My first interaction with computers was back in 1993. I was completely obsessed with the premise of technologies, later on fully immersed in the concept of gaming, automated logic, programmed decision-making with the speed of light, and the opportunities this brings to the humankind.
This was a natural continuation of my education and career path, with software engineering in high school and college, in parallel with my first website built in 1999 and freelancing in the early 2000s. The Internet was the future, and I was ready to conquer it.
This whole journey wouldn’t have been complete without all the geeky communities I was in, finding other outcasts who were passionate about the same principles revealed in the Takeout movie for Kevin Mitnick in 2000, and a series of hacker movies after (and let’s not forget the 1999 classic “The Matrix”). 2004’s “I, Robot” stuck with me for years – literally.
My first programming resources were help docs in IDEs like QBasic’s internal documentation, floppy disks downloaded from Internet cafes, and print versions of books that dads in the neighborhood had (and we were Xerox-copying these for all the kids in our group). Information was scarce at best; most kids didn’t have computers at home, and if they did, it was usually a 33MHz Intel machine with 8-16MB of RAM and a sub-GB drive, with no Internet access at all.
When modems arrived, dial-up was the way to go, with prepaid cards bought from the post office for 5 to 20 hours available; carefully times by patiently connecting, opening several browsers with resources, and disconnecting to read offline while saving the prepaid hours as best as possible. The Wild West of connectivity at its finest.
But for a kid born in Eastern Europe in the late 80s with no access to modern universities or the Bay Area where the sauce was made, the Internet was a wealth of knowledge and information that I, and my closer online peers, were consuming like crazy at any chance we got.
We were forever grateful to downloadable networks hosting docx files of manually typed books or resources, and scanned copies of user manuals. Global news were available in a scarce number of websites – the pioneers of the Internet. This information wasn’t available elsewhere, mostly kept to local sources or national at best.
Forums, early instant messengers, and IRC were the access to that holy grail that was the World Wide Web.
Our dream, vision, futuristic goal in the years and decades to come was close to what we have available right now:
- A computer in every pocket
- Internet availability for everyone
- Access to everything, anytime, anywhere
- Instant communication on the way (think of Messenger or Instagram or WhatsApp)
- Video calls weren’t even a dream at that time with 8KB/s speeds, slow machines, and no smartphones (heck, even the early GSM phones were still early and fairly dumb)
- Also, robots!
The 2000s and 2010s were exciting – Google dominated the web and SEO was doing extremely well, social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram appeared, messengers were modern, smartphones and tablets became common and affordable, Internet became available with unlimited access for every plan. Things were only getting better.
Until ChatGPT was released and accessible AI became the norm in 2022. This was supposed to be a great change, right? Right?
Every new instrument is a double-edged sword.
Just like a weapon can keep you safe living in a farm with the closest house a 10min drive away, it’s a killer’s tool in the wrong hands.
Or the world’s largest library available for studying online is also a place for adult content, illegal drug dealing, and viruses.
LLMs made it possible to pollute the web with indefinite volumes of spammy content, automated social posts, random copy-hacked images, endless loads of email blasts and DM harassment, and other algorithmic stupidities leading to all the viral clickbait online, stolen posts and resources published online, copyrighted content recited by GPTs and many, many more.
As a result, the web became cluttered and largely unusable. Large cohorts of executives – hundreds and hundreds in my own circle – have escaped the social web over the past few years, slowly but steadily. First, reducing the time they spend on social. Second, giving a shot of professional networks like LinkedIn or X, until they became cluttered with clickbait and viral hooks. Later on, moving to post-only format after identifying tons of AI-generated pieces, only to be followed by AI comments as a result.
During a couple of calls with private equity, senior partners have clearly stated that they avoid social like plague, and have even deleted their profiles altogether. So many ghost, abandoned profiles have been cluttering the digital space, unmanned and only representing a digital avatar of a real human being, but with no connection between both.
Simultaneously, programmatic SEO cluttered the rest of the web, and the Google – Reddit deal didn’t make it any easier, with UGC theoretically better, but mimicking the comments under a political piece or a sports game (filled with trolls). Enter the marketers jumping into every conversation with a promotional link and voila – the reddit index, gaining 20X of visibility in just a year, messed up hard, too.
As an INTJ, I’m heavily introverted, yet craving substantial conversations with intelligent people. I run my email list with 20,000+ people only to dive in follow-up conversation in replies, and stick around 20ish Slack communities for professionals in different areas of work (martech, ops, revops, executive, etc.)
While the premise of “robots taking over” seemed appealing back when I was a kid, this no longer holds true. A phantom web packed with robotized content and desperate sales pitches is horrid. This has been escalating for years, and spending 14 hours a day on average in front of a screen, my head keeps spinning and my eyes are near bleeding at this point.
I miss the times when users were in charge of building their own content and articles were authored by humans. Even subpar, this showcased the thinking process and rationalization of actual people. Nowadays, a 13-year-old can try to fake a cybersecurity or blockchain piece fully baked with ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini. This says nothing about their skills or expertise (or how they can apply it in practice).
Part of my “faith in robots” in the early days was based on the rising levels of greed and selfishness in humans. The growing gap between the top 1% and the barely surviving. The disappearing middle class.
A world where private jets were prioritized and Mashable was showcasing success stories of VC-funded founders (many of them failing to execute, unlike bootstrapped businesses making a decent living and helping families and small communities make a difference at a small scale. The same world prioritizing “fash fashion” or junk items from Alibaba to satisfy instant gratification craving that was previously met with kids playing catch in the park or adults meeting for coffee or sharing sugar around the community.
The “good” in many people felt replaced by constant push for salary bumps and job-hopping, limited loyalty, backstabbing, and personal interests (work-life balance as its now known, but usually at the cost of efficiency, productivity, creativity, critical thinking, innovation, or any real effort in driving progress).
But in reality, good and bad exist together, and where weak people may be loud, there are still tons of great people out there. Just see a charity campaign or a fundraiser for sick kids and families. I’m so grateful for everyone chipping in and restoring the faith in humanity.
AI, however, has led to the digital web as we know it. And I don’t know that we have a clear way back.
Most likely, gated content will prevail (not to be stolen by LLMs) and private communities where real faces should be verified will become closed gardens vs. the promise of an open web. This is a massive mental shift and the only one I see as realistic today, unless AI detection is magically invented (which is pretty hard with computer-controlling agents and operators today).
And for now, I bet on humans again. I attend meetup and make it to events, despite being an introvert in nature. Conversations in real time have better signal-to-noise ratio and more and more people are craving the same today.
Let’s make humans great again.
