Optimism

Shite MeadowLink to “Shite Meadow”#

I grew up on a lovely council estate street named Shute Meadow, also known by its far fonder local name. Nobody in my family had been to college, let alone university. The done deal was to either join the RAF, or find a stable enough job to support yourself. My parents did their damnedest to nurture my own curiosity, especially when it came to science. But I didn’t have many particular role models in social mobility, and so at first I had my sights aimed fairly low. By the time I got to college, I became exposed to what would go on to define the next 15 or so years of my life: Programming. I was near immediately intoxicated. I’d of course heard of and understood what programming was. But that’s an entirely different proposition to actually inputting the magic words and the computer making your ideas become real.

That, precisely, is what captured my imagination. For too long until those moments I had narrowed my gaze, and accepted that I could only affect so much. Here now, I had been handed a tool that could seemingly with a little graft enable whatever I could imagine.

Okay yes, slight hyperbole. But that’s how it felt! I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the thrill of building a mental picture of a whole system, navigating it in my mind. Hunting down that one bastard bug past any reasonable effort until feeling like a complete genius for discovering whatever had eluded me. But with the rise of AI, I feel now the same emotions as when I wrote my first crappy line of Delphi (I know…) and watched UI I’d written appear on screen.

TodayLink to “Today”#

The ceiling has been lifted once again. Except now it really does feel like the limit is whatever I can imagine. The feeling of inspiration striking me, and being able to make it tangible in almost no time. Access to more specialisms than I could learn in a lifetime. Motion graphics, CGI, mathematics, hell meteorology. If I can just ask the right questions, then I can tap into all of human knowledge the way we always hoped the internet would let us.

Have I lost the opportunity to sit and manually debug an issue, or flow state into a perfectly written controller? Yes absolutely. But I’ve also lost hours of my finite life being thrown at exception chasing. Trying to force my mind to wring out the last couple of percent to write that last feature before deadline. Having to learn the syntax of whatever JS framework is popular this year.

I’ve gained:

• An infinitely patient teacher
• A tireless reviewer and incident responder
• The time to do as much accessibility work as websites have always deserved
• Someone who will squash down as much admin as I can ask of it

I could extend, and extend this list. This doesn’t even touch on my own beliefs about how it will enable us all to live longer, healthier, more abundant lives. For me I’ve lost some puzzles to solve, but I’ve gained a future I feel genuinely optimistic about.

SentimentLink to “Sentiment”#

Everybody I talk to today is feeling one polarised mood or another.

For some, the current change is destabilising. Spiritually, mentally, economically, and a handful of other -allys. It’s hard to escape the sentiment that the Golden Days are over, and we have been robbed of them by the ultra-wealthy. With little care for who they trod over, or what they stole along the way. I don’t have the perfect answers to that, and I think we will have to grapple with them seriously.

I can sympathise. For many, people I respect deeply, the craft was the thing from which they derived their personal joy and satisfaction. It brought meaning, artistry, and artisanship to their life.

In closing, I’ve moved away from thinking that I can convince someone out of their own emotional reaction. But I do want to be one optimistic voice amongst the crowd. I spent my early years aiming low because nobody had shown me the ceiling could move. I believe how positively we orient ourselves to the future has a real effect on the one that arrives.