The Friday Thing #789

Johnnie Walker was not imbibed following last week’s edition. Maybe this week….

The Friday Thing #789 is not going to be a very cogent edition – more like a loose collection of ideas, bouncing around in my brain that need to get out to make room for other ideas. Or perhaps someone here will help remix and make sense of them. We shall see.

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The edition was inspired by the notepad below that a friend gave me as a gift a while back (thanks, Trish). It’d sat on my desk for a while, waiting for its calling – which came a few weekends ago when I sprinted out of the door to head to Brussels for work. Of course, I had packed my other “notepad” in the form of my Surface Laptop, but I had a sense that I may need analog support on this trip. It turned out to be a wise decision as I ran from meeting to meeting, adding to my “punch list”. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, reach for my notepad and write down a new idea or an action I had forgotten to track. Most times, this information is all logged in OneNote – my digital notebook that is synched across many different devices in my life. But at times, there is no replacement for the speed, versatility, and portability of analog. I have a Surface Duo too which meets many of these needs, but analog has one thing none of them have – infinite battery life. I don’t mean that as a criticism of my digital tools – more an observation that technology is rarely a “zero sum game”. That’s a very ‘tech phrase’ that I see media writing about often – the notion that one new piece of tech will wipe another one out. Occasionally that happens, but often it’s somewhere in between.?

I have also been thinking about our relationship with new tech when it comes along. Often there is wonderment, that quickly turns to suspicion that turns to rejection. Some things for sure do fade away, but others just become part of the fabric of life. None more so than GPS, which I personally think is one of the most transformative technologies of our time. I asked the new Bing to give me a short explainer on GPS and how it’s changed our lives. Here is what I got:

I think GPS is remarkable – though it has not wiped-out paper maps, last time I looked. And, despite lots of the recent chatter around AI and generative AI in particular, I think it’s even more transformative than GPS. Like GPS, AI is all around us today in ways we may not immediately appreciate. Face ID on your mobile phone or PC? AI. Predictive text in email or text messaging? AI. Streaming music recommendations? AI. High quality streaming video? AI. Self-learning home thermostat? AI. Financial fraud detection? AI. In fact I asked the new Bing to give some ideas and here is what it came up with.?

My point here….I think, is that slowly but surely, this new generative AI is being woven into my workflow. Will it replace my notepad when I just want to scratch out some ideas and jot down some notes? No, but will it become another tool in the quiver that I rely on instinctively? For sure.

Am not sure that made much sense this week but y’know, sometimes that’s how it goes.

Cheers and happy Friday.

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-Steve?