Building towards the future #

People outside the snap #

We are in the constant and irrevocable process of stepping into the future, and we are always making bets on it and building towards it. #

Anything we build is intended to shift something in the future.

We cook so future-me won’t be hungry. We cook good-for-me food so future-me will be healthy. 

We change the oil in our car because we want it to keep working. If we didn’t? Eventually what’s there would get old, burn off, muck up the engine at best and destroy the engine at worst.

We build shelters so we can survive with higher likelihood into the future, removing ourselves just enough from the changing weather. 

We produce software to make a thing go more smoothly somewhere down the road. Sure, there has also historically been a goal of “lots of money!”, but if the software didn’t make some sense of benefit, there would be no money to make.

What we’re in the process of building is for us, but not for now-us. It’s for future-us. The problematic part is that the future-us is primarily leveraging data and informations structures validated by past-us — not even in line with present-us.

Some of us build deeper into the future than others. More of us need to. Building for emerging data takes a completely different structure and information architecture than what is described in our current best practices; genAI doesn't even do it.

The person using our IT as it currently exists is stuck in the past. Finishing up a contract (e.g., a clerk at a car rental agency) is working towards the future, but all their steps are predefined and have no wiggle space. They are stuck building into the future with only the past as the guidelines, as filtered through the perception of business and its priorities with more or less adherence to the reality the actual moment.