm for a Life Well Lived
In the end, Brent Hewitt’s obituary is more than a summary of a life; it's a blueprint. It’s an algorithm for meaning in an age that is drowning in information but starving for wisdom. It’s a reminder that the most powerful technologies we will ever possess are our own two hands, and the most valuable network we will ever build is the family and community we nurture. The challenge for us—the builders, the dreamers, the architects of tomorrow—is not to create a world that replaces the one Brent Hewitt knew. It’s to build one that honors it. We need to design tools that help us put down our phones and pick up a hammer, that encourage us to cultivate a garden, and that strengthen the real-world bonds that truly define a human life. That is the code we should all be trying to write.