Big Tech Can’t Start Over. We can.
I used to think I was normal.
However, as I reflect on my childhood and youth, or hear stories about myself, I’m pretty sure I’m not. My mom says I had certain “Sunday socks.“ Up until about 12-13, my favorite thing to do was build with legos in my room. At some age, my dad taught me the trick to building strong lego structures. Counterintuitively to me, you need to stagger the blocks. I clearly hadn’t yet thought about brick structures.
Another thing my dad taught me is carpentry.
I’ve fallen in love with it. I was building decks with my dad as a teen and being sent to finish out new builds a few years later. I gained so much experience in the world of structures. I’ve been into furniture making for the past 25+ years. I have kids now, so mostly I just dream of it. At some point, I made the connection that most woodworking is just riffing around the boundaries of a cube. House. Table. Chair. They all share a similar form. I’ll leave Plato right there.
I've spent the last 10 years building software. When I first had access to it, I got a little too obsessed with AI. But I realized something crucial: trying to add modern AI to most management software today is like trying to install a super-smart, voice-activated kitchen in a house with 100-year-old wiring. It’s buggy. The foundations are all wrong. Most companies' information is trapped in old, messy systems, like having important documents scattered in a dozen different locked filing cabinets. This broken foundation isn't just a technical problem; it's the reason the software you're forced to use at work is so clunky and infuriating. It's why nothing seems to talk to anything else.
In my last post, I wondered about what could be done about Big Tech’s grip on us all. At some point, my experiences with AI necessitated I reimagine the way I build software. If we’re being sold AI, they really need to move away from the legacy infrastructure and data architecture that fragments businesses data into non-standardized data silos. It’s created a whole industry that exists for standardizing our data to derive insights and analytics!
This is not a tragedy. It is a strategic opportunity. They are trapped on broken ground, fighting for the wrong prize. We must create a different battleground and occupy the high ground.
Big Tech can’t start over. We can.