A 16-year-old with no credentials and no capital could just do things. The world of bits offered the freedom to build without being drowned in arbitrary constraints, in a way that didn’t require assembling vast capital or prestige or connections, where your creativity and work could speak for itself, and you had agency. This is a precious thing and we should seek to preserve it for as long as it is possible, because there is still much possibility left. We’ve only just begun scratching the surface for what is possible to build and how best to harness the intelligence of powerful models.
80% of me finds me in complete agreement with this read. I was lucky to grow up on BBS' then the commercial net ( AOL / Prodigy / CompuServe ) then everyone was able to just have a connection, and the digital world became flat. The other 20% of me really does worry about new models just being released to everyone on a whim and not tested for the wielding of their power. However, I am starting to err more towards the side of that 80% though as I beginning to see the tokenization tollbooths kick in. This is a great read.
The Closing of the Frontier — Tanya Verma
