Today I wrote a computer terminal that I could use from a web page. With “mini me.” I mean together with “Chat GPT Plus O3 Mini High.” Why I did? That is not the point. But after I did, I realized:
"Okay, that wasn't a lot of code!"
And right there, a good point for us to reflect. So I say now, that GPT Plus gave me that. That answer, right there. What is new here, therefore and from a philosophical perspective, has to do with the doer's ability to do it, to advance. And to do that in a happy state. I can explain my situation, what changed for me.
But why happy? You may wonder. Is it because of the magical powers being given? Well, in part, for sure. And many say that this is the major thing going on. I buy that. The lamp genie pops up, three wishes, we love her ability to one-click solve our needs.
But allow me, for now, to consider the contrast with the world as we knew. If you are a developer, a web developer perhaps, maybe you grew up in this world. A great world, indeed, but too a sad world where too many words and things grew everywhere. Bad communication, grammatically correct. Tough world.
As an example, answers from Google took us to new kinds of pages, complex pages, with complex user interfaces, confusing in new ways, full of ads, full of noise, with comments of all sorts, ads and call to action of all sorts:
And if not - at any time - a new update to the user interface - out of the sudden. So someone or something pulls the carpet, right there. When you less need that, right? Or every time, by the hour. And they tell you:
Hey, buddy, we just launched XYZ feature!
And next:
Do you want a guided tour?
And then, and before you blink, the screen fades out and the limelight shows. Not there, there! That sort of thing, a normal world? A normal canvas, for many, many that grew on top of that world. No way to escape, to know. Thus too difficult for many to navigate through noise as it isn’t noise. It got to a point that even signal sounded like noise. The strange thing. In a noisy world. And we got used to that, that sad world:
It’s sad to a point I almost say “I miss the old world of public departments, static in time.” That’s the reflection. User experience needs ergonomics, we know. But there is something else too:
User experience needs character
Because character matters. What is happening here and now, when one builds with Chat GPT (as an example), has to do with developer's best friend phenomenon. Or you may say it's builder's best friend function. For me, I feel alive. As a producer, as a builder, as a person, as a learner too. For now, in terms of user experience, I can play along.
Please don’t get me wrong. I do fear that genie, that first locomotive that approached Ohio in 1828, or that little calculator. But for now, for today, allow me to breathe. And to, even if in certain ways I shall be distracted in new ways, to move on. By not stepping on stones, little stones, painful bits and pieces, glass made of visual elements. These little things draining my energy.
To close, and to reach out to a point above the point, I ask us to respect ourselves, when in front of any system’s interfaces. For many of us, depending on systems for survival, we have been taken to a place, to think that what we see is right and we are wrong. This is when second nature becomes first nature. The price we pay, for not thinking it’s all badly written, is that we tend to judge ourselves. Oh, it must be me. And as a plus? When it’s time to build, we build on top of that too. We collaborate.
To be continued… But if you want to see that “terminal within the web page”, check out this video.