The engineering mindset - the relentless pursuit of building useful layers, and the courage and the ability of peering through the complexity of underlying layers, will thrive forever.
'What vs. how' debates treat the 'what' as something you arrive at through thinking, planning, or vision, and the how as (just) execution. However, the 'what' isn't prior to the 'how'; it emerges from the 'how'. Leonardo had the what. It was worthless. The Wright brothers discovered the what by doing the how. Even better: Hero of Alexandria built a working steam device (the aeolipile) in 30AD. It spun. It worked. And it sat as a curiosity for 1700 years because nobody had encountered the specific failures that would have pointed toward engines, pistons, pressure vessels, governors.
Failure is not just feedback, it's directional. It's not that building teaches you things—it's that the specific shape of failures collapses the possibility space. The what only becomes visible from inside the how.
For those who are curious, this post gives a great overview of the physics layer that the digital empire is built on top of: https://substack.com/inbox/post/182399119
'What vs. how' debates treat the 'what' as something you arrive at through thinking, planning, or vision, and the how as (just) execution. However, the 'what' isn't prior to the 'how'; it emerges from the 'how'. Leonardo had the what. It was worthless. The Wright brothers discovered the what by doing the how. Even better: Hero of Alexandria built a working steam device (the aeolipile) in 30AD. It spun. It worked. And it sat as a curiosity for 1700 years because nobody had encountered the specific failures that would have pointed toward engines, pistons, pressure vessels, governors.
Failure is not just feedback, it's directional. It's not that building teaches you things—it's that the specific shape of failures collapses the possibility space. The what only becomes visible from inside the how.
Totally agree that what emerges from the how!
For those who are curious, this post gives a great overview of the physics layer that the digital empire is built on top of: https://substack.com/inbox/post/182399119