It’s an interesting time to be in silicon valley. Although I’ve been in tech for a long time, I first arrived here at the bottom, March 2009, of the Great Recession. It was an interesting time to be here as the proto-elements of web2.0 (aka social media) were embedding themselves into the fabric of society. The iPhone was an infant, and the merger of web2.0 and smartphones were yet to fundamentally rewire society at a global scale. There were cautious voices, if you searched for them, but mostly people here were maximizing their opportunities to ride the wave (or bubble).

Today, we’re now roughly two years into the LLM-centered AI frenzy, and the opportunity-to-caution ratio seems to be a lot different. A perfect example of the handwringing – warning really – is a recent post by Matt Schumer. For a massive amount of technologists, the rise of AI as a central, almost cultural, theme is extremely scary. Unlike the web2.0 era, it feels like technologists are joining the normals with alarm bells of what is about to happen. Adding to this is the Saaspocalypse of the last few days, and well, we’re in for a very interesting 2026….

Update: This X article is a great counterbalance to the Schumer post: