I've Seen the Future
And it cooks.
I don’t talk much about food or health over here at my observations, but I have taken my Martial and Pastoral educations past zero. I can tell you confidently that I have always gotten along with military brats and farm kids. I didn’t know why at first, but it’s because we share some serious discipline in common. More than just about every other section and sort of Americans out here where reading a lot is a common occurrence, we have an inherent sense of when words no longer matter. This is an important distinction and I believe it is something that cannot be finessed.
Nevertheless, I may never convince the Spousal Unit to abandon California. My last attempt, somewhere around 2015 or so was when all of our kids were off to college and service. I wanted to go to Texas and join my cousin for some new adopted pastimes of hunting and fishing. More importantly, no state taxes and no reason to need good schools. Alas. So what had I not already done in Southern California where I was born and raised? Basically spend a lot of money on a sports car and fancy restaurants. So in anticipation of my startup’s eventual exit I came to an understanding and new found infatuations with Porsche and Yelp instead of Benelli and Orvis. Long story short, COVID effed it up for everyone, so I scaled all that back to an appreciation of bourbon and scotch and watching IMSA on TV. Although I have the equipment for hunting and fishing, I have my regrets.
The great irony of my professional situation is that a great shakeout is occurring as the small fraction of the class of software engineers with the right connections are planning for several pieces to fall in place in the areas being carpet bombed with AI capital. A great deal of that involves programming languages and various paradigmatic shifts. Think of me as the son of legendary clay animator Ray Harryhausen watching Jurassic Park for the first time. Pixar is coming. It’s the beginning of the end for Old School presaged by Industrial Light and Magic. Movies about monsters and space travel will never be the same. It makes no sense for American consumers to second guess the big money. We simply do not have the cultural backbone to resist the next big thing. As clearly as I see this, I am ironically doubling down on the obscure handcrafted arts of my profession. Why? Because the martial and pastoral cannot be finessed.
More specifically I have seen the future of where the smart money will go after the startups and upstarts have settled down. It will be experiential. It will involve the pastoral. It will be all about food.
The question arises these days about what to do when intelligence comes cheap. Most people are over-generalizing about the nature of intelligence. That is because the chatting class relates to and idolizes the kind of intelligence that is central to their professions. It is literary. It is cinematic. It is political and otherwise bound by narrative. Moreover it is tied to the acceptance of the concept that ‘the medium is the message’. We, the literate, are shaped for better or worse by the highways and byways of messaging. Computer science has messaging down to, well, a science. And here we are trafficking in that heavy traffic. Better get on the bus. The new interstates are coming. This ain’t your father’s Oldsmobile and this ain’t Route 66. You’re going to catch kicks alright. As I’ve been saying, all of this investment is advertised for middle class road trips, but it’s really about tanks.
I talked about some of the inevitable problems AI will create in Word Speed. Indeed I’m not the only one who thinks cursive is a dinosaur. I remember being crotchety about emojis, a literacy I haven’t bothered to master. But one of my favorite sci-fi authors, Greg Bear predicted the transformation of interpersonal communication:
"First of all, most of the citizens and clients of the Axis City and the communities along the Way—what you call the corridor—talk to each other by picting." She touched the torque around her neck and looked at Heineman. Flashes of light darted before his eyes. "I'm wearing a personal pictor. You will all be given pictors in a couple of days. It won't be absolutely necessary for you to learn the graphicspeech, but it will be very helpful. Lessons should take no more than two or three days. Miss Vasquez, I understand, already has a rudimentary knowledge of picts."
Humans are more visual and so in a certain way, depending on future economies, the manner in which we communicate will undergo drastic changes. It is clear to me that the merging of all of those media, moderated by computing, is inevitable. The question of efficiency in interpersonal communication is key - but let me twist you just a touch with this idea.
As the 20th century saw a rapid and large increase in human literacy, the 21st may see a similar consolidation of communication forms. The language barrier is already broken, which you can see in cinema, the best of which works like silent film. A well crafted visual needs no words and can communicate emotions with subtlety. Mathematics and chemistry, on the other hand, cannot. And obviously quantum mechanics cannot. So which us get to write and study that sort of thing in the future when all communications will be moderated by compute? I believe the oppressed masses will be served only by picts. Emojis.
No matter what form of language or emojis we do end up with, our freedom of expression will be determined by how open our communication networks will be. And yet, the martial and pastoral cannot be finessed.
AIs can’t cook. They cannot taste, they cannot manipulate kitchen equipment. They cannot experiment and make determinations about the credibility of a style or fashion. When I watched this video, I realized that I was watching something very intelligent - an intelligence of the sort which is pastoral and cannot be finessed by symbolic representation or manipulation. At some point in the future, such a video could be deepfaked with bogus ingredients and as such would not be amenable to education. For now, I would try this at home. So that second part of my California consolation, still remains available. I want to go get myself a fat juicy stake. That’s for my next birthday. I want you to really watch the whole of this video. It is such a wonder for me. Not so much of what it is today although I am a foodie, but what it will mean when AGI is here. Nobody wants a robot chef. Moneyball will not work.
I have nothing but hope for the future of fine dining and of the pastoral in general. As much time and money as we waste on the interwebz’ blather and click environment, it will pale in comparison for our bodily hungers. That is if we don’t all morph into Eloi. I’ve got a feeling that a halfway horrific act of terrorism or another weak plague will focus our attentions quite swiftly.
In the meantime, I’m juggling interests but not in a panic. There’s always work at the post office. Or is there?
What's the emoji for "salty with a brief aftertaste of pine and rare metals" or "overtones of maple and cilantro and hints of luzula nivea and oat?"
I put this question to Grok. The answer was...wanting. Seriously, man. You've no idea the world that awaits your post-career arrival. The last few months have been some of your best writing. Remain calm and carry on.