Tidal Series by Curtis Collicutt

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Latest — Jan 15, 2025

No More Fun Computers?

The contrast between late 90s transparent tech (iMac G3, VW Beetle) and today's opaque AI systems reflects a cultural shift from optimistic, visible computing to inscrutable black-box technology. However, AI could ironically help make computing more natural and "invisible" again.

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Open on Thursday, Closed on Sunday

The last couple years have shown unprecedented speed of change: SVB collapsed within days through group chat coordination, while ChatGPT reached global adoption almost instantly. Yet we may be hitting natural limits—not technical ones, but human capacity to process and adapt to such rapid shifts.

A Smarter Rubber Duck: The Duck Talks Back

The classic "rubber duck debugging" technique asks developers to explain code problems to an unresponsive toy duck, but AI transforms this into an interactive dialogue where the duck can actually respond with meaningful insights and suggestions.

What if a Computer Was a Walk in the Woods? Why Should an AI Computer Be Like a Desktop Computer? And More on Mark Weiser.

Recent advances in AI have given rise to "power users" who push the boundaries of human-computer interaction. Moving beyond simple prompts, they develop personalized workflows that treat AI as a cognitive partner. Their practices hint at a future where we question what a computer even is.

The Golden Age of Software Development: From "How Do I Code This?" to "What Should I Build?"

AI coding assistants are getting better. Their use is subsidised. The infrastructure costs of running applications in production are low. Now the question for indie developers is: what can we build?

Well Being: Human Centric Artificial Intelligence

While the temptation to simply automate away humans is strong, disruptive technologies like GenAI present a unique opportunity to re-imagine work itself. Rather than simply replacing humans, we need to explore how AI can make the stock market go up AND improve human well-being.

Oh Great, Now We Have to Deal With Synthetic Identities Too?

Identity is like a mercurial droplet flowing downhill, absorbing new elements while shedding others along its path. Except it's a digital stream of personal data that's constantly being stolen and manipulated to create things like synthetic identities for credit fraud.

Where Is the Machine Usefulness? The Faster Horse

Whatever you think of AI, it certainly has the potential to replace jobs. Recent advances have allowed LLMs, strange programs, to use a GUI based computer. Isn't that just a faster horse?

AI & the Business of Enterprise Sales, Software, & Services

Despite some backlash, AI is moving forward. We are building new capabilities on top of existing advances, moving toward the ability to implement services as software, and disrupting a $10 trillion market. How is that changing things? A lot of it is counter-intuitive.

Reframing Risk as Trust

Is it risks we're looking for? Finding a million little pieces of risk isn't that useful, what we are actually doing is building trust in our systems. Maybe we should admit that?