So much great passion and energy went into this essay, it seemed you really put your, well, full spirit into it. As for "prompt engineering" the time has come to replace it with the same terms we use to recognize excellence in the art and skill of precisely and unambiguously communicating to other humans and efficiently articulating to them exactly what one wants done, which requires exceptional coherence and clarity that is both conceptual and verbal. In the military this is when the process of order composition is acheived at its highest level (consider Napoleon's iterative process), but at a more abstract level it is human-to- system "project elocution". If you could measure that human skill of conceptual-verbal drafting craftsmanship on a scalar, it will correlate with who pulls ahead in the near future. Literally skill at wielding a new kind of pen in the old "the pen is mightier than the sword" idiom.
I share this balanced techno-optimistic outlook of yours, combined with the prudence of a conservatism that values tradition. I think this is a strong combination for anyone who wants to offer their children the best opportunities of today’s world without letting the negative aspects of addiction and superficiality dominate their relationship with technology. I see this as one of the greatest responsibilities of those who seek to exercise parenthood in our times.
I remember BBEdit so fondly. I no longer use it, and it’s not in my dock anymore, but I can’t quite bring myself to bury it. So, it sits on all my MacOS devices, waiting. Maybe it’s because I am a fair bit older. 😉
Thank you for knocking on the door of the pattern language we need.
You open with your relationship to a technology. As a boarding-school teacher, I respect _in loco parentis_ and the conscientiousness that the phrase--and its vibe--require. But your image of letting that relationship "amplify the amount of conscientious activity in my family life" depends so wholly on your conditional "well implemented" that I paused over the phrase. And I can't get past it. We need a collection of installed virtues. And in that respect, it's not the Ong-described technology of writing that has led us here, but the Ong-practiced anti-technology of *caring*. Can we care AND foster profits?
I'm working on an open-source framework that would imitate Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language for schooling (and parenting is schooling, yes?) and this "animated" "collective," let's say, "conscientiousness." What ONE pattern might you offer up so that this conscientious engagement remains...well...what is the word? Healthy? Whole? Good?
nice take. "the animations of mankind's collective knowledge" framing resonates.
I sometimes think LLMs as the internet speaking back to us.
Amidst the day to day noise it's good to step back and appreciate this really is an extraordinary science fiction-level technology that we now all have access to.
I am curious: Do you have a routine to check information from the model in response to a query - especially a text response that cannot be verified like a math or coding response. Beyond simple fact-checking, in your routine, how do you determine the usefullness, for example, of a text summary or comparison that the model generates?
"Like a chatbot, you can type to a CLI agent in natural language." I was perplexed for a moment until realizing that by "CLI agent" you mean something like Claude Code which is *launched* from a CLI when I type "claude", and which then commandeers the CLI's terminal emulator window, so that subsequently I'm not typing to a CLI per se, but to a chatbot (e.g., Claude Opus 4.5 configured to be an agent) until I quit by typing "/exit'.
Astonishes me the extent to which I now live in ghostty. Expect I have many years on you and I’ve been a GUI man my whole life. But now…. 9 ghostty tabs / windows open at one time. Previously loved tools sulking in the corner. Trend moreover is all one way.
So much great passion and energy went into this essay, it seemed you really put your, well, full spirit into it. As for "prompt engineering" the time has come to replace it with the same terms we use to recognize excellence in the art and skill of precisely and unambiguously communicating to other humans and efficiently articulating to them exactly what one wants done, which requires exceptional coherence and clarity that is both conceptual and verbal. In the military this is when the process of order composition is acheived at its highest level (consider Napoleon's iterative process), but at a more abstract level it is human-to- system "project elocution". If you could measure that human skill of conceptual-verbal drafting craftsmanship on a scalar, it will correlate with who pulls ahead in the near future. Literally skill at wielding a new kind of pen in the old "the pen is mightier than the sword" idiom.
I share this balanced techno-optimistic outlook of yours, combined with the prudence of a conservatism that values tradition. I think this is a strong combination for anyone who wants to offer their children the best opportunities of today’s world without letting the negative aspects of addiction and superficiality dominate their relationship with technology. I see this as one of the greatest responsibilities of those who seek to exercise parenthood in our times.
I remember BBEdit so fondly. I no longer use it, and it’s not in my dock anymore, but I can’t quite bring myself to bury it. So, it sits on all my MacOS devices, waiting. Maybe it’s because I am a fair bit older. 😉
Thank you for knocking on the door of the pattern language we need.
You open with your relationship to a technology. As a boarding-school teacher, I respect _in loco parentis_ and the conscientiousness that the phrase--and its vibe--require. But your image of letting that relationship "amplify the amount of conscientious activity in my family life" depends so wholly on your conditional "well implemented" that I paused over the phrase. And I can't get past it. We need a collection of installed virtues. And in that respect, it's not the Ong-described technology of writing that has led us here, but the Ong-practiced anti-technology of *caring*. Can we care AND foster profits?
I'm working on an open-source framework that would imitate Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language for schooling (and parenting is schooling, yes?) and this "animated" "collective," let's say, "conscientiousness." What ONE pattern might you offer up so that this conscientious engagement remains...well...what is the word? Healthy? Whole? Good?
nice take. "the animations of mankind's collective knowledge" framing resonates.
I sometimes think LLMs as the internet speaking back to us.
Amidst the day to day noise it's good to step back and appreciate this really is an extraordinary science fiction-level technology that we now all have access to.
I am curious: Do you have a routine to check information from the model in response to a query - especially a text response that cannot be verified like a math or coding response. Beyond simple fact-checking, in your routine, how do you determine the usefullness, for example, of a text summary or comparison that the model generates?
"Like a chatbot, you can type to a CLI agent in natural language." I was perplexed for a moment until realizing that by "CLI agent" you mean something like Claude Code which is *launched* from a CLI when I type "claude", and which then commandeers the CLI's terminal emulator window, so that subsequently I'm not typing to a CLI per se, but to a chatbot (e.g., Claude Opus 4.5 configured to be an agent) until I quit by typing "/exit'.
Astonishes me the extent to which I now live in ghostty. Expect I have many years on you and I’ve been a GUI man my whole life. But now…. 9 ghostty tabs / windows open at one time. Previously loved tools sulking in the corner. Trend moreover is all one way.