> write building-block essays with AI help, and then glue them together with artisanal unassisted ones
I realized it seems pretty conceptually similar to the process I've found works really well for building software with LLMs. Vibe code a bunch of separate parts that do things an AI is good enough at one-shotting, taking care to make sure they're cohesive ideas with usable interfaces, and then gluing them together...
I laughed out loud as soon as I opened this email. It's true I am buckling under the load and have been contemplating taking an evening espresso to try to get another hour for reading.
i may be missing something here. do you need to do __less__ re-reading of an essay when you build it with AI? do you feel that building it with AI requires less rereading than building it alone and then having AI fix it? (assuming the main drag is rereading ad nauseam - and then you ship)
Re-read the linked "Welcome to the Future Nauseous" essay with the help of AI and found it particularly insightful, specially because using AI I can quickly cut out the parts which are less interesting, and and ask AI to expand upon, and add more example for the parts I'm more interested in.
--- --- ---
Here's the AI discussion for the audience:
Prompt:
"<essayContent>
Give me a 3-7 bulleted para summary of core concepts of this essay."
Response:
"""Here is a 3-7 bullet point summary of the core concepts in Venkatesh Rao's essay "Welcome to the Future Nauseous":
- The Manufactured Normalcy Field (MNF): We live within a psychological and cultural construct that actively smooths over technological and societal changes, making the present feel static and continuous. This "Field" prevents us from truly feeling that the future is constantly arriving, even as we intellectually recognize changes like smartphones or global population growth.
- Future Arrives via Specialization and Metaphor: The future doesn't arrive temporally for everyone. Instead, it integrates into society primarily through (a) specialists who gain narrow, instrumental mastery of new technologies (like fighter pilots for flight), often without deeper appreciation, and (b) normalization via metaphor, where new concepts are mapped onto familiar older ones (e.g., the web onto documents, smartphones onto phones) to make them usable and non-disruptive.
- Experience Lags Behind Reality (The Stretched Past): Because normalization relies on existing metaphors, our lived experience of technology remains anchored in older frameworks (Rao suggests perhaps as far back as the "15th Century" metaphorically). The Field doesn't move into the future; it stretches to incorporate new elements, making our present a heavily overloaded version of the past.
- Instrumental vs. Appreciative Understanding: We develop the ability to use new technologies (instrumental comprehension) effectively within the MNF, but we often lack a deeper, intuitive grasp (appreciative comprehension) of their true nature, complexity, or transformative potential. We can use Facebook, but struggle to truly comprehend the underlying reality it represents.
- Critique of Futurism/Edge Culture: Both traditional futurism and edge cultures fail to capture how the future actually arrives. Futurism often imagines change defining itself rather than being normalized into familiarity, while edge culture experiences cumbersome prototypes or pursues stimulation, rather than the eventual, often mundane, normalized future experienced by the mainstream.
- Future Nausea (The Threat of Field Collapse): The real danger isn't necessarily "future shock" (being overwhelmed by speed), but the potential for the MNF to stretch too thin and break down ("attenuation"). As shared realities fragment (e.g., through personalized media feeds), we lose a common Field, leading to pervasive anxiety, disorientation, and a constant state of existential unease or "Future Nausea."""
Prompt:
"Expand more on the Futurism/Edge Culture, cite examples from the essay, but also your own."
Response:
"""
Okay, let's expand on Venkatesh Rao's critique of futurism and edge culture, incorporating examples from the essay and adding others.
Rao argues that both futurism (the practice of predicting future trends) and edge cultures (subcultures obsessed with or early adopters of future technologies/ideas) often misunderstand how the future actually manifests in the present. They fail because they overlook the power of the "Manufactured Normalcy Field" (MNF) and the processes of normalization.
Here's a breakdown of his critique:
Frozen in a Different Time Theater: Rao contends that edge-culturists aren't actually living in the future ahead of the mainstream. Instead, they are "frozen in time too," just in a different part of the "time theater." Their activities are often more about seeking higher levels of stimulation or performing a certain social identity ("reactionary musical and sartorial tastes," challenging mainstream manners) than about engaging with the future as it will eventually be lived by the majority.
Essay Example: He explicitly states, "The edge today looks strangely similar to the edge in any previous century... Edge-dwelling is a social rather than technological phenomenon."
External Example: Consider the various iterations of cyberpunk aesthetics over decades. While influential, the actual day-to-day experience of using the internet and advanced computing hasn't universally adopted the trench coats, mirror shades, and gritty noir atmosphere. The social signaling of being "cyberpunk" often persists independently of the mundane reality of interacting with normalized technology.
Experiencing the Mechanism, Not the Normalized Future: Early adopters and edge-dwellers often grapple with cumbersome, difficult-to-use prototypes or systems. Their experience is defined by the struggle with the mechanism, which is vastly different from the smooth, normalized experience the technology might eventually offer the mainstream.
Essay Example: Steven Roberts' Behemoth bicycle (1991) is Rao's prime example. It was a complex, custom-built recumbent bike laden with early mobile computing and communication tech. While it foreshadowed smartphone capabilities, Rao argues Roberts didn't experience the future of mobile communication as we do (normalized via the simple "pacifier" metaphor of the iPhone). Instead, Roberts experienced the complex mechanisms required to achieve those functions on a bicycle in 1991.
External Example: Early Virtual Reality setups in the 90s involved heavy headsets, complex calibration, and often induced literal nausea. People using them were experiencing the difficulty of VR, not the seamless (or potentially seamless) immersive experience envisioned or the currently more normalized versions used for gaming or specific training, often understood via existing metaphors ("like being in the game").
Focusing on Pre-Field Excitement, Missing Post-Field Value: Futurists and edge cultures are often drawn to the potential of technology before it gets normalized and integrated into the MNF. Rao calls them "pre-Fieldists." However, he argues (perhaps cynically, perhaps pragmatically) that technology often only becomes truly impactful and valuable (economically and socially) after it becomes "technically boring" and integrated into the Field ("post-Fieldists," like marketers).
Essay Example: "Most futurists are interested in the future beyond the Field. I am primarily interested in the future once it enters the Field... This is also where the future turns into money... Technology only becomes interesting once it becomes technically boring." He notes this explains why few futurists get rich – they are excited by the un-normalized, less valuable parts.
External Example: The initial excitement around blockchain technology focused on radical disruption of finance, decentralized autonomous organizations, etc. (pre-Field). Much of the actual value currently being realized (post-Field, arguably still early) involves more mundane applications like supply chain tracking or specific financial instruments, often integrated into existing corporate structures and understood via existing business process metaphors, rather than the revolutionary visions.
Failing to Predict Normalization Through Metaphor: Both futurism and science fiction often imagine the future defining itself with new behaviors, aesthetics, and concepts. They fail to anticipate that when elements of that future arrive, they will be translated into familiar terms through existing conceptual metaphors, minimizing actual behavioral change. This makes their predictions feel "unreal" or quaint when the future actually arrives in its normalized form.
Essay Example: Alvin Toffler is critiqued not for failing to predict increased mobility's impact on housing, but for failing to predict we'd understand phenomena like Airbnb or couch-surfing through mundane, existing metaphors like "Bed and Breakfast," rather than through Toffler's more future-specific concepts (like "modular housing" defining itself).
Essay Example: Science Fiction often depicts radically different ways of living for dramatic effect (strange clothes, behaviors, social structures). Rao argues this is entertaining precisely because it's different, but reality works to minimize these differences upon arrival. A flexible e-ink newspaper playing movies becomes a "bad startup pitch" reality, not the magical object in Harry Potter.
External Example: Early visions of the internet often emphasized its radical potential for anonymity, free information, and new forms of community (pre-Field, self-defined concepts). Its widespread adoption involved normalization through metaphors like the "information superhighway," "cyberspace" (as a place), "social networks" (yearbook/rolodex metaphor via Facebook), and e-commerce ("online storefronts"). The lived experience became less radically other and more an extension of existing activities.
In essence, Rao sees futurism and edge culture as often being captivated by the potential disruption and the imagined novelty, while consistently underestimating the immense inertia of the present and the power of cultural and psychological mechanisms that domesticate the future by translating it into familiar, less threatening terms. They focus on the shiny object, missing the mundane-but-powerful process by which it actually becomes part of everyday life.
I’ve had a lot of fun noodling with AIs the last couple of weeks. Is there one that you’d recommend over others? I don’t really feel like paying for more than one but I’m really feeling the limits of the free ones
I can't wait until I trust an AI enough so that the 1:1000:1 decompression compression centaur to centaur information flow works. But right now having a frontier model with that much personal context feels like too much of a liability
When I read this line:
> write building-block essays with AI help, and then glue them together with artisanal unassisted ones
I realized it seems pretty conceptually similar to the process I've found works really well for building software with LLMs. Vibe code a bunch of separate parts that do things an AI is good enough at one-shotting, taking care to make sure they're cohesive ideas with usable interfaces, and then gluing them together...
I laughed out loud as soon as I opened this email. It's true I am buckling under the load and have been contemplating taking an evening espresso to try to get another hour for reading.
🚀☕️
i may be missing something here. do you need to do __less__ re-reading of an essay when you build it with AI? do you feel that building it with AI requires less rereading than building it alone and then having AI fix it? (assuming the main drag is rereading ad nauseam - and then you ship)
Thanks for prompt to do more AI driven reading!
Re-read the linked "Welcome to the Future Nauseous" essay with the help of AI and found it particularly insightful, specially because using AI I can quickly cut out the parts which are less interesting, and and ask AI to expand upon, and add more example for the parts I'm more interested in.
--- --- ---
Here's the AI discussion for the audience:
Prompt:
"<essayContent>
Give me a 3-7 bulleted para summary of core concepts of this essay."
Response:
"""Here is a 3-7 bullet point summary of the core concepts in Venkatesh Rao's essay "Welcome to the Future Nauseous":
- The Manufactured Normalcy Field (MNF): We live within a psychological and cultural construct that actively smooths over technological and societal changes, making the present feel static and continuous. This "Field" prevents us from truly feeling that the future is constantly arriving, even as we intellectually recognize changes like smartphones or global population growth.
- Future Arrives via Specialization and Metaphor: The future doesn't arrive temporally for everyone. Instead, it integrates into society primarily through (a) specialists who gain narrow, instrumental mastery of new technologies (like fighter pilots for flight), often without deeper appreciation, and (b) normalization via metaphor, where new concepts are mapped onto familiar older ones (e.g., the web onto documents, smartphones onto phones) to make them usable and non-disruptive.
- Experience Lags Behind Reality (The Stretched Past): Because normalization relies on existing metaphors, our lived experience of technology remains anchored in older frameworks (Rao suggests perhaps as far back as the "15th Century" metaphorically). The Field doesn't move into the future; it stretches to incorporate new elements, making our present a heavily overloaded version of the past.
- Instrumental vs. Appreciative Understanding: We develop the ability to use new technologies (instrumental comprehension) effectively within the MNF, but we often lack a deeper, intuitive grasp (appreciative comprehension) of their true nature, complexity, or transformative potential. We can use Facebook, but struggle to truly comprehend the underlying reality it represents.
- Critique of Futurism/Edge Culture: Both traditional futurism and edge cultures fail to capture how the future actually arrives. Futurism often imagines change defining itself rather than being normalized into familiarity, while edge culture experiences cumbersome prototypes or pursues stimulation, rather than the eventual, often mundane, normalized future experienced by the mainstream.
- Future Nausea (The Threat of Field Collapse): The real danger isn't necessarily "future shock" (being overwhelmed by speed), but the potential for the MNF to stretch too thin and break down ("attenuation"). As shared realities fragment (e.g., through personalized media feeds), we lose a common Field, leading to pervasive anxiety, disorientation, and a constant state of existential unease or "Future Nausea."""
Prompt:
"Expand more on the Futurism/Edge Culture, cite examples from the essay, but also your own."
Response:
"""
Okay, let's expand on Venkatesh Rao's critique of futurism and edge culture, incorporating examples from the essay and adding others.
Rao argues that both futurism (the practice of predicting future trends) and edge cultures (subcultures obsessed with or early adopters of future technologies/ideas) often misunderstand how the future actually manifests in the present. They fail because they overlook the power of the "Manufactured Normalcy Field" (MNF) and the processes of normalization.
Here's a breakdown of his critique:
Frozen in a Different Time Theater: Rao contends that edge-culturists aren't actually living in the future ahead of the mainstream. Instead, they are "frozen in time too," just in a different part of the "time theater." Their activities are often more about seeking higher levels of stimulation or performing a certain social identity ("reactionary musical and sartorial tastes," challenging mainstream manners) than about engaging with the future as it will eventually be lived by the majority.
Essay Example: He explicitly states, "The edge today looks strangely similar to the edge in any previous century... Edge-dwelling is a social rather than technological phenomenon."
External Example: Consider the various iterations of cyberpunk aesthetics over decades. While influential, the actual day-to-day experience of using the internet and advanced computing hasn't universally adopted the trench coats, mirror shades, and gritty noir atmosphere. The social signaling of being "cyberpunk" often persists independently of the mundane reality of interacting with normalized technology.
Experiencing the Mechanism, Not the Normalized Future: Early adopters and edge-dwellers often grapple with cumbersome, difficult-to-use prototypes or systems. Their experience is defined by the struggle with the mechanism, which is vastly different from the smooth, normalized experience the technology might eventually offer the mainstream.
Essay Example: Steven Roberts' Behemoth bicycle (1991) is Rao's prime example. It was a complex, custom-built recumbent bike laden with early mobile computing and communication tech. While it foreshadowed smartphone capabilities, Rao argues Roberts didn't experience the future of mobile communication as we do (normalized via the simple "pacifier" metaphor of the iPhone). Instead, Roberts experienced the complex mechanisms required to achieve those functions on a bicycle in 1991.
External Example: Early Virtual Reality setups in the 90s involved heavy headsets, complex calibration, and often induced literal nausea. People using them were experiencing the difficulty of VR, not the seamless (or potentially seamless) immersive experience envisioned or the currently more normalized versions used for gaming or specific training, often understood via existing metaphors ("like being in the game").
Focusing on Pre-Field Excitement, Missing Post-Field Value: Futurists and edge cultures are often drawn to the potential of technology before it gets normalized and integrated into the MNF. Rao calls them "pre-Fieldists." However, he argues (perhaps cynically, perhaps pragmatically) that technology often only becomes truly impactful and valuable (economically and socially) after it becomes "technically boring" and integrated into the Field ("post-Fieldists," like marketers).
Essay Example: "Most futurists are interested in the future beyond the Field. I am primarily interested in the future once it enters the Field... This is also where the future turns into money... Technology only becomes interesting once it becomes technically boring." He notes this explains why few futurists get rich – they are excited by the un-normalized, less valuable parts.
External Example: The initial excitement around blockchain technology focused on radical disruption of finance, decentralized autonomous organizations, etc. (pre-Field). Much of the actual value currently being realized (post-Field, arguably still early) involves more mundane applications like supply chain tracking or specific financial instruments, often integrated into existing corporate structures and understood via existing business process metaphors, rather than the revolutionary visions.
Failing to Predict Normalization Through Metaphor: Both futurism and science fiction often imagine the future defining itself with new behaviors, aesthetics, and concepts. They fail to anticipate that when elements of that future arrive, they will be translated into familiar terms through existing conceptual metaphors, minimizing actual behavioral change. This makes their predictions feel "unreal" or quaint when the future actually arrives in its normalized form.
Essay Example: Alvin Toffler is critiqued not for failing to predict increased mobility's impact on housing, but for failing to predict we'd understand phenomena like Airbnb or couch-surfing through mundane, existing metaphors like "Bed and Breakfast," rather than through Toffler's more future-specific concepts (like "modular housing" defining itself).
Essay Example: Science Fiction often depicts radically different ways of living for dramatic effect (strange clothes, behaviors, social structures). Rao argues this is entertaining precisely because it's different, but reality works to minimize these differences upon arrival. A flexible e-ink newspaper playing movies becomes a "bad startup pitch" reality, not the magical object in Harry Potter.
External Example: Early visions of the internet often emphasized its radical potential for anonymity, free information, and new forms of community (pre-Field, self-defined concepts). Its widespread adoption involved normalization through metaphors like the "information superhighway," "cyberspace" (as a place), "social networks" (yearbook/rolodex metaphor via Facebook), and e-commerce ("online storefronts"). The lived experience became less radically other and more an extension of existing activities.
In essence, Rao sees futurism and edge culture as often being captivated by the potential disruption and the imagined novelty, while consistently underestimating the immense inertia of the present and the power of cultural and psychological mechanisms that domesticate the future by translating it into familiar, less threatening terms. They focus on the shiny object, missing the mundane-but-powerful process by which it actually becomes part of everyday life.
"""
You've inspired me. Enjoyable evening getting this out and the bar about "good ai slop is fun for *you* to read" really helps.
https://promptness.substack.com/p/the-structured-chaos-of-non-judgment
I’ve had a lot of fun noodling with AIs the last couple of weeks. Is there one that you’d recommend over others? I don’t really feel like paying for more than one but I’m really feeling the limits of the free ones
I just use chatgpt for everything
I’ve read this somewhere else but even though you can’t go wrong with ChatGPT, Claude is more friendly and the responses work better for me.
For me, Gemini is my chatgpt compete and I primarily use claude (their projects feature is really nice for building up context)
I can't wait until I trust an AI enough so that the 1:1000:1 decompression compression centaur to centaur information flow works. But right now having a frontier model with that much personal context feels like too much of a liability