The scale of things

45 years ago, computers were things that did math and maybe typed out messages. Small, limited bits of data could be stored. Prices were high, most families did not have one, instead preferring consoles like Nintendo or Atari if they had any computing power in their house.

Enter the 90s and the concept of a PC at home became a thing. Word processing, limited email, dial-up connections that let you talk to the county library and checkout a book or access some public services were a thing. I recall using the library's basic services to find Calvin and Hobbes comic books and reserve them. Using basic knowledge of SQL I was able to manipulate the reservation system to make sure that I was first in the list.

Monitors were this thing called CRT and weighed a ton; I lugged one across several states to college as the internet became a thing in the 2000s. Languages like Ruby, Java, Perl, or the then cutting-edge JavaScript were taught in college. I learned C and C++ because those were considered premier even though it was clear to see that their time would soon come, even then.

Recessions hit, but technology continued to advance. The personal computing space seemed to stagnate, and the next frontier was mobile. Mobile phones shrunk, became flip phones, then phones with keyboards we called "crackberries" and then boxy squares in iPhone and Android. 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G and now 5G and beyond, with many people simply using a phone as a primary compute device.

With the evolution of technology, the world too has changed. You no longer make a collect call or talk to an operator to connect a phone to someone or somewhere international. You don't go to the library to browse the limited internet, and no one maintains a set of encyclopedias at home anymore unless they're unique.

Three years ago, a pandemic ended. A year later this thing called ChatGPT burst onto the scene. Today, software engineering, a skill that made the personal computing revolution and internet ages happen is becoming a commodity, a skill that an AI model can do at almost as good as some of the best experts in the world for next to no cost.

It feels like the world is again about to change. The people not using AI now are the people without a computer in their house in the 90s.

I wonder what the world will look like post-AI.

I hope it won't be too scary.