A strange tech parable

In my role at Microsoft, part of what I do is spend time with the leadership team that runs M365, Office, and Windows. This group of people includes the wonderful Charles Simonyi, one of the early programmers at Microsoft. It’s been a lot of fun getting his perspective and hearing his industry stories.

Recently, he and I were sitting side-by-side in one of the meetings. Which is super cool, given our respective histories - the two of us have had a lot to do with the evolution of digital documents and work over the years (he much more than me, but still!)

I was taking notes in a notebook, which I often do, for reasons I would have trouble articulating - I think it helps me see better, or something. I looked over, and Charles was doing the same! Here we are, the two of us, decades later, completely ignoring hte tech we helped bring into the world. What?

I don’t know what it means, or that I have something to say that hasn’t been said before. I guess it’s a good reminder that technology is complex - the way it intersects with humans, physicality, habits and other patterns is really hard to predict. And also that there isn’t a “one size fits all” for it - sometimes a “better” technology isn’t really better in a different context, or for a different use.

I think that’s a good lesson for us to take away as product builders. I doubt anyone would say that the products that Charles and I have been part of building are failures. Far from it! And yet, here we are.

I suspect this will happen even more strongly with AI tech. It will be immensely powerful for many things, and used widely, but also, individual users will be highly idiosyncratic, and it’s likely that there will be many different ways and contexts for using it. One size doesn’t fit all, and it’s never the case that old tech dies completely (I was writing with a fountain pen, even!)