Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Welcome to the Trailblazer FM podcast. This is your host, Lee, and on today’s show, it’s you and me. I think I’ve overused that one probably over the last 400 or so episodes.
Now, first of all, sorry, I’ve not been around for a little while. And well, also not sorry, because I’ve just needed a break. I’ve been absolutely exhausted and yet again had a bit of a plummet when it comes to the old mental health. But, you know, I’m not doing too bad today and figured that I’d jump on and just record some thoughts.
I’ve been doing an awful lot in my personal life and it’s made me think a lot about what’s going on in business, really. So first of all, bit of context, I have really gotten into typewriters. I’ve always loved typewriters. However, I don’t know why, but I’ve just had this insatiable appetite to buy as many typewriters as I can recently over the last kind of six months, pull them all apart, work out how they work, put them back together again, fix any issues, etc.
And I’ve become a little bit of a typewriter snob slash connoisseur slash whatever you want to call it. And it’s been great fun. And what’s hit me is there’s a lot of these typewriters that are ridiculously old. You know, we’re looking at items that I’ve got here from the 1920s, the 1930s, and they still work. They’re still fit for purpose. They still do the job that they were intended to do.
Sure, you need to do a little bit of work with them to clean them up and oil them. Actually, little tip, don’t over-oil a typewriter. That’s actually a bad thing. But there is a lot you can do to keep your typewriter going.
And I know this is a podcast for web developers. What the hell am I talking about typewriters for? But it’s going to lead us on a journey here. And the first part of this journey is the whole idea of planned obsolescence.
Ian Padgett, a great guy, got a podcast over at Logo Geeks. I highly recommend you go check that out. He texted me just this morning. And we were talking about the frustration of planned obsolescence of all of these devices that we have that just die after a few years.
I’ve got an iPhone 12 Pro. And I know the battery is not great in there anymore. And I am eking as much life out of this as I can. But it’s not easy for me to pull this apart and put a brand new battery in. And I’m going to have to get a heat gun and prise this thing apart and replace a battery with potentially a non-stock battery, etc., in the hope that I can get this going again. And it’s probably going to lose its IP, whatever it is, you know, that waterproofing rating.
So that’s not cool. And Apple obviously really want me to buy a new iPhone, which is probably only incrementally better than the one that I have. The iPhone 12 Pro is blooming brilliant. Takes great pictures, fab little device, great videos. It’s served me well. And I am going to keep eking as much life out of this as I can, even if that means taking a battery pack around with me for now.
So anyway, that was the first thing. Again, got me to thinking about, oh, wow, you know, we’re looking here at typewriters that last like centuries. You can have a century-old typewriter and it’ll still work.
I’ve got a Singer sewing machine here as well because I’m just into old mechanical stuff and I’m a complete nerd. And this, I’m looking at it right now. You can’t see it. This is an audio podcast, but it’s there and it works. And I can still sew things on this over 100-year-old Singer sewing machine, hand-cranked.
If I need to fix anything, I can still find parts for it. I can still find new parts for it if I really look hard enough. And it’s just incredible. This is an old machine. It’s just a lot of machinery that lasts.
And I know with capitalism, it doesn’t work like that, does it? You know, you want people to keep buying off you. If somebody buys a thing off you and then uses it forever, you’re going to have to find another client to buy a thing and use that forever. And it’s not great for growth, etc. I do get that. But I also don’t like that. I think it sucks.
And this is going somewhere. I know this is a web development, or has been a web development, podcast over the years. But let’s also think about what we’re doing online and AI.
And I am in two camps with AI. I both love it and hate it. There’s something called Marmite here in the UK and the phrase is you either love it or you hate it. I’m going through both at the moment with AI.
I love that I can pop a document into AI and I can get some information back on the document. Maybe a summary, maybe some key points. Maybe I can put the transcription of a meeting in and get some key actions. You know, these are really good productivity tools. Thank you, AI. I love it.
But then on the flip side, I utterly hate all of this content generation that’s going on out there, be it video, be it audio and also written. And everyone’s sounding the same now on posts, in blogs. All the videos are looking the same. YouTube is being ruined by AI.
You know, I can’t find any decent educational content unless I search for stuff that’s now several years old and then find that channel, subscribe to that channel and hope that they still post, excuse me, relatively new content.
But how did we get from typewriters to AI? Well, first of all, I’m a human and that’s what we do. We’re not predictable like AI. We go from thought to thought, which is much more fun to read for me if I’m reading somebody and can see their thought process, as opposed to this perfect AI piece.
But secondly, it’s again about the obsolescence. So we talked about planned obsolescence of devices. I’m worried that we’re kind of coming into this new era of skill obsolescence as well.
I know that’s quite a jump, but if you think about it, another thing that happened this morning for me was I was like, I need to remove Thunderbird from my Kubuntu install.
I forgot how to do it. I know it’s a Snap. I don’t like Snap packages. I’m usually used to apt commands. So I’m going to need to go and check what the Snap command is. And I was going straight to AI to ask it that question.
And then I stopped and thought and realized several things.
First of all, it’s going to cost the earth less if I go to a search engine and find a website, I believe, rather than having an AI regurgitate what that command should be.
The second thing that occurred to me is this is really something I should remember because I’ve actually asked that same question of AI multiple times. So that’s costing the earth and costing resources more.
And then the last thing that occurred to me is that I’m not learning it. I’m just now outsourcing my memory to AI.
And I know people used to say that about, well, we’ve outsourced our memory to Google. We don’t remember things. Maybe the cost back then was less versus AI. What do I mean?
I mean, from what I understand, I have literally no sources to cite for this. I’m shooting with the breeze or whatever they say. But I understand that the cost of me running a prompt asking for the command to remove something and purge it from Ubuntu is much more with AI with regards to compute power, etc., tokens, all of that sort of thing, as opposed to jumping onto Google and finding a website that has that command on it as well.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I believe it is. Maybe I should go and find that out. If you’re listening, fact-check me. That’d be fab.
However, I’m also getting on to another point. On the whole outsourcing your memory to Google, that’s another concern. And it’s still a valid concern.
I’ve used this command multiple times. I should have remembered it, but I have become reliant on knowing that there is technology out there that will just display it for me whenever I need. And I don’t have to remember or note it down.
So I’m still costing the planet. If I’m going to become an eco-warrior, I’m still costing the planet in some way by not remembering this information or noting it down.
But also, I’m not learning. I’m not retaining information. I’m outsourcing my memory to AI, to search engines. I’m not building a system of memory, be it written down or be it in my mind.
So what I’ve done as a result this morning is just simply noted down the commands that allow me to, first of all, list all the packages I have on my Ubuntu install. Then how to remove any package. So that’s all the commands, the purge commands, where to look in regards to the home directory, etc.
Written it all down in a nice little Markdown document, saved it in Obsidian, and it’s saved to my local drive. I could also print it as well if I want to, so that I have it there as a crib sheet.
But I now never need to go away and Google something or use AI to get that information.
But also, by writing it all down myself, I kind of remember all the commands. And I’m thinking I’m going to get better at remembering those commands.
And I also have a crib sheet if and when I need it. So I’m not costing the earth and I’m not costing my memory.
I’m not making my memory obsolete.
And it’s not just memory. It’s also creativity.
People are losing their creativity because of AI. And I’m sorry to be hating on AI right now, but if you can sit down and write a blog post in five seconds and get it posted, is that really a good thing? I would question that.
Perhaps, you know, you are thinking, yeah, this is SEO. It’s going to help drive traffic. It’s going to help generate leads on my website. Yeah, hey, let’s do that.
And I would like to posit that there is still an awful, awful cost here.
And that cost is creativity.
If you can no longer sit down with a piece of paper, a typewriter or a Word document and write from scratch your thoughts on a particular topic and share it in some sort of coherent way without relying on an LLM to essentially auto-generate that, you’re going to start losing your creativity.
It’s easier to have the AI churn out this information for you quickly than it is for you to sit down and, from your mind, unpack what you’ve learned, spell it out on paper in your Word document and teach it to other people.
And creativity, I believe, is, or at least for me, is like a muscle. It’s something that I have to exercise.
And by going back to these typewriters, working out how they work, fixing them, putting them back together and then writing blog posts on them, I’m flexing that muscle. I’m practising being creative. And it’s an incredible experience.
You know, the quality of my blogs is probably dropping if you are going to look at it with regards to the structure, the thought process and, you know, the eloquence of said blog post.
But frankly, it’s more real. It’s more real to me. It’s something that I am doing like this.
I’m just having a conversation with my microphone and hopefully you’re listening.
This is more real. This is more creative.
And so is the act of writing something down as me, not writing a prompt and then having something that sounds a bit like me, formulating the perfect blog with kind of the point I was trying to make, but instead writing as I go and unpacking it as I go, not even being sure what the sentence is going to end with.
I think you’ll do that. We have a conversation. You start your sentence.
You don’t know how it’s going to end. You’re thinking it out as you go.
So it’s part of that creative process. And it’s the same with writing something down.
So you can unpack what you think, outward process, as it were, what it is you think, what it is you believe, what you’re learning, what your knowledge is and how you can explain that to other people, how you can pass that on.
That is a wonderful creative experience.
And it’s something that I am worried is becoming obsolete because people are thinking they are being more productive and getting more done by simply prompting an LLM to give them very, very quickly what it is they need.
Now, if you’re feeling exceptionally judged, I apologize.
You are not, because I myself have admitted and listened back a few episodes to have been leaning on AI an awful lot, especially about a year or so ago when I was absolutely exhausted with this podcast.
I just wanted to run away, close everything down and disappear off the face of the earth.
And I was using AI to do a lot of the heavy lifting for me.
So don’t feel judged.
You know, we all do this.
And using AI is not inherently a bad thing.
It’s just, I guess the point of this episode is that AI is something that we can use intentionally as and when, but not at the cost of our own creativity, our own mind, our own thought muscles.
I’m making this shit up, sorry.
But you get what I mean, don’t you?
I am really concerned that we’re going to start losing skills.
And let’s go into skills themselves.
We’re web developers and we’re web designers.
If you can prompt a logo really, really quickly, you’re going to start to lose that creativity.
But also there’s this part of you that’s not going to feel satisfied, I don’t think.
If you know that the thing you generated for a client was essentially cobbled together with AI, I don’t feel like you’re going to have the satisfaction of the hours that it took to create that piece where you thought it through carefully and were able to create that logo from scratch using the tools of your trade.
Being able to spark up a website with AI really, really quickly. So you skip that design process, you skip that thought process, you skip the coding process, and essentially you end up with a site that looks generically the same as most of the other ones.
If I can now tell Claude websites, let me know if you can as well.
[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), that’s my email.
Great to have a chat.
No commenting system on the website.
But anyway, let’s make friends.
But where was I?
I said no commenting system.
Hang on.
Let me just go and listen back and then I’ll carry on.
Oh, yeah.
I was talking about Claude websites.
Yeah, I can totally tell if someone’s used Claude for a website because they look like the ones I’ve been generating as well.
But you’re missing all of those key ingredients.
And people are in danger of delivering websites that they don’t even understand anymore.
So how can we be providing support for these websites if we have not been a major part of that build?
If the site has been fully generated by AI, we don’t really understand the code base anymore.
We don’t really understand what it’s doing.
If we do need to do any support, we’re going to have to rely on an LLM even more to go through all of the code and try and work out what the original LLM was doing so that we can fix the problem.
Or we’re going to have to personally go through it all and dust off those skills that we’ve not been using to try and work out what the heck is happening in here.
So I’m really concerned as well for the web industry in itself where AI is commoditizing?
Don’t know.
You know, whatever.
Insert correct word there.
The act of development, the act of building and designing and again being creative.
So it’s like this creative obsolescence that’s happening.
Businesses are relying now on LLMs rather than creativity.
And I’m worried that everyone’s starting to look the same.
Everyone’s starting to forget how to do what it is that they fell in love with in the first place.
And folks are therefore now just generated, sorry, generated.
Folks are now just focused on things like productivity, selling more, how to stand out from everyone else because everyone else is all doing the same as well with AI.
So why would anyone use you over anyone else?
I’m really worried.
And I’m seeing people that I have massive respect for over the years telling you to start AI agencies.
What the hell is going on?
What is agentic AI?
I mean, I know what it is, but why would we want to be replacing people?
I’m actually getting mad now.
You know, why do we want to replace people?
Why do we want to replace the skills that folks have, the care and attention that people have when it comes to creating and crafting something that’s going to be used by other humans?
For us to do this and to say, yeah, you can have all of your AI employees, an entire team, and it can just be you, and you can make a million pounds.
I’m sorry, no names here, and I do love everyone, but I really disagree with the idea that we can start to use AI to grow these virtual agencies that one person can churn over millions of pounds because they’re using all of these AI agents.
That makes me mad.
Why do we want to get rid of humans?
Why do we want to get rid of the creativity?
And have we not thought what this might be doing?
You know, if somebody is going to…
All right, let’s be real.
Okay.
A lot of people, and people listening to this podcast, got into web design because they worked out how to use theme builders, and they were able to deliver nice-looking websites and use WordPress without ever having to learn how to program.
Okay.
And those folks know and recognize the importance of adding someone to their team that has software development expertise and skills, because there’s only so far you can go with, say, a page builder and a theme, etc., to meet the client’s needs.
But there’s also just the act of supporting it.
If you’ve built something with a page builder and with WordPress plugins, and you don’t understand code or how to fix it, then you’re stuck with a product that you can’t really realistically support.
You’re at the mercy of WordPress updates, etc., and that ain’t great.
So, you know, folks understand the importance of bringing a real person onto the team for that.
That’s why agencies grow into small teams of experts who are really good at the different things that they can do.
You’ve got someone who’s great with a page builder who can do information design.
You can lay out a website looking fantastic.
You’ve got the developer who can support the features, who can support the product, etc.
You’ve got the account manager who can manage clients, etc.
This is great.
These are human interactions.
These are human skills.
These are folks with families, with, you know, folks who need to put food on the table.
And with AI, you know, we’ve got people that I’ve respected for donkey’s years telling you to get rid of all them and use AI.
I think it’s bloody shocking.
Really shocking.
I’m getting myself all het up.
I’m just going to take a sip of coffee.
Bear with.
And how does this relate to typewriters?
Well, it kind of doesn’t, but it kind of does.
It’s just a reminder of what…
And I’m pointing at a typewriter right now.
You can’t see it.
This is an audio podcast, Lee.
The act of being creative on that typewriter and learning how it works and knowing that no AI can possibly press all of those keys and put together a nice typewritten page of thoughts from my brain.
Just that very act of doing that reminds me of our creativity.
It reminds me that things are important and shouldn’t be lost.
These typing devices have lasted years.
That’s wonderful.
That’s wonderful.
And they still have value to give in this day and age.
I’ve written actually a blog post on why I use typewriters.
LeeMatthewJackson.com.
That’s where all my blogs go.
And I also put pictures up of the typewritten sheet.
But these devices, even in 2026, 50, 60, 70 years after these devices were built, are able to provide value, able to allow me as a human to be creative.
And yet, you know, I’m going back to physical devices nowadays, planned obsolescence.
We’ve got phones that need to be replaced every few years, if not every year for some people.
And then there’s the obsolescence of the human, which is really upsetting me.
And that’s the idea that we can replace human skill with AI to generate websites, generate code, generate designs, generate blog posts, generate social media posts, generate interactions with clients.
And we can just sit back and make bank.
It’s crazy.
It’s really crazy.
And I do want to end on a positive note.
My positive note is that I am pretty sure that humanity will win out.
Why?
Because I think, well, two reasons.
Number one, I do think there’s a big AI bubble about to burst.
At least I hope there is, because I do want this to end in some way.
And for us to have a better relationship with AI, LLMs, etc., are great tools, but we kind of need to stop making them like everything.
But the main reason is that I feel like humanity will win out.
People will miss creativity.
I think I referenced this in my podcast I did a few months back.
But I actually felt more depressed using AI than I did just doing the thing.
I feel robbed of the ability to do something if AI does it for me.
Even if I then deliver that and push it out, I didn’t really do it.
I did a prompt.
I maybe did an edit.
But it’s not really mine.
I didn’t have that feeling of satisfaction.
It didn’t feel like it was truly me from my mind, from my creativity.
I mean, heck, you know this is.
I’m just rambling into a microphone and maybe five people are listening.
Thanks for listening.
If you got this far, well done.
Give yourself a pat on the back.
But I just think humanity is going to win out.
I think folks are going to get sick of seeing all of this AI-generated garbage on the internet.
They’re going to get sick of going on YouTube and not being able to find a real human sharing their thoughts and feelings.
And people are going to actively seek out businesses and people that are offering in-person human services.
I want to read posts on social media that are human-written.
I want to read books that are human-written.
I want to read blogs that are human-written.
Not because they’re, like, better.
Because, like, functionally, AI can probably create a more succinct, clever, nicely worded post than a human, maybe.
But because a human, like me, is going to ramble and is going to connect the dots whilst they’re rambling.
And you’re going to do the same.
You’re going to listen or you’re going to read.
You’re going to consume that content.
And like a human, you’re going to follow with that person.
You’re going to follow that journey.
You’re going to value the human creativity far more than the polished AI.
So I kind of hope and look forward to a time where human creativity, human work will be valued much higher.
And maybe folks will get paid better for that.
And that’s a whole other blog post in its own right.
But all this generated stuff ain’t good for us.
And I think we all know it.
And I think folks are going to chase humanity over AI.
So I do feel as I’m coming into land that there is positivity, you know, something positive to look forward to, something positive to push to.
And if I’m right, I think we need to be demonstrating our humanity early on.
That’s why if you go to LeeMatthewJackson.com, you will see that my blog posts are either handwritten or typewritten.
And I put a picture of that to prove that, you know, the terribly written post was done by me.
All me.
It was typed.
I took pictures.
There’s the evidence.
Go and read a human’s post on LeeMatthewJackson.com.
Enjoy.
I think we need to start doing that now.
Showing what we’re doing.
Showcasing our skills and our talents.
Teaching people.
Reminding people that we know CSS.
We know JavaScript.
We know PHP, HTML.
You know, demonstrating these valuable skills.
Rather than, you know, leaning into this AI.
So that when folks are like, yeah, I just want to interact with a human.
I want to interact with a human agency.
I want to interact with a human consultant, human coach, whatever it is.
If you’ve already been demonstrating your humanity, your lack of polish, I think that’s going to be the gold dust of the future.
I’m barely editing these podcasts now.
You know, I’m leaving all the warts and all in there.
Because I want folks to know that this was just me rambling without any notes for 20-odd minutes, half an hour, whatever it’s been.
It’s been a while.
Because I think people are going to value the humanity.
Folks want to hear from other people.
They want to learn from other people and interact with them.
They don’t get the same feeling, as it were.
Or I believe the same learning process as they would if they’re doing or relying and leaning on AI themselves.
Or consuming content that has been generated by AI.
So anyway, how would I summarize this ramble?
Let’s try and recap.
And I’ll try and remember what I’ve just talked about.
But I’ve said that I am concerned that we are outsourcing our memory and our skills to the computer.
So we’re going to start to lose those.
So we’re going to start to lose those.
I’ve also had a good old rant that just technology in general has kind of planned obsolescence baked into it nowadays.
So folks are having to replace devices, etc., every few years.
And I feel that that’s spilling over now into the creative space where creativity is becoming obsolete.
Or that’s what folks want us to believe.
I feel really frustrated at people in our industry who should know better.
Who are pushing for agentic agencies and replacing people.
And I will caveat that with there are some people who are pushing for a hybrid.
And I get that.
And that’s all cool.
But for the folks who are just literally looking to fire all their staff and run their own agency.
Or teach someone who doesn’t even know anything about web development how to run an agency with little agents.
I just think it’s appalling.
So we’ve covered that off.
And then having been a complete negative rant, I think I kind of wrapped up with a reminder that there is a positive future.
That all of this AI, memory obsolescence.
All of this stuff costing the earth.
All of this negative stuff will, I believe, become a real sore point for humanity.
And folks will seek real people.
Real messy content.
They won’t care anymore about polished content.
They’ll want human content.
Warts and all.
I think that’s great.
I want to see unpolished content.
I want to hear from real humans having a rant that sounds really disconnected.
Disorientating.
Probably like this one.
But there are a few good points mixed in there.
And that will have real value to humans.
People hearing from people.
People learning from people.
People being creative.
And flexing those creative muscles.
So folks, I hope you enjoyed this podcast.
J-X-N-S dot com.
That’s Juliet X-Ray November Sierra dot com.
Is my email nowadays.
If you wanted to email.
Lee at trailblazer dot fm also still works.
It will forward.
Be great to hear from you.
This podcast is nowadays my hobby.
I don’t do it for anything other than for me.
And to flex my own creative muscles.
And if you listened, you are a part of that journey.
So thank you very much.
Have a wonderful day.
Take care.
Be good.
If you can’t be good, be careful.
