Joy Was the Point

Everyone's optimizing for the robot now.

Listen to how people talk about it. They've got a magic toolset, a harness, the perfect prompt — and it's going to be the tits for their company. They're squeezing every last drop of efficiency out of the work.

Here's what gets squeezed out: improvisation. The wrong turn that becomes the whole point. The bored doodle that becomes the brand. The delight of making a thing without knowing exactly how it'll come out.

Optimize a creative process to death and you don't get more creation.

People are going to look up from their perfectly tuned pipeline one day and realize they don't enjoy a single part of it anymore.