The Fog of Now: Living Through the AI Revolution

Growing up near Seattle, I used to think I missed the big waves. The personal computer boom. Microsoft exploding. The dot-com frenzy. I got into computers just after all that, on a brand-new HP running Windows ME, right when Napster was taking off. Just enough to feel the magic, but not early enough to ride the first wave.

But now, with Gen AI, vibe coding, and agent workflows taking off, I’m realizing something. This is our wave. This is our moment. We’re right in the thick of it 😶‍🌫️, even if we can’t see where it’s all going.

The funny thing is, no matter what future actually plays out, it's going to feel obvious in hindsight. If things go great, people will say they saw it coming. If it all burns down, same story. The signs were there. We warned you.

Right now, we’re flooded with predictions. Total job loss. The end of creativity. AI paperclipping the planet. But also a boom in productivity. A new kind of economy. Better tools. Safer systems. All of these futures are on the table.

What’s likely is that we land somewhere in between. Artists, writers, and developers are already feeling the shift. Their work is being reshaped. Some jobs will disappear. Others will evolve. And entirely new ones will emerge. Think less “mass unemployment” and more “reorg of human output.”

In programming, I think we’re going to see something interesting. Agents might write more of the code, but they’ll still need us to guide them. The skill isn’t going away. It’s just going to look different. More critical thinking. More product alignment. Less keyboard grinding. And maybe the same shift happens in product management too. Those roles start to blur.

And when that happens, people will look back and say, “Of course. That was always going to happen.” Same way they talk about the internet, or the smartphone, or any tech shift that rewrote the rules while everyone was busy arguing about it.

So yeah, the fog is real. But I want to be in it. I want to help shape what’s next, not just watch it unfold.

Because when the fog lifts, I don’t want to say “I knew it.” I want to say “I was there.”