Poetry in Silicon

From humble sand, everything.

"We shape our buildings and thereafter our buildings shape us." -Winston Churchill

This moment in AI, and in particular, Sir Steven Wilkinson's particularly beautiful take on it, is inspiring me to relay something I've thought about computing in general since even before the social media and AI moments. Specifically, that computers do not show us the world or each other, they show us ourselves.

Part of why social media has been so polarizing is that we collectively took a good look at ourselves in the mirror and didn't particularly like what we saw on average. AI, rather than threatening to replace us, is quickly bringing that mirror into much sharper focus and, so far, we seem to like that even less.

Perhaps there is something metaphysical to this idea. I know of no other metal which can take on as perfect a mirror finish as silicon. The element itself perfectly reflects its surroundings.

Copper and silicon, entangled in an inevitable dance. I've had this chunk of 99.99% silicon on my desk for several years as silent reminder of how much I owe to such a simple and yet powerful mineral. Reflected is a one pound ball of copper, to whom I also owe my career and livelihood. (Math nerds, calculate the dimensions of the cube!) Leica SL2 65mm f/2.8 1/125s iso500

It's quite beautiful that what we've created when we've energized this metal at scale has also become a mirror that reflects far more than just what we see, it reflects who we are.

I've been writing computer programs for forty years. My family got a Commodore VIC-20 when I was eight and trying to learn everything about it and subsequent computers became the basis of my life and previous career. As I've watched computers develop over that time, it has become clear to me that predicting the path of technology is a fool's errand. Who in 1988, listening to the bouncing tones of a 2400 baud modem's connection song, could have predicted that essentially the same process, enhanced by seven orders of magnitude (ie. 10 million times) would be sufficient to stream videos to multiple rooms while effortlessly supporting all of the other digital needs of the increasingly connected home? Or, that the humble FPU (floating point unit) which used to be optional in the early "SX" versions of 386 and 486 computers would, when scaled from 100 kFLOPs (100 thousand floating point operations per second) to 90 TFLOPs (90 trillion) be able to perform the arithmetic gymnastics required to convincingly pass the Turing test in our lifetimes? Turing himself might have been off by a couple hundred years if the question had ever been posed to him.

But as technology has progressed, it has become clear that for all that we've gained, we've lost something meaningful about what it is to be human in the process. This is especially true, post-pandemic where our reliance on technology abruptly increased. We are all sort of floating in the metaverse, regardless of whether we spend any time in VR. It's our identities which have suffered most which may be why so many of us are externalizing that struggle in the form of identity politics. It's very comfortable to know precisely who we are as people. This has been so important to humans since ancient times that 'Know thyself' was inscribed at the Temple of Delphi. It follows that it is very uncomfortable when our identities are uprooted.

It's because of the human part of this situation that I decided to start writing on Substack. Our uprooted current moment is leaving us vulnerable to predation by political forces which would take advantage of the plasticity of the moment to accrete power and control over the fortunes and fates of others. It's important that we push back while honoring the struggle that we as individuals and we as a society are grappling with. This is both a risk and an opportunity. Society could head into another Renaissance or into another totalitarian dystopia. My goal is to do whatever I can to bias toward the former.

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” -Pablo Picasso

I don't have the answers and it pains me to know that nothing I've said here so far and possibly nothing I say here in the future is original. Better minds have been struggling with these questions and writing about them more eloquently than I can for literally thousands of years and it's mostly all out there free for anyone to read. All I have are questions that I think need to be reasked from time to time. Hopefully in the reasking, and in the conversation the questions spark, we'll rediscover a few truths here or there.

Thank you so much for reading and for coming with me on this journey. I’d also like to thank my mentors Doomberg, @DoombergT, and Grant Williams, @ttmygh, for all of the feedback and help they have given and continue to give. This work would be a pale shadow without their help and generosity ♡.