I’ve been playing with Zo computer and new AI models lately and I haven’t felt this way about computers since I was a kid. I started thinking about it, and I went down memory lane.
As a kid, I was unburdened by what I didn’t know and the silliness of adulthood. Social titles, work titles, titles that box you in.
I did so many things: I streamed online radio because it seemed fun. I built a Django project from scratch with help from strangers on IRC, and I wasn’t a developer. I had a blog, but I wasn’t a blogger. I used Photoshop but I wasn’t a designer. I used Linux, managed my own server, but I wasn’t a sysadmin. I sold stuff online but I wasn’t an e-commerce specialist.
All I was was curious. I had a conviction that nothing was too hard to learn.
The other thing I had was time. I could spend three months getting a half-baked Django app running, or a full week making my microphone work on Linux. Now I don’t have that kind of time. But I still get the occasional idea I want to see in the world.
The difference is that if I know what to tell an AI agent, I can get a good version of it. A really good version over one weekend.
I went through different iterations of 7am.email¹, made a decent v0.1, and landed on a solid v1.
What would have taken weeks and a team took me two days.
I built it and I’m still not a developer or a designer and that’s the point.
Here’s to more generalists. More polymaths. More broadly curious people.
All hail masters of none.
¹7am.email – A daily email with your weather and the news that matters to you.