Optimism in Technology
I just watched Starship launch number fourteen, the first commercial Starship flight. It carried a new generation of Starlink satellites, the kind that are a step toward putting AI data centers in orbit, and it went around the Earth twice. I have now seen four or five launches in person: the Space Shuttle, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy. This one may have been the most special of all of them. Standing in the crowd afterward, an older woman was going around asking people a question. If you could travel five hundred years into the past or five hundred years into the future, which would you pick? I didn't have to think about it. I'd pick right now. Over any other time in history.
A short span of time
I'm old enough to remember black-and-white televisions. I have known people who grew up using horses to get around. It has only been about a hundred years since the automobile overtook the horse as the way most people travel.
And today I spend my working hours alongside AI that is more capable than any person I've ever met. Those two facts sit inside one lifetime, with room to spare. When I say "right now," that is what I mean. Very few generations have ever been able to watch a curve bend this sharply while they were standing on it.
Faster, better, and cheaper
My career is as wild as it has ever been. My side business, Clearbay, has prospects that honestly feel unlimited. At my day job, my influence and what I'm able to deliver are growing faster than at any point before.
We are not laying anyone off. The goal is to make everyone's job easier. And something has changed that I didn't expect to see in my career: projects can now be faster, better, and cheaper. For as long as I've worked, the rule was that you could pick two. That rule is quietly going away.
What an ordinary day looks like
I work where I want. I pick the projects I want. In the old sense, I don't really have to "work" anymore. The AI does a great deal of the doing, and I'm valued for my mind: the judgment, the ideas, knowing what's worth building. I have the time and the means to do what I want with my life.
I'm not writing that to brag. I'm writing it because it's playing out better than I expected, and I think it's worth saying out loud when that happens. Most of the predictions I heard growing up about the future were fearful ones. This one is going well.
Bigger than me
My optimism is through the ceiling. I expect my daughter's life to follow the same trajectory, and probably a steeper one. Cancer is being cured. Things are happening that I never expected to see, and they are happening faster than I thought they would.
None of that means every problem is solved or that there is nothing to worry about. It means the tools we have to solve problems have never been this good, and they are improving every month.
Right now
On the way home from the launch I sat in a car that drives itself. If I took the wheel, it could go twice as fast as a stock car at Daytona. I don't. I let it drive, and I spent the ride thinking about that woman's question.
Five hundred years back, or five hundred years forward. I understand the appeal of both. But I'd still pick this one, the moment when the rocket clears the tower and you realize you get to watch what happens next.