What we can learn from the verbs defining the tech era (and how we live in it).

Google. Tweet. Prompt.

When Armstrong and crew set foot on the moon he made the famous phrase: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

It’s been 57 years and we haven’t set foot on the moon, but we’ve sure been busy developing technology that will one day take us to space and beyond the moon.

Our first small step was Google. Not just the internet of webpages, but the act of googling. The idea that once, when information was in question, we had to think of where to find it. With Google, that all became one place.

When I was 7 years old, I cried in the bathroom alone for hours searching for something nonexistent in me; on me. Or at least they said, my family said it was a google hole and everyone told me I was supposed to have one between my balls and butt somewhere. I don’t know if I really cried, but I really did search for my google hole forever in there only to give up and admit I must be the only person in my house without one.

What I didn’t realize then — Years before the verb existed and without their knowing what lay ahead: I was googling. Pioneering, in real time, the logic that would come to dominate and forever shift our paradigm.

Google then became a household name for an entirely different reason; the presence of it as a verb for retrieving information was fast ubiquitous. As a first step in our computer technologies it was necessary; the type of God tool man must’ve dreamt of for centuries in deserts and forests and crossroads pubs and on and on until finally a silicon chip network floating in the ‘cloud’ made that possible. Anything you want to know, anytime, anywhere — just gotta be plugged in.

Google changes where you look, and how you start…

Now if Google is like stepping on the moon, a local leap for mankind. Then Tweet is like going beyond the moon, interplanetary travel achieved. The day we find communication with the cosmos will mirror the shift that Tweet-like medias gave the world.

I see the Tweet exceeding any previous form of communication in two ways:

1. It collapsed the gap between production and broadcast for any individual — no infrastructure, no intermediary, no permission
2. archival quality of digital record > material record

It’s like the difference between having all the knowledge of human history saved on Earth or ALSO backed up elsewhere; be it cold storage in space or planetary-based data centers…

Oh, and the ability to transmit data to these ‘backup’ locales without ever physically going there… to bring it back to Twitter, if they’re right to call it the town hall — then its significance is that it provides us access to town halls everywhere without expiration.

A breach of time and space.

Tweet changes who can speak, and how long echoes last …

So far I’ve said Google allowed for a footing, Tweet became a leap… and that leaves Prompt.

Now I daresay it represents a final type of technology… and End tech. One that allows us to create beginnings, infinite beginnings.

I see it as a Genesis-level tool… viewed within the planetary analogy: it’s the ability to terraform; to manipulate time, space, particles and thereby architect the elements… Same requisite matter; infinite new worlds.

Already we see this in earthly simulations, virtual algorithmic environments little different from our own. Within what we now call artificial intelligence — large language models (LLM) and the now-iconic mode of ‘prompt’ — we have the infant form of the genesis tool. The final technology that takes us from travel beyond the moon to life beyond the moon.

Prompt changes what you can make, and who gets to make it…

What does prompting feel like as an act?

What does it change about the person doing it?

Time tells.

For diligence sake, a few terms that come to mind but don’t quite live up to the influence of these three: liking, sharing, reposting, visiting, streaming — the rationale behind why they don’t live up I find in their easy dismantling with connection to the old world. Like how

“Streaming” has so many analogs from the river to the stream-of-consciousness creatives. Or that reposting, liking, sharing and so on came on far before social media took them seriously.

Google metamorphosed into an act. Tweet represented something once impossible by human measure… Prompt, the same; but more, faster and further. The promise of AI and the Prompt represents the entire lust of human endeavor. Something between the ancient Prometheus and the modern ‘god’ complex …