Things You Want to Do
Now that you don't have to do the thing — what do you actually want to do? The closing post of the What's Left series.
Blog
There Is No Kung Fu Download
AI can generate perfect Spanish content all day. It cannot acquire Spanish on my behalf. The brain's work turns out to be the irreducible part.
More Famous Than the Pope
GTE spent billions building distribution. Now distribution is free, and the only scarce resource left is attention. This is not obviously good news.
John McCarthy's Mistake
The man who coined 'artificial intelligence' invented the most elegant language ever designed for it. It was the wrong tool — because it was the wrong category.
What You Had to Do
A department of a hundred writers documented mainframe billing programs. Every one of them had something else they'd rather be doing. They knew.
The VAX in My Pocket
My first employer ran Florida's telecom on millions of dollars of mainframes and VAX clusters. My phone outclasses all of it. We never stopped to notice.
They Said My Tesla Was Running on Coal
In 2013 the talking point was coal. Now it's water. The structure of the argument is identical. So is the physics problem with it.
The Consolation of Difficulty
A late friend had two sayings. The first one gets you started. The second one keeps you going. In the age of AI, the second one has gotten more useful, not less.
More Human *Than* Human — That's Our Motto
Blade Runner's replicants, Asimov's Three Laws, the US Constitution, and Constitutional AI are all failing the same edge cases. In real time.
When LinguaMama Is Not for You
Most companies won't tell you when their product isn't the right tool. We will. Honest guidance on who this is built for — and who should go find something else.