Computing

I was debugging a power issue with my home automation setup last week when it hit me: I had no idea how many batteries were in my house. Not approximately. Not even close. Twenty years ago, I knew exactly where every battery lived—the TV remote, the kitchen clock, maybe a flashlight. Today? They’re everywhere and nowhere. In sensors, in remotes, in devices I’ve forgotten I own. They’ve crossed the threshold from technology to invisible infrastructure. ...

I’ve been thinking about the current AI moment, and I can’t shake the feeling that we’re about to hit a wall. Not a failure wall, more like the wall Web 1.0 hit right before everything changed. Remember when every startup was “webr.com” and the height of innovation was animated GIFs? We’re in the AI equivalent of that era right now. Just as Web 2.0 wasn’t really about AJAX or rounded corners, AI 2.0 won’t be about better chatbots. We’re about to witness a fundamental shift in how AI gets built, deployed, and integrated into our daily tools. And honestly? It can’t come soon enough. ...

I’ve noticed an interesting shift in computing over the last few years. It’s one of those changes that becomes obvious in hindsight, though while in the moment it was confusing and disorientating. It turns out I was blinded by my own path of coming up in the industry. I’m never surprised when a bias gets in the way of seeing something. It’s a constant of human progression and the fundamental reason we science. We’re aware of our limits, and we pursue knowledge from the perspective of disproving ourselves so that we can uncover the truth despite the limits of our ability to observe and think. Science is cool. ...

Somehow I missed the recent larger EC2 unit sizes: When I saw this, I immediately thought: these numbers will have K, M, and G suffixes within the next 5 years. Compute units will be sold as 88 mega-ECUs. Imagine 88 giga-ECUs? The ECU is similar to our old measure of computing: boxen (except more virtual). The idea of giga-boxen boggles, but is inevitable (boxen is so much more inspiring than ECUs), or maybe it should be boxels? ...