What you’re showing is even more attractive than an AI optimist or pessimist vision — but an AI individualist, using it to push through the walls of our current social constraints & malaise to build what YOU want YOUR world to look like. This is the future I want to live in: A realist orientation toward tech to maximize freedom as we want it. And we don’t need to fear it — as long as we wrangle it for our own visions & desires, we can all be more giddy like you.
Perhaps the most insidious path isn't societal pressure into external work, but the one that tooling makes you follow.
It's a truism that "technology shapes us," probably determines us, but perhaps for the first time ever it's becoming obvious in real time how this happens.
Love "Full-stack weirdness,” sounds like using AI to build a custom Iron Man suit around your own weirdness instead of settling for cobbled-together off-the-shelf articles. Your new stack’s/suit's looking pretty slick. Looking forward to seeing more and more Weird Iron People out there.
Lol at the one-shot ai bro comment. See the one-shot claims everywhere and it has to either be larp or they aren’t building anything worth building. Part of the fun of the whole process is the iteration and learning that come with perfecting your builds.
Doing less to just unstick the gears? I thought grinding the tranny until it smokes was the way forward…
Great piece Paul. I come from tech and most writing about agentic anything triggers my gag reflex at this point. But I actually dig what you’re doing. And why.
I’m working on going feral myself—just hope it doesn’t mean going broke. Stanley Broadwater is already whispering about my dwindling bank account.
I’m definitely a person. And I’m moving fast in the direction of my very human curiosity.
Gloriously satisfying for the soul — wildly capital inefficient on the ledger. Just as there is a cost for chasing the buck, there is a cost to chasing the dream too.
I haven’t been coding this much but I absolutely have been in the same spirit by using Claude code and obsidian to create my own iterative knowledge garden from the ground up based on my neuro spicy desires. And the act of co stewarding it has been a blast. I love that you mention aliveness as that is essentially my number one metric to optimize for
What you’re showing is even more attractive than an AI optimist or pessimist vision — but an AI individualist, using it to push through the walls of our current social constraints & malaise to build what YOU want YOUR world to look like. This is the future I want to live in: A realist orientation toward tech to maximize freedom as we want it. And we don’t need to fear it — as long as we wrangle it for our own visions & desires, we can all be more giddy like you.
This is the goal
Perhaps the most insidious path isn't societal pressure into external work, but the one that tooling makes you follow.
It's a truism that "technology shapes us," probably determines us, but perhaps for the first time ever it's becoming obvious in real time how this happens.
Stay pathless, friends :)
Love "Full-stack weirdness,” sounds like using AI to build a custom Iron Man suit around your own weirdness instead of settling for cobbled-together off-the-shelf articles. Your new stack’s/suit's looking pretty slick. Looking forward to seeing more and more Weird Iron People out there.
Exactly
Lol at the one-shot ai bro comment. See the one-shot claims everywhere and it has to either be larp or they aren’t building anything worth building. Part of the fun of the whole process is the iteration and learning that come with perfecting your builds.
Thanks for writing this! It has inspired my next 18 month execution of my 20 year game plan for my novel!
Hell yeah
Doing less to just unstick the gears? I thought grinding the tranny until it smokes was the way forward…
Great piece Paul. I come from tech and most writing about agentic anything triggers my gag reflex at this point. But I actually dig what you’re doing. And why.
I’m working on going feral myself—just hope it doesn’t mean going broke. Stanley Broadwater is already whispering about my dwindling bank account.
Agency is great if you move in the direction of your own curiosity. Most moving in more capital efficient directions. Like businesses not people
I’m definitely a person. And I’m moving fast in the direction of my very human curiosity.
Gloriously satisfying for the soul — wildly capital inefficient on the ledger. Just as there is a cost for chasing the buck, there is a cost to chasing the dream too.
C’est la vie. Or something.
I haven’t been coding this much but I absolutely have been in the same spirit by using Claude code and obsidian to create my own iterative knowledge garden from the ground up based on my neuro spicy desires. And the act of co stewarding it has been a blast. I love that you mention aliveness as that is essentially my number one metric to optimize for
Cool! If you're open to it, would love to have you demo at a Taipei Claude meetup someday around the topic of literature / writing :)
sure!
Real pleasure to see one living in this way.
Good luck!
Absolutely delightful and inspiring
I work for a SaaS b2b and I’m now seeing what you’re saying - in the future it won’t be needed. 🤯
I don’t think that’s true. I think they’ll just be more options.
Lots of ideas churning, thanks Paul
Love it! Tiago's Full-Stack Freelancer article is iconic! Your updated spin on it... is fascinating, thank you!