I've had a lot of thoughts swirling been meaning to write so back to this place for the first time in a while.

I finished listening to Chris Hayes's Sirens of Attention. I think it helped give me a framework for... something. Part of writing is pinning down what exactly.

It's about attention. And I think attention is the right focus even if the word/idea has been worn down a bit by being talked about so much.

I think the most interesting parts were the comparison of attention to labor - and looking at Marx analysis of alienation. Especially the parts on commodification. Where part of what digital markets (and advertising before that) have allowed is the quantification of attention and - what - the interchangeability? Is that quite right? Is attention broken down into likes and impressions commodification? I think so.

Some of this have been dovetailing with me thinking about my own 'social media presence'. I think the X/Twitter algorithm has changed so that the kinds of posts I used to do about work-in-progress don't get much attention at all. Bluesky a little better and I should be off Twitter anyway but it does have an effect - I think I was depending on that attention of those Twitter posts as a form of validation. And maybe that shifting away means I should shift where I look for that validation (and maybe it shouldn't be validation exactly - but 'other people interested in the same thing' is a useful symbol).

Part of what I've been meaning to write too is how GenAI code generation has impacted my beliefs/practice of 'build lots of small prototypes to validate ideas and interactions'. There are more prototypes than ever, and I probably thought that would feel great - but it feels noisy. There is a possibility I'm gatekeeping. I think it's more complex than that. Another thing I want to explore more and articulate better.

The perspective you have matters - if I can keep focused on ideas I want to see in the world and be happy if they spread (whether by me or others) that's the best place to be.

At the same time I'm using Claude code more - and realizing that for a base CRUD app it can handle it - and thinking about the implications - do I move to more complex prototypes.

At the same time listening to a lot of the Wookash podcast and thinking about how C/game developers approach code. There are structural things I want to explore that Claude can help me with. But it does put some pressure on the value of exploring those things if I feel like it's going to be fully generate-able in the near future. That's the dilemma. And again if you just want it to exist than that seems like the best place to be - but I don't think it's that simple. There's process tied to it too.

And still thinking about Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees and Irwin's process of exploration.