That was a joy to read.
I have a lot of thoughts on all this. Some are well formed, others aren't. We are living in very disorienting times right now.
What happens when software becomes superabund...
You also talked about realness, @hodlbod - how sweat and love makes something real. Realness is a tricky thing in general, and in cyberspace it's doubly so.
That said, I'm convinced that a combination of proof-of-work and web-of-trust is able to provide some realness (if we want to call it that) in cyberspace. I think this will be true for software too, just like it's true for content now.
People hate slop. At least people with taste do, if I may say so. But AI-generated doesn't equal slop automatically; the missing ingredient is care, as @Zaza beautifully explained a little while ago. It's all about polishing the stone. And it doesn't matter if you use AI for it or not. As long as you care, and you do a thousand iterations with the powertool that is AI, you will be able to create something beautiful, something that was done with lots of love and care. Something real.
Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going with all this, but I love typing on my mechanical keyboard, so here we are.
Oh, one last thing: I am quite convinced that interfaces will go away or become adhoc. That worries me too, because interfaces present a shared language. I'm not sure what happens to society if all that goes away, if every interaction is hyper-personalized. We see that in the wider culture already, where everyone is so deep in their own echo-chambers that shared reality evaporates and thus communication breaks down completely. Not good.
In any case, I remain optimistic. In the best case the clankers will do clanker things, and humans will be free to do more human things. And real stuff will become more important. And being real will become more important too. And whatever it is that makes us human will move to the forefront.
How about that? Yeah. How about that...
That said, I'm convinced that a combination of proof-of-work and web-of-trust is able to provide some realness (if we want to call it that) in cyberspace. I think this will be true for software too, just like it's true for content now.
People hate slop. At least people with taste do, if I may say so. But AI-generated doesn't equal slop automatically; the missing ingredient is care, as @Zaza beautifully explained a little while ago. It's all about polishing the stone. And it doesn't matter if you use AI for it or not. As long as you care, and you do a thousand iterations with the powertool that is AI, you will be able to create something beautiful, something that was done with lots of love and care. Something real.
Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going with all this, but I love typing on my mechanical keyboard, so here we are.
Oh, one last thing: I am quite convinced that interfaces will go away or become adhoc. That worries me too, because interfaces present a shared language. I'm not sure what happens to society if all that goes away, if every interaction is hyper-personalized. We see that in the wider culture already, where everyone is so deep in their own echo-chambers that shared reality evaporates and thus communication breaks down completely. Not good.
In any case, I remain optimistic. In the best case the clankers will do clanker things, and humans will be free to do more human things. And real stuff will become more important. And being real will become more important too. And whatever it is that makes us human will move to the forefront.
How about that? Yeah. How about that...
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