The Weeking #5
Three wonderful things to read this week
Eight Software Markets that AI Will Transform Differently
A well-considered and very welcome read:
Software is produced in at least eight distinct markets, each with different constraints, different demand elasticities, and different relationships to the factors that AI coding actually changes. Predicting what happens to “software” is like predicting what happens to “transportation”—the answer for container shipping is different from the answer for bicycle commuting.
https://davegriffith.substack.com/p/eight-software-markets-ai-that-will
Dan Wang's 2025 Letter
Every year (except 2024) Dan Wang pens a long, thoughtful exploration of the state of China, and US-China relations. This years' is one of his best:
The two most insular cities I’ve lived in are San Francisco and Beijing. They are places where people are willing to risk apocalypse every day in order to reach utopia. Though Beijing is open only to a narrow slice of newcomers — the young, smart, and Han — its elites must think about the rest of the country and the rest of the world. San Francisco is more open, but when people move there, they stop thinking about the world at large. Tech folks may be the worst-traveled segment of American elites. People stop themselves from leaving in part because they can correctly claim to live in one of the most naturally beautiful corners of the world, in part because they feel they should not tear themselves away from inventing the future. More than any other topic, I’m bewildered by the way that Silicon Valley talks about AI.
How Will the Miracle Happen Today?
Possibly the best essay Kevin Kelly has ever written. And that's a high bar.
Kindness is like a breath. It can be squeezed out, or drawn in. You can wait for it, or you can summon it. To solicit a gift from a stranger takes a certain state of openness. If you are lost or ill, this is easy, but most days you are neither, so embracing extreme generosity takes some preparation. I learned from hitchhiking to think of this as an exchange. During the moment the stranger offers his or her goodness, the person being aided can reciprocate with degrees of humility, dependency, gratitude, surprise, trust, delight, relief, and amusement to the stranger. It takes some practice to enable this exchange when you don’t feel desperate. Ironically, you are less inclined to be ready for the gift when you are feeling whole, full, complete, and independent!
How Will the Miracle Happen Today? - The Technium
Enjoy your week!
Mark