Personal essays
Should you grab a pick and head for the hills
Saying no
At our neighborhood block party Saturday night, one of my neighbors asked me about machine learning and Apple’s new Vision Pro.
His son is studying Computer Science and he’s encouraging him to look at AI and ML.
I get it.
With my math background I should have embraced ML years ago when it was clear that it was going to be a big area. When books were being written about Tensor Flow and before that about neural nets I kept asking myself why I wasn’t jumping in.
I just didn’t see my place in it.
The same is true for Apple’s new headset. I think there’s going to be a lot of money to be made but I don’t see where I fit in.
It’s kind of like writing. If you don’t like to read and don’t read a lot, you probably aren’t going to be much of a writer.
When I listen to screenwriters talk about their craft, they love to go to movies and watch great television. They watch critically and appreciatively and see things that I’ll never see.
That’s not enough to be a good writer, but it seems to be a necessary condition.
I don’t use VR or AR headsets and don’t actively engage with ML (although it is everywhere in my life) so I don’t see where I fit in.
Selling tools
When the iPhone shipped I knew that I wanted to be involved.
The first apps on the iPhone - even stupid apps - made a ton of money.
No really, I mean stupid apps. When you opened up the developer tools and built the template it was a white screen that you could code to turn into whatever app you wanted. Or you could just ship it and charge for it and say it was a flashlight app.
It was clear from the start that a lot of people were going to make a lot of money.
It was also clear that at some point there would be a lot of people writing apps that never made any money.
There’s nothing wrong with that. I deliberately sell apps like that. They do something I want but don’t make me any money.
But these were developers rushing to the iPhone like it was a gold rush and they wanted to make it rich.
I decided to sell them tools. The people that sold the gold miners picks, blue jeans, and supplies made a good living. They generally didn’t strike it rich - but they also didn’t tend to go bust so long as there were new folks heading to the hills to find their fortune.
I wrote books and sold training. My model was Levi Strauss not Walter Huston’s character in the Treasure of the Sierra Madres. (see his famous Gold Dance here)
Not Chasing fads
I met a guy for coffee who tried to explain his business to me.
It involved Web 3.0, bitcoin, and NFTs.
I kind of understood what his business was but it sounded as if his main business was built around chasing buzzwords.
It’s hard to say no to that thing that everyone is chasing.
Often by the time something becomes that popular, it’s too late to stake your claim. Every inch of ground is covered.
It’s early enough days for Apple’s new Vision Pro for me to find something to do in that world - it was announced two weeks ago. I just don’t know where I’d want to start digging.
As for ML, there are still plenty of opportunities for me and perhaps I should look at building a better blue jean for the folks out working the mines.
I’ve got one maybe two gold rushes left in my career and I’ve been pretty selective. You need to choose which ones you want to be associated with and determine what your role will be.
Levi Strauss started by selling dry goods and tents to the gold miners and only later co-developed his signature jeans.
Maybe the goal isn’t to find a new gold rush but to come up with different things to sell to the large population still working the ground from the last one.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 169. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe