> We are all the sorcerer's apprentice

Back in the mists of time at BigCo internship day1, the incoming cohort of interns was briefed by outgoing cohort, without managers present. One of their pearls of wisdom was that a great manager (and by extension, team) could lead and defend an oasis of excellence in a desert of industry detritus. Today, this dynamic can also be seen in serial founding teams and spinoff projects.

If time is more spiral than linear, then cyclical patterns are not merely swings of a pendulum, but a recursive opportunity for redemption or relapse. In that worldview, merely waiting would be enough to experience a different set of local maxima. But human actors with agency can move to new contexts instead of waiting for cyclical change, or work with peers to spark new cycles.

Stargate/Fringe/Eureka posit multiple universes and versions of ourselves, each universe further having multiple timelines. If it were possible for us to see an infinite tapestry of futures, would we be invigorated or paralyzed by choice? Looking in the other direction, we have access to the near-infinite, unfinished work of our ancestors, some of whom deserve the sorcerer moniker.

One way to gain perspective on local minima/maxima is to step back to a different scale of time or space. The classic film "Powers of 10" [1] offers a spatial perspective. There are history of technology books which span decades to centuries, showing recurring patterns of both good and bad. One tiny example is the decoding of the Maya language, which was unsolved for centuries, then cracked by an art history teacher on vacation.

There is a 1930s sci-fi book [2] which spans 2 billion years and many generations of humans going through cycles of technology and social structures. The successor book has an even longer timeframe. As a thought exercise, it leaves one with the impression that everything has already happened before, and will happen again, but slightly differently in future spirals of time and space. Where does that leave mortal humans prioritizing action within finite lifespans?

If we can't find a sorcerer from whom to learn, we can choose which sorcery we want to teach. Be the change.

> For every story about how tech is improving lives, you hear another two about yet another horrible dystopian usecase for the same technology, and it's never hard to imagine a dozen more.

If one looks into the history of tech, they can find initially benevolent tech that was twisted into dystopian purposes. But there are also examples of tech designed for one purpose, later adapted to positive use. Even hostile social media can be tamed by manually curated lists of non-hostile writers. With the proliferation of open-source, it has never been easier to Embrace & Extend, or harder to choose a direction.

If you have the space/time/tools to build something tangible that fuses software with the physical world, it can combine the dream-catcher inspiration of software with physical constraint. If lacking inspiration, recreate a pioneering tech demo or meet a hyper-local need, then extend that foundation.

[1] "Powers of 10", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men

[3] "Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide." --Heinz von Foerster https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8018832