Freeman Dyson (1997):
It often happens that a scientific revolution is accompanied by a change in style. I like to use the names of Napoleon and Tolstoy to symbolize two contrasting styles: rigid organization and discipline represented by Napoleon, creative chaos and freedom represented by Tolstoy. In the world of computers, Napoleon is the massive IBM main-frame; Tolstoy is the humble Macintosh. The computer revolution was an escape from the Napoleonic ambitions of von Neumann to the Tolstoyan anarchy of the Internet. Future revolutions will bring more such escapes.
The big AI companies are the apotheosis — literally, in the view of many who work for them — of Napoleonic science. The open web and the world of hobbyist and small-scale devices (often built on the Raspberry Pi) are our remaining refuges of Tolstoyan computing. See also: Erik Larson reflecting on Dyson in 2022.
Update on my use of Claude — lotsa good links in this one.
Tikkun Olam, One Prompt at a Time | Sara Wolkenfeld and Samuel Arbesman:
If the Jewish approach to AI does not revolve around the imposition of a single utopian vision, then the focus should be on how AI technologies can act as enabling tools: ones that allow each of us to build the kind of world we might want, enabled by personalized and bespoke software, and interact with information in ways that fit each of us, rather than having to settle for a one-size-fits-all solution. The novelist Robin Sloan has written of the beauty of an “app [that] can be a home-cooked meal.” And now AI provides the ability to prompt new software into existence, whether you are an expert programmer or not. A home-cooked meal, by definition, may never be as perfectly crafted and as beautifully presented as the one you buy in a restaurant, but it holds all the authenticity of human investment. There is an open-ended potential with this tech, allowing each of us to make apps for our own family and communities, using AI to chip away at obstacles and create the world as we might each want it to be.
Maybe the right way to make these home-cooked apps is to reject datacenters in favor of good old muscle power. (Via Robin Sloan — that guy again!)
Currently listening: John Hiatt, Crossing Muddy Waters. Haven’t listened to this in years, and am glad to be reconnected with it. Almost every song a banger. ♫
Another example. “I meant to do that.”
I’m struggling with manual focus and exposure on this film camera, but let’s call this a deliberate artifice … and call it a day.
Currently listening: Claire Holley, Where I Lived. What a superb record. Now, Claire is an old friend, and I listened to this when it came out some months ago — but I didn’t really hear it. My recently chaotic life had to settle down a bit before there was enough silence inside me to let this music in. The songs are beautifully arranged and recorded, and the whole mood is meditative, reflective, evocative. But above all these are wonderful songs, songs that often go (lyrically and harmonically) in directions you don’t expect but that always in the end come sweetly home. ♫
I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime.
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.
Donald Knuth posted this a long time ago, and I wonder whether he has been able to continue an email-less existence. (He has correspondents, but do they use the U.S. post only? Fax machines? Printouts of emails brought to Knuth by friends?)
Could you even sign up for basic utilities these days without having an email address? Asking for … myself, though as social media implode and the internet necrotizes email increasingly seems like a great technology. Still, I have for many years dreamed of imitating Knuth’s fellow computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra and just mailing out handwritten letters to interested parties.
By the way, Knuth has been trying out Claude.