Actually it's our birthday (one clear benefit of being a twin is that you never misremember your brother's special day!)
I was born in 1979, so today I turn 47. It's been three years since we incorporated Datum, two years since we really got to work, and a mere 25 years since I rented my first Linux server. These are fun milestones to reflect on.
Along with Jacob, I chose to kickstart my next trip around the sun by launching a blog. This is a weird choice for me, since I don't actually love writing blogs! I find the process slow, mentally taxing, manual, and opposite of the pace at which I like to run my days. Much like playing in the two community orchestras (a birthday resolution I committed to a few years ago), writing is a really expensive thing for me to do, at least in terms of time and energy.
But, of course, that's exactly why I'm doing it: because it is hard!
The name for this site is a fun play on the Human-in-the-Loop concept, which has roots in 1940's cybernetics research. The concepts were developed for military use cases, but with a direct throughline to the world of machine learning and generative AI today. HITL describes the creation of intelligence that results from a feedback loop between a computational process and a human being.
While both Jacob and I hope what we write is genuinely interesting or useful to others, that's not the main purpose. Instead, it's for us. To stay in the loop, to take time to digest and process what we learn while building Datum during this wild moment in our world, and to practice the art of thinking and writing and sharing and listening and learning.
Since this is mainly for our own personal growth, we also get to choose some fun aspects.
- No post will be more than 4700 characters in length
- We plan to post 47 times this year. Don't expect every post to be polished!
- We will write each word and edit without AI. No slop allowed.
- We can't promise 47 different topics but you can expect variety: what we are learning, struggling with, thinking about, or discovering as we build a business, engage with our communities, and support our families.
- Many posts will be fueled by, or celebrated with, Monkey 47 gin
Before we get to the present and the future, it's a perfect moment to look to the past.
My mom wasn't expecting twins. In fact, we were supposed to be a big girl named Ashley! Suffice it to say, she was very surprised to find out the truth the day before we were born.
What else was going on in the back half of 1979?
- In July, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences convened and then released the Charney Report (led by meteorologist Jule Charney), which was the first comprehensive assessment of global warming, predicting that doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide would result in a global temperature rise of roughly 3° Celsius.
- In August, Monty Python released Life of Brian, which became a staple of my teenage years. I love that it was financed by George Harrison.
- Two weeks after I was born, Douglas Adams published The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, formalizing the answer to life, the universe, and everything: 42.
- Duke University students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived Usenet, which established concepts we still use today (including the idea of an FAQ).
- And to close out the history tour, IBM published a training guide that seems really relevant now. Here was the punchline:
