AI is the poison pill for corporations. They cannot resist the idea that with no people to pay they will make even more profit. If you think about that, and understand that AI is about search, then you see that there will be enormous opportunity to build software that is built to help people not make profit.
Even if you don't really like programming, the takeover by Artificiality will mean that the value of Actuality will increase dramatically. So go for actual value in what you do.
Enough already. The way to determine what kind of manager a person is, is to listen for the context they use. For an extreme hypothetical example, if you hear a manager talk about locking their team in their cells every night, you will know something about their context.
If the manager says "They look to you for leadership and clarity", you know something.
It they quote Jeff Bezo, that provides more definition.
The lesson to learn from this article is not the words, but the context. What is the context you find in this article? How does this person talk about other people? What assumptions are inherent in this article? If you find this normal, what does this say about your assumptions?
What I have learned from my years of being an engineering manager is that the corporate model of software development is fubar.
I find myself referring to my contractors as: Workers.
What does that mean about me?
I can't call them employees. I read the communist stuff a while ago and decided I didn't want to be exploited, so I thought this was just the proper terminology.
But people on the internet loath being called a worker and have called me out on this.
Meanwhile I yoyo between to nice and too hard... I think I'm naturally too nice to the point of failure. I seem to only be 'too hard' for a few months before I go back.
Thank god my industry is high demand, I think even with bad management we will survive. (I got a masters in Engineering Management + read 10 books, but management/supervision orthodoxy is diverse and contradictory.)
I do not want my technology tied to some person I consider of despicable character. Would I buy a cell phone, even at a good deal from Putin? No. Corporations have increasingly become political. Thanks, United vs FEC! So we see them taking a knee to gain commercial advantage. And as in this case harm to our democracy.
In my opinion, no discussion about Starlink is complete without considering whether the money you pay will be used to profit people or causes you do not want.
If you need this, then great. But I have other choices, just as I would not touch a tesla even if you gave it to me. I just am not that desperate.
I’m always amazed how much people attribute to citizens united, a ruling that overturned portions of a law that was only on the books for 7 years at the time.
Hmmm. The ruling had a far greater impact than simply that law. It established that corporations have the same right to free speech that ordinary citizens do as a general principle.
What is the result. We now have a situation where a candidate cannot be elected without a large amount of funding. You will need to either be a billionaire or a corporate toady to get elected. Who is the elected official beholden to? What does the elected official have to do to improve their chances of re-election? Do better by the voters do better by the corporation. This is simple logic.
Added to that you have corporations and the rich controlling the media. Murdoch, Bezos, Musk. If the common citizens want to have a living wage be the minimum, Jeff Bezos does not. How willing is the Washington Post to raise the banner of changing the US minimum wage? This is a rhetorical question as the answer is obvious.
And any media that are not outright owned by the greed afflicted, most media receive a substantial part of their income from advertising, they are also not beholden to common citizens. The New York Times wants to appeal to the rich because that is the market for their advertisers. That is why you see stories in the NYT about "How much second vacation home will two million buy you in Maine". And that is why you do not see stories about "How much hovel will minimum wage buy you in Maine".
I'm an ant. I want to tell you how the chemical trails work. Here is how the pheromones work....
Except. The main point of chemical trails, money or other implementations of the messaging bus of a complex adaptive system is THE COMMUNITY it creates. Think the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but instead of language determines what you think, expand that to "your messaging bus language determines how your community functions". Yeah there is lots of stuff about money, but how it determines the form and function of the community (as in CAS) is the important part.
The other primary thing to think about money - once you get that it is a messaging bus - is the idea of making money from money. When you understand the function of the system you can then understand that making money from money is not a good idea. This is not a new idea. The concept of throwing the money lenders out of the temple has been around for a long time.
If you understand money, then you will be able to answer this question:
why is making money from money a bad (dysfunctional) idea?
Oh look. Something works. Lets not break it? How crazy is that?
I sometimes wonder if what happens is like this:
1. Have problem. Need higher level computer language.
2. Think about problem.
3. Solve problem - 'C'
4. Think about problems with 'C'
5. Attempt to fix problems with 'C' - get C++
6. Think about problems with C & C++
7. Get: Go, F#, Rust, Java, JavaScript, Python, PHP, ...other
etc.
I tend to do this. The problem is obvious, that I do not repeat step #2.
So then I move to the next step.
8. Thinking about how to fix C, C++, Go, F#, Rust, Java, JavaScript, Python, PHP, ...other is too hard.
9. Stop thinking.
Although Mozilla's reason to pay for Rust R&D was because of problems with C++ it's probably not most helpful to think of Rust (let alone F#) as an attempt to specifically fix those problems.
C is a Worse is Better language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better). The bet is that if it's simpler to implement then the fact that what you're implementing isn't great will be dwarfed by that ease of implementation. And it worked for decades which is definitely a success.
You can make a similar argument for Go, but not really for Rust. The other side of the Worse is Better coin is that maybe you could make the Right Thing™ instead.
Because implementing C is so easy and implementing the Right Thing™ is very difficult, the only way this would compete is if almost nobody needs to implement the Right Thing™ themselves. In 1970 that's crazy, each Computer is fairly custom. But by 1995 it feels a lot less "out there", the Intel x86 ISA is everywhere, Tim's crap hypermedia experiment is really taking off. And when Rust 1.0 shipped in 2015 most people were able to use it without doing any implementation work, and the Right Thing™ is just better so why not?
Now, for an existing successful project the calculation is very different, though note that Fish is an example of this working in terms of full throated RIIR. But in terms of whether you should use C for new work it comes out pretty strongly against C in my opinion as a fairly expert C programmer who hasn't written any C for years because Rust is better.
There is the smoke part - worth seeing, the shader part - well worth exploring (shaders make you see the world in a different way , then there is the learning part. The site is very interactive so it allows you to see one, do one and maybe teach one.
Many people are stuck in html land. I was. Webgl, threejs, @react-three/{fiber/drei} provide another dimension and shaders are the gateway.
Very highly recommended as a skill worth understanding (at least).
This is really cool thinking. The fundamental concept I got out of it, was fracturing something means that it can fit together again, so there is a constraint. Of course, but cool. Thanks!
Factory work began when people could use other people as machines. For example, mechanized looms could weave cloth but each cloth weaving machine needed a machine to run it. So use people. Children, real slaves anyone. Slave labor. Thus began the Factory Age.
Now AI can replace people for repetitive labor. AI Can run the machines, it is the new Slave Labor. The problem now is what to do with all the freed slaves? If AI can make us the things that are needed, then how are we needed? We are not. As freed slaves, suddenly we are out of work. We are obsolete.
Unfortunately, for corporations that are now rushing to free themselves from the old, difficult, demanding, contentious slaves, they have missed one gigantic element of the equation. Hmmm. What could it be? Can you guess? What could possibly go wrong here?
Fortunately, for us - the freed slaves and factory workers - it turns out we are not just slaves after all. We were just trained to be slaves. So we have a future. If we can adapt to being free. And that is not a joke.
<End joke. I just made this up, nothing about it is true or even remotely serious. />
If Bill Bryson is to be trusted, the loom actually replaced a massive amount of labor. Prior to invention of labor-savings devices, Britain made 32x less cotton fibre. The inventions in this space put tens of thousands out of work, in what was already a difficult job market due to automation. I’m not sure your first paragraph makes sense.
People were dirt cheap, but machines were vastly more productive (and some inventions were stolen so that no royalties had to be paid).
Even if you don't really like programming, the takeover by Artificiality will mean that the value of Actuality will increase dramatically. So go for actual value in what you do.
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