A colleague mentioned, the other day, the idea of being able to generate a complete website in just ten minutes. The reference was made in passing during a wider discussion on AI, and while it wasn’t the main focus of the conversation, it stuck with me.
I have a particular fondness for hopeful science fiction. The sort of thing that could be called solar punk. Part of that is probably the cosiness of it. How could anyone resist the charm of Becky Chambers’s tea monks, cycling from town to town, listening with care and attention, preparing salving brews?
I was struck by two things I encountered online this week: a video about a bell foundry and an interview with a fashion designer. I suppose both subjects lend themselves to my interests in some vague way, but not very closely.
Personal computing in the ’90s and early ’00s moved at a rapid pace. At least, that’s how I remember it. School curricula, not so much. Around 2003, I was being taught about the merits of dot-matrix printers, how to choose between a command line interface and graphical user interface, and the intricacies of network topologies.…