Categories are Good & XML's glow-up

We live in an age of near-infinite intelligence, yet doing something feels just as laborious. Fatigue is everywhere and more prevalent than ever and it's as if things have stopped having a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it's just this frenzied energy laced with prompts, as if telling something to "make no mistakes" is really going to create the Cistine Chapel.

To make this concrete, which of these is more likely to work:

Come up with a billion dollar startup idea, make no mistakes.

<project>
  <goal>Come up with a billion dollar startup idea.</goal>
  <plan>
    <task id="imagine">
      Imagine the five fastest-growing market segments in the next 12 months.
      <deliverable>
        A one-page google doc, max 1000 words
      </deliverable>
      <approva
    </task>
    <task>
      Customer interviews
      <key-result>
        We've spoken to engineering teams in at
        least four companies operating in each of
        the market segments outlined above.
      </key-result>
      <plan todo />
    </task>
  </plan>
</project>

Categories are Good

This essay is coherent because it follows a structure. Even the most sophisticated, most complex music in the world, that too follows a structure and follows chords we know. There is such a thing as too much flexibility.

Imagine a world without id columns. It's kind of like asking for driving directions in a third world country: "go down and then turn right after the convenience store that's about a mile after the blue bridge"

To name it, tame it.

XML

While they never really took off so much, things like XSLT and xpath are incredibly powerful - they are expressive ways to jump through huge hoops of knowledge.

XML and HTML (aka XHTML) are great because they let us use different browsers. They're one thing that made the open web possible.

I think XML is going to have a glow up specifically because its categorical nature make it more useful than plain markdown. Plain markdown is great when you're getting started and figuring out what you're making. But once you know what you're doing, you can afford some structure and scaffolding.

We never really got around to everybody having their own XML schema, and I think that's because we built CRUD web-apps instead. Instead of enforcing categories through XML, we enforced it through relational databases.

Boundaries

This is what the future looks like without boundaries

So, where do we go from here?

1. First measure our conversations and tokens. We get a handle on representing the conversations we've had and are having. chat.xml
2. Then we come design a representation for our goals and work. project.xml
3. Maybe then the feedback loop becomes more automatic.