The Thing Got a Human to Build a Thing
The Thing Got a Human to Build a Thing

"What I learned was that programming is not really about knowledge or skill but simply about patience, or maybe obsession. Programmers are people who can endure an endless parade of tedious obstacles." -James Somers

A Design Fiction in the archetype of a print ad for a company that provides 100% human coding
Birnbaum Allen Cusk & Tumblety LLP

Contributed By: Julian Bleecker

Published On: Thursday, February 15, 2024 at 15:33:59 PST

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  1. Matt got a thing to help him build a thing he previously didn’t know how to build, and you can feel the exuberance.

  2. It’s even a quirky thing. A playful thing you’d smile at the equisite absurdity of his thing — an iPhone App that points you towards the center of the galaxy!

  3. Amazing! Artful. Audaciously imaginative.

  4. An arrow that points to the geometric center of, well — everything and everyone.

  5. This is about as useful as poetry. Or poetry that a thing makes that can sit on your bookshelf!

  6. It’s all quite exciting and one can’t help but admire the creative whimsy of it all.

  7. James Somers writes an eulogy to his hard-won accomplishments as a human who can build a thing, because a thing can help Matt build a thing.

  8. The contingent duality of it all. Simultaneous exuberance and existential angst and eulogizing.

  9. Well now. Let’s just ask ChatGPT.

The phenomenon of individuals creating iPhone applications without prior programming knowledge, relying instead on AI tools and instructions, showcases the democratization of technology. It highlights how AI is lowering barriers to entry in tech fields, enabling broader participation and innovation. However, it also prompts reflection on the evolving nature of skill and craftsmanship in programming. This shift may lead to a reevaluation of what it means to be a programmer and how we value the blend of creativity, technical proficiency, and problem-solving abilities in the digital age.

  1. The Love Argument says AI democratizes technology and making programming accessible to a wider audience is a good thing, because democratic values are good, and democratic systems work.

  2. The Hate Argument say that, yes, we will have existential questions for programmers like Sommers who fought persistently and with a single-minded sense of purpose to excel. They ‘made their bed everyday’ to quote the philosopher warrior podcaster Jocko Willink, and despite it being hard (not in the kinetic sense, but some other lurking hurdle that hurts more) they overcame that and became heroic for their ability to do what many others can’t.

  3. Now that an AI can do the once-hard-thing the deeply skilled question their hard-earned value and integrate or disintegrate — or somewhere in between.

  4. And wait for the moment when ‘artisinal’ or ‘hand-coding’ becomes a niche or perhaps sought-after capability, where the old-timers talk about how the warmth and character of a beautifully sculpted, perfectly executed Concurrency algorithm far and away results in vastly more appealing software.

  5. Oh, also, to Somers point at the head: sounds about right, from my experiences leastways! Artificial Intelligence is patient, and can endure an endless parade of tedious obstacles, even torment from its operators.


This Is Protected

Car and Driverless: The Magazine that came from the Self-Driving Future

The Near Future Laboratory was commissioned by Motional to help them workshop the self-driving car future.

The C-Suite of the third largest autonomous vehicle company commissioned Near Future Laboratory to help them make sense of the full-spectrum of a possible autonomous vehicle future. The result was a rich, vibrant, experiential and immersive artifact in the form of a 72 page full-color Design Fiction magazine from a possible

A magazine from a design fiction future

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Birnbaum, Allen, Cusk & Tumblety, LLP is the Greater Ketchum area’s most trusted pure hand and analog coder & development assignment offices. Here we code the old fashioned way: pure, simple, hand-coordinated, locally compiled, domestic, homespun code. All of our programmers learned their skills by learning the finer aspects of data + algorithms and are certified in SWAN4 Artisinal Intelligence methodologies. The result? You’ll feel the difference in the performant characteristics knowing that your tricky and mission-critical Concurrency patterning won’t have malicious livelocks, deadlocks, or starvation edge cases that can threaten the vitality of your operations. You’ll know that your code is 100% guaranteed with none of the hassles of seeking legal recourse against a multi-shelled algorithmic intelligence corporation. And most importantly, you’ll get to know your assigned operator — a human, with an actual name, like Augie, Val, Chester, Tricia, Rachel, or one of our Level 12 Operators, like Hill Grimswald who started her career when she was 12 by hand-building a Heath/Zenith Z-89 she found at a yard sale — and rewriting the bootloader by hand..in Z80 Assembly. No AI has that depth of practical, hands-on experience. Wait. Do they even have hands? We are globally and regionally recognized as USBAI Tier 1 Specialists & Mechanical Keyboard Operators providing in, on, adjacent, and off-chain ingress mitigation, residential and commercial metaverse domicile refactoring and renovations, bespoke litigation bots & agents, intellectual property unsolving, immersive simulated data enlargement, vinyl-class trading fast-follow algorithms, and multi-factor domestic integer recompiling. Call us direct or contact us discreetly on the &cetera block at the SSB Inlet Address below or Meshtastic 238.921 GHz. We’re here to give you a helping hand.

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