Tag: technology

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Authors Books History

The Devil’s Rope

We often mistake simplicity for innocence. When we look at a technological innovation, we tend to judge its weight by its complexity—the microchip, the steam engine, the nuclear reactor. But sometimes, history turns on the axis of something far more rudimentary. Sometimes, the world changes not with a bang, but with a sharp, metallic scratch.

I was recently reading Cattle Kingdom by Christopher Knowlton, and I stopped cold at a passage regarding the invention of barbed wire. It’s an object we pass by on highways or stumble over in overgrown fields without a second thought. Yet, Knowlton writes:

“None was more significant than the creation of barbed wire, which literally reshaped the landscape and set the stage for the era’s eventual destruction—at great personal cost to so many of its key players.”

It is a profound observation. We tend to romanticize the American West as a geography of endless horizons—a place defined by what it didn’t have: fences, borders, limits. It was the Open Range. But that openness was fragile. It existed only as long as the technology to close it was absent.

When Joseph Glidden and others patented their variations of “The Devil’s Rope” in the 1870s, they weren’t just selling steel fencing; they were selling a new concept of ownership. Before wire, a man owned what he could patrol. After wire, a man owned what he could enclose.

The quote strikes a melancholic chord because it highlights a paradox of human progress: the tool created to maximize the land ended up destroying the culture that relied on it. The cowboys, the cattle barons, and the drifters who defined the era were undone by the very efficiency they sought. The wire made the cattle industry profitable on a massive scale, but it also ended the cowboy’s way of life. It stopped the long drives. It turned the cowboy from a navigator of the plains into a gatekeeper.

And, as Knowlton notes, the “personal cost” was staggering. This reshaping of the landscape wasn’t just aesthetic; it was violent. The wire cut off migration routes for bison and the Indigenous tribes who followed them. It sparked the fence-cutting wars, neighbor turning against neighbor in the dark of night, snapping tension wires that represented their livelihood or their imprisonment, depending on which side of the post they stood.

There is a lesson here for us today, far removed from the dusty plains. We are constantly inventing our own versions of barbed wire—digital boundaries, algorithmic silos, tools designed to corral information or efficiency. We build these structures to create order, to claim our stake, and to protect what is ours. But every time we draw a line, we must ask: what era are we destroying? What open range are we closing off forever?

The landscape is always being reshaped. The question is whether we are building fences that protect us, or cages that trap us in.

Categories
Living Mathematics

The Curve That Blinds Us

There is a fundamental mismatch between the hardware in our heads and the software of the modern world. We are linear creatures living in an exponential age. We can be stunned by exponential growth.

Our ancestors evolved in a world where inputs matched outputs. If you walked for a day, you covered a specific distance. If you walked for two days, you covered twice that distance. If you gathered firewood for an hour, you had a pile; for two hours, you had a bigger pile. Survival depended on the ability to predict the path of a spear or the changing of seasons—linear, predictable progressions.

But nature and technology often behave differently. They follow a curve that our intuition simply cannot map.

If a lily pad doubles in size every day and covers the entire pond on the 30th day, on which day does it cover half the pond? Our linear intuition wants to say the 15th day. But the answer, of course, is the 29th day.

For twenty-nine days, the pond looks mostly empty. The growth is happening, but it feels deceptively slow. We look at the water on day 20, or even day 25, and think, “Nothing is happening here. This is manageable.” We mistake the early flatness of an exponential curve for a lack of progress.

This is the “deception phase” of exponential growth. It is where dreams die because the results haven’t shown up yet. It is where we ignore a virus because the case numbers seem low. It is where we dismiss a new technology because the early versions are clumsy and comical.

Ernest Hemingway captured this feeling perfectly in The Sun Also Rises when a character is asked how he went bankrupt. His answer:

“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

That is the essence of the exponential. The “gradually” is the long, flat lead-up where we feel safe. The “suddenly” is the vertical wall that appears overnight.

The tragedy is not that we fail to do the math—we can all multiply by two. The tragedy is that we fail to feel the math. We judge the future by looking in the rearview mirror, projecting a straight line from yesterday into tomorrow. But when the road curves upward toward the sky, looking backward is the fastest way to crash.

To navigate this world, we must learn to distrust our gut when it says “nothing is changing.” We have to look for the compounding mechanisms beneath the surface. We have to respect the 29th day.

Categories
AI

The Second Fire: From Finding to Forming

There is a specific kind of vertigo that comes with a paradigm shift. It’s the feeling of standing on the edge of a map that has just been unrolled to reveal twice as much territory as you thought existed. Lately, as I navigate the vast, generative landscape of AI, that old vertigo has returned. It’s a hauntingly familiar resonance, a structural echo of the late nineties and early 2000s when we first encountered the Google search bar.

Back then, the world was a series of closed doors. Information was siloed in physical libraries, expensive encyclopedias, or the unreliable oral histories of our social circles. Then came that clean, white interface with a single blinking cursor. Suddenly, the friction of “not knowing” began to evaporate. We weren’t just browsing the web; we were suddenly endowed with a collective memory. It felt like a superpower—the ability to summon any fact from the digital ether in milliseconds.

“Google is not just a search engine; it is a way of life. It is the way we find out who we are, where we are going, and what we are doing.”

Today, the sensation is different in texture but identical in weight. If Google gave us the power to find, AI is giving us the power to form.

The “Aha!” moment of 2026 isn’t about locating a PDF or a Wikipedia entry; it’s the realization that the distance between a thought and its realization has shrunk to almost nothing. When I prompt a model to synthesize a complex theory or visualize a dream, I feel that same electric jolt I felt twenty years ago when I realized I’d never have to wonder about a trivia fact ever again.

But there is a philosophical weight to this new “awesome.” With Google, the challenge was discernment—filtering the flood of information to find the truth. With AI, the challenge is intent. When the “how” becomes effortless, the “why” becomes the only thing that matters. We are moving from the era of the Librarian to the era of the Architect.

We are once again holding a new kind of fire. It’s warm, it’s brilliant, and just like the first time we saw that search bar, we know that the world we lived in yesterday is gone, replaced by a version where our reach finally matches our imagination.

Categories
Living Television

The Drift of the Vertical Hold

There is a specific kind of frustration reserved for things that almost work.

In the 1950s, television wasn’t the seamless, high-definition portal we know today. It was a temperamental guest in the living room, prone to static, ghosts, and the dreaded vertical roll. When the “vertical hold” failed, the image would begin to slide—first slowly, then into a dizzying, rhythmic tumble.

“It used to drive my Dad crazy when the screen would start rolling and even have to get up out of his chair and adjust the vertical hold. It would seem to hold for a few minutes and then it would start rolling again. It drove him nuts.”

I remember my Dad in those moments. The rolling screen didn’t just disrupt the program; it seemed to pull at his very patience. It was one of the rare times we might hear him mutter a swear word. He would have to leave the comfort of his chair to fiddle with the dial. He’d tweak it with surgical precision until the picture locked into place. He would sit back down, satisfied for a moment, only to see the image begin its slow, inevitable upward crawl once again.

It was a battle against the “drift.”

We don’t have vertical hold dials anymore. Our screens are perfect, locked in digital amber. Yet, I find that the feeling of the vertical hold remains a central part of the human condition. We spend our lives trying to “lock in” our circumstances—our careers, our relationships, our sense of self. We get up, we make the adjustment, we sit back down, and for a few minutes, the picture of our life looks exactly how it’s supposed to.

But life, by its nature, has a tendency to drift.

The rolling screen was a reminder that the transmission was fragile. Perhaps my Dad’s frustration wasn’t just about missing a few minutes of a show, but about the realization that he couldn’t force the world to stay still. We are all, in some way, standing behind the television set of our own lives, fingers on the dial, trying to keep the image from sliding into the static.

There is a quiet philosophy in that 1950s living room: the hold is never permanent. The beauty isn’t in a perfectly locked picture that lasts forever, but in the willingness to get out of the chair and try to find the focus again, over and over.

Categories
AI Robotics

Breaking the Glass: When Intelligence enters the Physical World

For the last forty years, our relationship with digital intelligence has been trapped behind glass. From the beige box of the personal computer to the sleek slab of the iPhone, we have accessed information through a window. We stare at intelligence; it stares back, passive and disembodied. We ask it questions, and it flashes text on a screen. But it has no hands. It has no agency. It cannot pour a glass of water or comfort a child.

As Phil Beisel astutely notes, we are standing on the precipice of a profound phase shift:

“Optimus marks the moment intelligence leaves the screen and enters the physical world at scale.”

This isn’t just about a “better robot.” It is the convergence of three exponential curves crashing into one another: AI software capability, custom silicon efficiency, and electromechanical dexterity. When you multiply these factors, you don’t just get a machine; you get a new category of being. We are moving from “compressed book learning”—the LLMs that can write poetry but can’t lift a pencil—to embodied intelligence that understands physics, gravity, and fragility.

The Pluribus Moment

The philosophical implication of this transition is staggering. We are building a “Pluribus” entity—a hive mind where individual learning becomes collective capability instantly.

In the human world, if I learn to play the violin, you do not. I must teach you, and you must struggle for years to master it. In the world of Optimus, if one unit learns to solder a circuit or perform a specific surgery, the entire fleet learns it overnight. The friction of skill transfer drops to zero.

The End of Scarcity

Elon Musk calls this the “infinite money glitch,” a sterile economic term for what is actually a humanitarian revolution: the decoupling of labor from human time. If the machine can replicate human movement and action 24/7, the cost of labor effectively trends toward zero. We often fear this as “replacement,” but looked at through a lens of abundance, it is the collapse of scarcity.

We are watching the birth of a world where the physical limitations that have defined the human condition—exhaustion, injury, the slow grind of mastering a craft—are solved by a proxy that we built. Intelligence is no longer a ghost in the machine; it is the machine itself, walking among us, ready to work.

Categories
AI History Living

The Echo of the Roar

It is a strange sensation to look back exactly one century and see our own reflection staring back at us, sepia-toned but unmistakably familiar. We often think of the “Roaring Twenties” as a stylistic era—flapper dresses, Art Deco skyscrapers, and jazz. But beneath the aesthetic was a seismic technological shift that mirrors our current moment with an almost eerie precision.

In the 1920s, the world was shrinking. The radio was the “Great Disrupter” of the day. For the first time in human history, a voice could travel instantly from a studio in Pittsburgh to a farm in Nebraska. It was the democratization of information, a sudden collapse of distance that left society both thrilled and anxious.

“The radio brought the world into the living room; the algorithm brings the universe into our pockets.”

Today, we stand in the wash of a similar wave. If the radio brought the world into the living room, the internet—and specifically the generative AI of this decade—has brought the collective consciousness of humanity into our pockets.

The parallels in infrastructure are just as striking. One hundred years ago, the internal combustion engine was reshaping the physical landscape. The horse was yielding to the Model T; mud paths were being paved into highways. The very geography of how we lived was being rewritten by the automobile. In the 2020s, the “highway” is digital, built on cloud infrastructure and fiber optics, and the vehicle isn’t a Ford, but an algorithm. We are transitioning from physical labor to cognitive automation just as they transitioned from animal labor to mechanical muscle.

The Texture of Time

There is a specific texture to this kind of time. It is a mix of vertigo and acceleration. In 1925, the cultural critic might have worried that the “machine age” was stripping away our humanity, turning men into cogs on an assembly line. In 2025, we worry that the “algorithmic age” is stripping away our agency, turning creativity into a prompt.

But here is the insight that offers me comfort: The 1920s were chaotic, yes, but they were also a crucible of immense creativity. The pressure of that technological change forged modernism in literature, new forms of architecture, and entirely new ways of understanding the universe (quantum mechanics began finding its footing then).

We are not just passive observers of a repeating cycle. We are the navigators of the rhyme. The technology changes—from vacuum tubes to neural networks—but the human task remains the same: to find the signal in the static. To ensure that as the machines get faster, our souls do not merely get cheaper. We must decide, just as they had to a century ago, whether we will be consumed by the roar, or if we will learn to conduct the music.

Categories
AI

Research Prompts

I recently came across a prompt in a post on X which has proven to be quite useful in brainstorming.

Here’s the prompt, tailored in this example to research the area of AI super intelligence:

You are a professional ghostwriter. Generate 15 high-signal content ideas on how AI labs will reach artificial super intelligence.

For each idea:
- Give me a hook line (<= 15 words, curiosity-driven)
- Outline the structure in 3 parts (hook, point, action)
- Include an example or analogy that will resonate with an audience of college graduates. 

Make them practical, non-generic, and designed to spark discussion.

To see how it works, just copy it and put it into your favorite large language model. I think you’ll be surprised and pleased with what results you obtain.

After the first pass, you can try this next:

Pick the best one and draft it.

You’ll get back a draft article about the model’s choice for the best among the 15 it first produced.

You can then steer the model using a prompt like this:

Tune the draft for the vc/tech founder voice. Also speculate that Google is most likely the winner.

It’s fun to see how the article evolves further with that voice and more speculation about the possible winner.

You can then ask the model to redraft it further:

Sketch two spicy counterarguments to the main thesis.

And so on. It’s fun to do a deep dive on a topic using this approach. The wide range of the first fifteen results narrows and deepens as you ask the model to refine the draft it has produced.

I’ve lost track of time exploring a topic of interest to me as I got back and forth with the model evolving my understanding. Some models will even assist you in that process by suggesting next steps along the way.

Let me know of your experiences using this kind of approach!

Categories
AI

Product Ideas

I started asking some of our AI models for their best thinking on what innovative new products might come about from the new collaboration of OpenAI and Jony Ive’s io. I’m using this prompt:

Come up with 20 innovative and smart product ideas for a hardware product designed by the merger of OpenAI and Jony Ive’s io.

Here’s the first one – from Claude Sonnet 4 (released earlier this morning):

20 Innovative Hardware Product Ideas: OpenAI × Jony Ive Merger

Here are 20 innovative hardware product concepts that would embody the merger of OpenAI’s AI capabilities with Jony Ive’s design philosophy:

Personal AI Companions

1. Neural Mirror

A seamless wall-mounted display that serves as your personal AI assistant, reflecting your schedule, health metrics, and thoughts back to you through subtle visual cues and natural conversation.

2. Whisper Stone

A smooth, palm-sized device that acts as your personal AI confidant, designed for private conversations and emotional support with haptic feedback that mimics human touch.

3. Ambient Lens

Smart glasses with nearly invisible frames that overlay contextual AI assistance directly into your field of vision without disrupting natural sight.

Creative Tools

4. Ideation Sphere

A levitating orb that captures your voice, gestures, and sketches to help brainstorm and visualize ideas in 3D holographic projections.

5. Composer’s Baton

An elegant conducting wand that translates your gestures into AI-generated music, allowing anyone to compose symphonies through natural movement.

6. Story Loom

A fabric-textured tablet that weaves narratives as you write, with the surface physically changing texture to match the emotional tone of your writing.

Home Intelligence

7. Hearth Hub

A minimalist fireplace-inspired device that becomes the emotional and functional center of your home, managing everything through natural conversation and warm, ambient light.

8. Garden Mind

Sculptural planters embedded with AI that monitor and communicate the needs of your plants while teaching you about botany through gentle, organic interfaces.

9. Kitchen Oracle

A seamless countertop surface that recognizes ingredients and guides cooking through projected instructions and temperature control.

Health & Wellness

10. Pulse Ring

An ultra-thin ring that continuously monitors your health and provides AI-powered insights through subtle vibrations and a companion app with crystalline data visualization.

11. Sleep Cocoon

A bedside device that creates optimal sleep environments while learning your patterns, featuring a breathing light rhythm that synchronizes with your rest cycles.

12. Meditation Stone

A smooth, weighted object that guides meditation sessions through gentle warmth, subtle vibrations, and AI-generated soundscapes.

Communication

13. Translation Pendant

A jewelry-like device that provides real-time language translation through bone conduction, designed as an elegant accessory.

14. Memory Vessel

A beautiful container that captures and preserves family stories, voices, and memories, allowing future generations to have conversations with AI recreations of loved ones.

15. Empathy Bridge

Paired devices for long-distance relationships that share ambient presence, heartbeat, and emotional state through synchronized light and warmth.

Learning & Development

16. Wisdom Cube

A geometric puzzle toy that adapts its challenges to teach everything from math to philosophy, physically reconfiguring itself as you learn.

17. Mentor’s Lens

A desktop magnifying glass that identifies objects and provides rich educational context, turning any surface into a learning laboratory.

Professional Tools

18. Decision Crystal

A multifaceted desktop object that helps analyze complex decisions by visualizing data patterns through light and form while providing AI-powered insights.

19. Presentation Wand

A minimalist pointer that transforms any surface into an interactive presentation space, responding to natural gestures and voice commands.

Accessibility & Care

20. Guardian Angel

A discreet wearable device for elderly or vulnerable individuals that provides AI companionship, health monitoring, and emergency assistance through elegant, non-stigmatizing design.

Design Philosophy

Each concept emphasizes the marriage of cutting-edge AI functionality with Ive’s signature approach:

  • Radical simplicity
  • Premium materials
  • Intuitive interaction
  • Design that feels both futuristic and timeless

The products focus on enhancing human capability rather than replacing human connection, with interfaces that feel magical yet completely natural to use.

Categories
AI Audio ChatGPT Computers iPhone Tools

Voice is not what I need…

It’s been a busy week of announcements in tech land what with Microsoft Build, Google I/O, and yesterday’s tease of an announcement by OpenAI and it’s acquisition of Jonny Ive’s company “io”.

Industry pundits are all a Twitter speculating about what kind of device Ive and his team might make to deliver an amazing AI experience to users. Ive seems to regret how “his” iPhone has created such an addiction to screens and seems to want to repent by bringing us something new and “better”. For more, see this tweet: https://x.com/mingchikuo/status/1925543472993321066?s=46

I have one simple request: don’t make voice the primary interface to some new magical device.

I’ve had an iPhone with some serious voice input capabilities for years and the reality is that I rarely use voice. Perhaps if my life was just “bowling alone” I’d find it natural to just talk out loud to a piece of technology. But I’m mostly around other people all day and out of respect for them I simply prefer being silent.

Until some new magical device can capture my thoughts without either voice or keyboard input, I will remain a skeptic. Skeptics like me will reduce the market size opportunity for any such new device. Just sayin’…

Categories
Stuff

Humanoid Robots

A couple of YouTubers I enjoy watching are very upbeat about the prospects for humanoid robots in our future. They talk of massive markets ahead for these creatures. Elon talks about Tesla becoming the biggest revenue company on the planet based on sales of Tesla’s Optimus robots.

Count me skeptical. I’m a big believer in purpose built robots for specific tasks. A couple of years ago I spent a few hours in an Amazon Fulfillment Center in Tracy, California and got to see a whole fleet of industrial robots helping automate that facility and speed shipments to customers. Years before that I toured the Tesla factory in Fremont, California and saw big industrial robots maneuvering car parts around on the factory floor. Those kinds of robots make lots of sense to me.

But humanoid robots? Maybe there’s a market but I suspect there’s too much optimism about the size of that market. After all, do you want or need a humanoid robot driving your car?