Hello while Twitter is (apparently) melting down I am on an island, remaining (mostly) unbothered.
Lately I’ve been feeling nostalgic for an era of technology well before my time. When we called it The Dream Machine, people built empires using Smalltalk and Hypercard ruled the earth. The computer was a portal to another world and, now we’ve climbed through, we seem to have forgotten about the portal altogether.
It can seem like, back in good old days, everyone understood the infinite imaginative potential of computers. Is it because it was early? Because they were smarter than us? Is it just nostalgia? Did many people actually think this way? Who knows.
This is my newsletter and I think today’s tech industry attitude is one of stagnation. Perhaps this stems from always looking at what already works and how to subtly change it, rather than dreaming of a new thing entirely. We’ve refined the playbook for finding product-market fit and carved out new niches in crowded categories and, in the process, we forgot that finding truly novel territory is possible.
AI is the clearest example today of something “new” but still, somehow, the current AI-first products feel generally uninspired and overvalued. Using AI to generate and automate things we already do is good and fine™️. Personally, I’m excited for what comes next.
For a counterexample, the pitch for Subconscious as a magic notebook feels delightfully fresh because it avoids comparison to existing products. It’s brand new and a little tricky to grok as a result, and that feels strange because we’re not used to new! We’ve been extremely successful at making things cheaper, thinner & faster for more than a decade across seemingly all of technology.
I’ve been reading Hackers and Painters (from back in the stone age, 2004) and it’s shocking how current it feels. We’ve been complaining about the same things for 18 years which is just about my entire programming career. When will we have a good web browser? When will the computer become truly personal?
Software can obviously be more. It’s the ultimate malleable medium. It can express anything, be anything, change form at any time. It’s all magic! But if that’s true, why is our interaction with the computer so damn dry?
Why is it so hard to pass that malleability on to the user? Are laypeople simply unimaginative? I’m doubtful. My experience in game development has convinced me that people do, in fact, love fun software. I can’t help but feel that the business incentives of large incumbents have influenced the shape of modern software far more than end-user preferences.
After all, users can only pick between the options they perceive. We’re entering increasingly bizarre times and the giants that dominate the internet are starting to stumble. It feels like we’re poised for a change.
I wonder if it’s time for something new?
Until next time,
✌️ Ben
Stuff I’ve been thinking about
Surviving and Thriving in Tech’s New Winter
Anticipatory Gardening for Technology