⌨️Standing on Sediment: Timing the Typewriter

“This is a field where one does his work and in ten years it is obsolete. It’s sort of like a sentiment of rocks. You’re building up a mountain and you get to contribute your little layer of sedimentary rock to make the mountain that much higher. No one will see it, but they will stand on it.” - Steve Jobs

I like typewriters. They scratch an itch. They’re tactile, understandable, and enjoyable to clank around on. But when I need to write an essay, I reach for my keyboard.

Some people still use typewriters.

In 1816, the first camera was invented. Before then, if you wanted to capture a landscape or portrait, you needed a steady hand and paint. Then everything changed. Not all at once, but for the first time, painting wasn’t the best way to capture a setting.

The same is true today. If you want the outcome, you use a camera. If you want the process, you pick up a brush. Each has its own function.

The trend of the 21st century has been the creation of cameras and keyboards.

Recent keyboards include:

• Podcasts replacing nightly news
• YouTube and short-form content eclipsing primetime TV
• Online retail reshaping in-store shopping

This week, OpenAI released Sora 2—challenging TikTok’s dominance just as TikTok finalized a White-House-brokered deal with Oracle. Legacy systems like broadcast news, print papers, and brick-and-mortar retail still exist, but in different roles. Today, bingeing podcasts or how-to YouTube videos is the 21st-century equivalent of bingeing Friends or How I Met Your Mother. The mediums shift, but entertainment is still entertainment—and commerce is still commerce.

AI is the ultimate keyboard—powerful enough to turn us all into typewriter users overnight. To many, it looms as a boogeyman that might both steal jobs and save the world. Meanwhile, the biggest companies are pouring billions into feeding it the world’s data and capital. With the layers of technological sediment piling up so quickly, how do we find stable ground to look ahead?

Start by identifying today’s typewriters.

Typewriter mechanics will always defend typewriters. But technology adapts faster than social convention. New tools, like CRISPR, stem cell therapy, and blockchain, are always met with skepticism. In the short run, they disappoint. In the long run, they prevail.

AI is no different. Though some remain dismissive, there’s still headroom in reinforcement learning and specialized models—one reason I’m not rushing to study dermatology or radiology anytime soon.

“The goal isn’t to get married but to stay married. The goal isn’t to get into business but to stay in business.”

- Alex Hormozi

The goal isn’t to cling to typewriters. It’s to avoid confusing tools with ends—and to keep betting on the right horse at the right time. The sediment of technology is moving so quickly that the present is the future.

TLDR: The present is the future. Teach kids to play with keyboards, not typewriters.