Journey

Every wave I lived through, in five markers. Each one taught me something I carry into AI.

A layered abstract suggesting decades of technology evolution
  1. 1980s-1990s

    Silicon

    When chips were the news. You could see them. You could understand the boundary between hardware and software because the hardware was visible. The mystery of the machine was something you could hold in your hand.

    Visible mystery
  2. 1980s

    Analog computers

    The quiet long dusk of analog computing while the digital wave was being born. Most people skipped this era. I lived through it. It is the bridge between the world that was and the world that is.

    Bridge era
  3. 1995-2001

    The .com era

    When the web invented itself in real time and we invented ourselves alongside it. Everything seemed possible, then everything seemed impossible, then everything just was. The lesson I carry from this era: hype and reality both run on the same track, just at different speeds.

    Reinvention
  4. 2003-2020

    The internet maturing

    After .com, the web became ordinary. Mobile happened. The cloud happened. The platforms became the gravity. This is the era where you got used to AI tools without realizing they were AI -- search, recommendations, translation, autocorrect.

    Becoming ordinary
  5. 2022-now

    AI

    The supersonic jet. It flew by so fast that even people who built the infrastructure of the previous era are watching from the runway. I am writing for the people on that runway. I want to give them the binoculars to see where it went, and the means to catch up.

    Supersonic jet