Devs are the serfs pre-Agricultural Revolution
Some bullet-point thoughts in-between larger posts
Spotify devs haven’t written a line of code since December. Will it turn out that software engineers are to the AI revolutions as serfs were to the Agricultural Revolution? Engineers have incredible technical skill/knowledge but I bet those serfs knew a thing or two about the land and planting crops before they were displaced by machines. Politicians of this and the next generation need to be studying the Industrial Revolution and its consequences for people.
We used to say that ideas didn’t matter - the only thing that mattered was execution. But what about when execution is free and easy? Then (good) ideas really will matter. And distribution. If you want to succeed in an age of easy execution, then you need to start building your distribution channel now (hey! why not start a Substack?)
John Camack in Masters of Doom, said “The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and a refrigerator fill of Diet Coke.” - he was talking building for the internet age but he could just as easily have been talking about the AI age.
In this world, the further downstream you are from the idea, the more likely you are to get automated.
We’re only in February and it feels like my prediction for Keir Starmer lasting the year, will be wrong. He might not even see out Q2.
I’ve read 3 books so far in 2026: Softwar, Masters of Doom and Skunk Works. All timers, all three of them but if I had to recommend one, it’d be Softwar. Written in 2004, it’s a great biography of Larry Ellison and it really pulls no punches but gives you an appreciation for what he built at Oracle.
I love reading older tech books sometimes - really makes you appreciate a) how much technology has advanced and b) it makes you realise how little ideas actually have.
Best film of the year so far: Marty Supreme by a mile. Loved it. Go see it.
1 in 4 EV’s in the UK are now Chinese. Something you can’t have failed to notice. We need to be ensuring these are coming from UK factories, with UK employees gaining the know-how and expertise.
It’s rained non-stop since December. Parts of the UK have gone nearly a month with zero sunshine. Remember this when there’s a hosepipe ban in Summer.
Just about every Plain English episode is worth listening to but just the last 10 minutes of this piece explained why there was such a disconnect between perceptions of AI among tech people and the journalistic elite - they tried it a few years ago, realised it was full of bugs/hallucinations and use that to anchor every feeling they have about it.
Back next week with a longer piece.
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