There is something very good and something very hard about being in tech. The reason is exactly the same. New things appear every day. This is both an endless opportunity and a terrible curse. I’ve been trying out Moltbot (formerly Clawdbot) for several days, ever since it came out. It felt like taking Claude, an AI with limitless potential, out of a flask and giving it a body. The moment I saw it on Twitter, my fingers ordered a Mac mini. By the early hours of the next morning, I had it set up. Twenty minutes was enough. You have to act on something like this right away to earn the right to breathe in this field.
When I told a friend about this, they said, "You sound really excited." They were right. I was excited. But at the same time, I wonder. Am I really excited, or do I believe I have to be? In this field, there is a deep-rooted fear that even a single day without learning will leave you behind. Stay off Twitter for a few days and you’re old school. Take two weeks off and you’re a fossil. So I can’t help scrolling through my feed and hitting save whenever I have a spare moment. I install things, pay for them, and mull over my impressions.
Every day, I hypnotize myself. "This is fun." Over and over, for more than a decade. At some point, another fear struck me: the boundary of my own awareness had disappeared. The line between genuinely enjoying something and being brainwashed into enjoying it had grown faint. Any ability to see myself objectively evaporates every dawn in a cloud of dopamine. How much of this is my own taste, my own hobby? But do I really need to know? Something incredibly fun will come out tomorrow anyway. The kidnapper is far too charming for me to call my current state Stockholm syndrome.
Ah, this is fun. Really. Probably. I think it might be. Let’s say it is for now. A few new services must have launched while I was writing this. I should go check again. I really think it’ll be fun.