[pbourke]

> The personal computer & the internet clicked for me because I saw them as personal enables, as endlessly flexible systems that we could gain mastery over & shape as we might.

I feel the same way. Developments in computing have evolved and improved incrementally until now. Networks and processors have gotten faster, languages more expressive and safer, etc but it’s all been built on what preceded it. Gen AI is new-new in general purpose computing - the first truly novel concept to arrive in my nearly 30 years in the field.

When I’m working in Python, I can “peer down the well” past the runtime, OS and machine code down to the transistors. I may not understand everything about each layer but I know that each is understandable. I have stable and useful abstractions for each layer that I use to benefit my work at the top level.

With Gen AI you can’t peer down the well. Just a couple of feet down there’s nothing but pitch black.