Wednesday April 3, 2024; 10:00 AM EDT
I want all the information about the products I make to be instantly available to anyone who wants to know, in exactly the form they want it. Until ChatGPT, that was a totally unattainable dream. But now, for many topics, it's reality. For example, if I have a question about CSS, and believe me, I do -- if I can ask the question clearly enough, I can get a clear and complete explanation of why the browser did the crazy thing with layout that it did. It means I could do something beautiful and refined like the blogroll I worked on in February and March, and the UI stuff I'm working on in March and April. #- I can't wait until ChatGPT can answer all those questions about my stuff. But then people who make music don't want their songs to be available the same way. As someone who wants to know as much as possible about songs I have always loved but had no idea how they were made, or what they meant to the writer, knowledge about the work is equally valuable as understanding technical topics. I think the big difference is knowing that life is short, and if we want to leave something behind of ourselves, having the information be available is a blessing, not something to fight against. I don't see why software designers in the future should have to reinvent what my generation has already figured out. I don't want them to have to. It keeps coming back to this one idea -- to solve the problems we have as a species we're going to have to work together, and part of that means not being so guarded and selfish about sharing what we've learned. #
- We had this problem with music before, with Napster. The users of music, such as myself, found that the ability to program our own music was so liberating. To listen to a song a few times before moving on made a huge difference, or to choose a song to hear because we just thought of it for the first time in 30 years. But we were literally mocked by music promoters and artists. But ultimately, like it or not, the users got the power they wanted. It's got to happen that way too for ChatGPT et al. I guess some people must've felt that search engines were going to rob creative people of control of their creations. I guess this is something we always have to go through. #