John Eckman

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  • Say Anything but AI

    There’s an iconic scene in 1989’s Say Anything where John Cusack’s character Lloyd Dobler is asked by Ione Skye’s father what he plans to do for a career. He tries to dodge the question first, but when pressed says: I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t…

  • Songs for the AI Age

    Whether you are dystopian, utopian, or some kind of apocaloptimist, you need good tunes to accompany your efforts. Feel free to suggest additions in the comments

  • The System Won’t Let Me Do That

    The perennial concern about AI, and in particular Advance General Intelligence (AGI), has been that it will become self-aware and take over, making choices for humans that are in the best interest of the machines rather than the people. It was HAL 9000 (HAL being one letter off of IBM) and later Skynet. What I’ve…

  • Wisdom Is Worth More Than Knowlege

    Wisdom > Knowledge In the age of AI, wisdom is more important than knowledge. That doesn’t mean knowledge has no value: it’s difficult to imagine how one would apply wisdom that wasn’t grounded in knowledge. It just means the knowledge itself is increasingly available by other means. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.…

  • Design Systems in the Age of AI

    A couple of weeks back, Ethan Marcotte joined us at the Boston WordPress meetup and gave a talk titled “The Design Systems Between Us” (video embedded below). As one would expect, it was a thoughtful exploration, parts of which are still looping in my brain. What are we to do with design systems in the…