Designer, developer, teacher. Co-founder @Pathwright. Probably working on something new ꩜
Greenville, SC
Joined March 2007
- Tweets6.8K
- Following1.3K
- Followers1.6K
- Likes13.9K
Too stressed to function
Chill issue
You’re unable to view this Post because this account owner limits who can view their Posts. Learn more
I have a bookmarks folder on X called "EA Cult" (for tracking effective altruism/x-risk conspiratorial beliefs), and boy, it's grown a lot over the last week.
Mark Johnson retweeted
This might be the most beautiful thing I've read in my life. What a privilege to be alive in 2026.
ordinaryabundance.com
Mark Johnson retweeted
Because agents are automations, and creating automations is a business problem, not a consumer problem.
Hot take… isn’t it kinda crazy that nobody is really using AI Agents? I don’t mean software engineers or AI early adopters. I mean “college friends talking about it in group chat,” the feeling you got when everyone started using Instagram or TikTok.
These frontier AI models are *insane* (as are the harnesses & tool calls & the like). And every large tech co has an AI agents platform, not to mention all the YC startups doing vertical agents. Yet all of your friends and family outside of tech — who spend all day staring at their iPhones and get paid to work in browser tabs — don’t really care or find themselves using any AI agents yet.
Yes ChatGPT, Claude, etc. are extremely popular… but if you look at the engagement data the vast majority of people are still using these aI chat tools like a glorified Google + Grammarly. That’s why the AGI labs are all pushing desktop apps for Codex, Cowork, etc. so hard to non-technical ppl. And yes exceptions for lawyers and customer service but even those have some asterisks and exceptions to rule.
Look I’m not saying the ChatGPT moment for AI Agents is not coming… it most definitely is! Remember we pivoted from Arc to Dia precisely because we believe computing is going to be radically reimagined around these AI primitives. No doubt. But that’s my point: it’s just so surprising it hasn’t happened yet because all of the tech you’d need is there.
Again if you stop for a second and think about it… for all the press and money and hype and models and crazy ARR numbers… this “AI Agent” moment does not *feel* like the other breakthrough tech moments we’ve lived through (e.g. think the shift to Stories via Snapchat & Instagram, or shift to on-demand via Uber/Airbnb/Doordash).
Which is a long way of saying: if you can figure out the answer to “why” most people don’t care about AI agents yet (and have no enduring interest in using them) — especially since the models and harnesses are here and ready — the answer to that question will allow you to capture a lot of marketshare and make a lot of money in 2027.
Theoretically, the tech is ready for AI Agents to totally transform how we work and live our lives… but alas the general public dgaf… that’s the generational puzzle to solve for the next 12 months for anyone not working on the models themselves.
Mark Johnson retweeted
wrote a few thoughts about what we lose now that we don't write the code ourselves, and do we get our flow back
Man, really not a fan of Claude's writing style (Fable included). Just obnoxious to read. Claude's "smell" is a lot more pungent than other models.
Mark Johnson retweeted
Levie’s Law of AI Psychosis:
The farther away you are from the actual work the more confident you are that humans are no longer needed
I like it
CEOs are uniquely prone to AI psychosis because they’re sufficiently distant from the last mile of work that still has to happen to generate most value with AI.
So when they play with AI, they see the happy path results, often not considering the next 10 or 20 things that have to happen to get sustainable results from agents.
“Look I made this awesome product prototype”. Yes but you didn’t have to review the code before it went into production and fix a bunch of issues.
“Look I generated a contract”. Yes but you didn’t verify all the terms before it goes out to the counterparty and didn’t have to wire up all the past contracts to work with.
The best thing you can do as a CEO is to use AI a *ton* to figure out the real implications of agents in the enterprise, and come out the other side with an appreciation for both the upside and the real work that goes into them.
Mark Johnson retweeted
Weird isn't just visual. Weird is whatever strays from the norm. Weird is relative to the current state of the world.
You can have weird principles. They should be things people can legitimately disagree with.
You have to remember Obsidian was very weird when it launched six years ago. Local files, malleability, backlinks, graph, even Markdown syntax... these were not as widely understood and accepted as they are today.
That's why I spent so much time writing essays like "File over app" to try and explain our choices. The goal was to describe why our weird ideas should be normal, and it worked!
Now the world has somewhat caught up and accepted those choices, so it's time to find the next frontier of weirdness.
Alarming how many "rational" people will willingly choose an option that would wipe out half the human race. The difference between logic and wisdom on display.
Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?
42%Red
58%Blue
98,539 votes • Final results
Encouraging to see high-craft engineering amongst all the slop.
Almost 16 months in the making, I'm finally at a point where I'm calling this good to go on the App Store. It's been my privilege to share the journey with you all, here's to the cool things still to come. Spatial is now available at apps.apple.com/app/id6753979…