Conceptualize Large Language Models as capable interns. They excel at tasks that can be explained in 10-20 seconds but lack the context and planning ability for complex projects. The key constraint is whether you can clearly articulate the request to yourself and then to the machine.
Large online communities are developing the attributes of nations: a shared identity (people), governance structures (blockchains, forums), and economies (cryptocurrencies). The next logical step in their evolution is to resolve the tension between their digital cohesion and physical dispersion by crowdfunding and acquiring land.
The most opportune moment to focus on a new technology is when it is dynamic, exciting, and poorly understood. The point at which it becomes mainstream and easily explainable is often the signal that the period of exponential change is over, and it's time to shift attention to the next frontier.
The volume of discussion about a technology is highest during its transition from novelty to ubiquity. Once fully integrated, conversation fades even as usage is at its peak. Attention follows the rate of change (derivative), not the absolute level of adoption.
The traditional model of military tech trickling down to consumers has inverted. The massive scale of consumer products like smartphones makes components cheap and powerful, leading to their adoption and adaptation by the military, which now follows the consumer market.
The massive scale of the smartphone market created a surplus of cheap, high-performance components (cameras, batteries, chips). This "smartphone dividend" became an off-the-shelf supply chain that enabled the creation of entirely new hardware categories like drones, VR headsets, and IoT devices.
In its current form, AI primarily benefits experts by amplifying their existing knowledge. An expert can provide better prompts due to a richer vocabulary and more effectively verify the output due to deep domain context. It's a tool that makes knowledgeable people more productive, not a replacement for their expertise.
Crypto adoption follows a U-shaped curve, bypassing the mainstream middle class. Its primary appeal is to two extremes: the "powerless" in countries with unstable economies seeking a safe haven for assets, and the "power users" dealing with complex, high-friction international finance that traditional banking rails handle poorly.
Not all tech disruption is a zero-sum replacement. Uber directly substituted the taxi industry's core function. In contrast, Airbnb is largely additive, serving different use cases (longer stays, group travel) and expanding the overall travel accommodation market rather than simply stealing share from hotels.
Google Trends data shows a historical shift in search queries from "cheap" to "best." This reflects the internet's evolution. Initially, users knew what they wanted and used the web for price comparison. Now, they go online for discovery, recommendation, and curation, seeking help further up the purchasing funnel.
The slow development of consumer-facing crypto applications isn't a sign of failure, but a constraint of "block space"—the capacity for on-chain computation and storage. Just as low bandwidth throttled the early web to text-only sites, limited block space gates crypto apps to simpler financial transactions for now.
Effective AI prompting is a high-level form of programming that requires a rich, specific vocabulary. Experts in fields like art history or software engineering can generate superior results because they can provide more precise instructions (e.g., specific styles, frameworks), making deep domain knowledge more valuable than ever.
AI can generate vast amounts of content, but its value is limited by our ability to verify its accuracy. This is fast for visual outputs (images, UI) where our eyes instantly spot flaws, but slow and difficult for abstract domains like back-end code, math, or financial data, which require deep expertise to validate.