“You’re probably in an office banging on a computer somewhere.”
Frank Silva was talking about his work as a ship’s clerk as ports became more automated. He noticed there were fewer people around and less working together. “You’re just sort of [an] isolated little thing.” And what stuck with him was the guys bringing sweet potato pies to work on Tuesdays.
They had a Waterfront Writers and Artists group where they took photos and made recordings to capture a day in the life before it faded out of memory. It got me thinking about my job as a software engineer and the obvious, or not so obvious, implications of AI.
If I were to give an oral history, what would I include?
Maybe the new hire rolling into my periphery asking how our system fit together, and me realizing we’re going to need a whiteboard for this answer. Or morning stand-up, when we’d jam one too many people into a spare room (or hallway), not knowing what to do with my hands, or impatiently swaying when somebody went on too long.
Those things we now do over Zoom, the things we can just ask Claude for, the things that we might remember.