The View Source of the Agentic Days

The AI agentic days are here, unleashed by OpenAI. For me, this is about going through a portal. The last portal I remember was when Netscape unleashed Netscape, the browser, when the Web was popularized, and the job of the web master was invented. Picture then, how it was, the reading experience of the normal print. And then, all of a sudden, we turned into web users, browsing through pages that could be instantly loaded. Google was yet to come our way, as indexing the web was increasingly difficult. But keep in mind: who would tell, right in the beginning, that the Gooooogle way (of indexing the infinite) was the only way? Not easy, to live and grasp, to see through. \ The most important thing in communications is hearing what isn’t said. Peter Drucker \ But here we are, bombarded again, now travelling through a medium of bots, excited indeed but overwhelmed by infinite articles telling us what is happening; while all things are yet to be settled. If listening to signals was difficult, it’s even more challenging us being in a world where to be connected became synonymous with being trapped. (Productivity strikes back) Consider, for instance, how many of us are flooded with articles about the dangers of productivity using AI. I hear that, loud and clear. But if we look beyond, to who are these authors, then we can see how their managerial conversation shifts. We can reflect about the circumstances where precious management advice becomes applicable again. Think about the world before and after the Lean Startup movement, for instance. How the world changed, how it challenged our way, and how new and old managerial advice became applicable to the art and science of turning a project into a business. Or think about how precious the following advice from Reid Hoffman turned out to be for founders: \ An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and assembles an airplace on the way down. Reid Hoffman \ Imagine that you had a great idea for a start-up, and enough signals to seek initial support. You convinced special friends from your network, and you received an investment. Now, things seem great, especially if this is your first start-up. On the other hand, an experienced founder would likely say something different, like “well, it’s a good problem to have.” She knows about the pressure of using resources fast, from pre-seed, to seed, towards series A, and so on. As the idea of hypergrowth emerged, Reid’s radar kept on searching for patterns - and role models - to help new founders navigate through the challenges. That was when Brian Chesky of Airbnb was nominated an "infinite learner": \ The term that I use for it is infinite learners, and you're actually one of the people I use as an example. Because literally the very first time you and I did a press event, it was the first time that I had done a press event with an entrepreneur in my portfolio where the very first question you asked me when we got off the stage was, "What should I have done better? (Hoffman, 2015, 1:00:09 ) \ How can we hear beyond what is said? (The View Source Effect) When the Web was unleashed by Netscape, when the browser was bundled and the world to some extent unbundled , it was as challenging to hold the conversations through the portal, through warping. Easy to miss what is difficult to hear. \ In my column series 'The Main Thing', I often talk about how Internet technology can improve the way people communicate - both within a business and between a business and its customers and partners. Jim Barksdale, CEO of Netscape \ And far from the seat of the CEO, we can think of other apparently weak conversations happening. In [The History of Web Developers Tied to Browser Development](), I went back in time and recovered some of the “browser features” that opened up conversations, like that little menu item named “View Source”: \ \ The webmaster job wasn’t sold or offered as an off-the-shelf role. The web master, the role, the web developer, and the front-end engineer, were jobs being formed. Through conversations, perhaps like the AI forward deployed engineer in this chapter. \ Wait, I am here opening this web page? Can I view the source, can I see how this was made? So this is what I have to do to come up with a web page like this? \ The main thing here is exactly about how easy is to miss these things. I could have easily (in retrospect) pointed out how that View Source thing wasn’t that special. “Well, that just shows some HTML from a page, not the whole thing.” To go that way is to refuse to join the conversation, a denial to be open and to pause what is going on. But the View Source thing was a piece of the big picture, of the real puzzle. The point of the View Source metaphor is that is help us reflect about the building blocks and the conversations. Back in the days, these builders touched “HTML pieces”, and other Web’s building blocks. But their conversations defined new roles. Now, looking beyond what is being said by the tools and its methods, we should focus on how the conversation goes in real life. So this is time again to unbundle ourselves, to learn, to capture the conversations among our peers. What are we talking about? What are the pieces of advice coming our way? For me, that is a big chunk of the pie. Management is in the air. \