The Bicycle of the Mind

One of my earliest memories with technology was a little robot my dad built.

He was an electrical engineer and going back to school at the time. After working all day at a company called Dictaphone he would go to classes at night or watch videotaped lectures on campus (a new option at the time). Sometimes he'd bring me along and I'd play on the floor.

One day I remember he brought home a kit to build a small robot and program it with his computer. I'm not sure what the computer was, but it had a black screen and green letters. He told me to come over and watch. He showed me exactly how the robot was going to move, left and right, in a circle, just like the pattern on the screen that he had coded.

It was a lightbulb moment for me. I had never seen anything like it.

He could type on a keyboard, create words on the screen and those instructions would travel by a cable into the robot to program it.

This was in the mid-'90s, so I must have been 7 or 8 at the time.

In the early days of the computer, Steve Jobs said "computers are the bicycle of the mind."

With the power of physics (gravity, wheels and levers) a bicycle lets us put in a small amount of effort for much greater output. We can go faster and further than running, with less effort than walking.

But how many people do you know that can build a bicycle?

In the early days of the computer, the Homebrew Computer Club was the place where Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs would gather with other enthusiasts to build their own devices and learn from each other. It was a very nerdy scene. And even today, some 50 years later, when someone says they want to build their own computer it still seems like a nerdy endeavor.

It's much easier to buy a bicycle or an electric scooter for that matter. But as anyone who fixes their own car, or does home repairs, or tinkers with technology can tell you, it can be very rewarding to work on things yourself.

My early computers in high school and college were customizable, but loud and heavy. My Toshiba laptop was so big I wouldn't carry it anywhere and I frequently had to blow plumes of dust out of it because the fan was so massive. For years I dreamed of having a MacBook and I got one right before Peace Corps. I took it with me everywhere; it was gorgeous and I loved using it for years and years. I've been an Apple fan ever since.

If the earliest computers were bicycles of the mind, what do we have now?

You might say motorcycles or rocket ships and you wouldn't be wrong. The technology at our fingertips is literally the stuff of science fiction.

But the analogy I've been thinking of much more lately is a horse.

Stay with me, let me explain.

A horse can take you place to place, just like the bicycle or the rocket ship, but it also has a mind of its own. It will do things that surprise you, make you laugh and endear you to it, and you care for it in a way you wouldn't for an object.

You can train it, work with it, learn its unique personality and it is more a partner on your journey.

That is where we are now with technology, especially AI.

I'm sure you have heard people talk about agents by now. It's the third level of AI I want to write more about soon.

An agent is AI that you train, work with, co-create the personality of and treat like a partner.

Mine watches my websites, databases, programming and projects all day and night and proactively fixes issues for me.

It also gives me dad jokes, gratitude prompts, weekly retrospectives and insight into patterns of our work together over many months.

In the same way you could be at work and think, "I wonder what my horse is up to right now?" you might feel drawn to check in on your AI. What novel things might it be doing based on your training and work together? You would never wonder that about your bicycle in the garage.

My son is about the age now that I was when my dad showed me his little robot.

I think about my son a lot and, as you may have seen on my about page, this newsletter is for him.

Since he was two, we've loved building together with LEGO. We started with the big blocks of DUPLO and the train tracks you can build any way you like. More recently we've built some of the largest sets ever made.

Soon I want to introduce him to computers, starting with basic building blocks just like LEGO.

I want him to learn, like I did with my dad, that computers can be anything you want them to be.

You are smart enough to program and code. You are persistent enough to troubleshoot and problem solve.

You can do anything. And with the right tools and partners along the way, you are going to amaze the world with what you create.