When the Screen Gazes Also Into You

The first time I interacted with the digital world was 1981. My elementary school had a few Apple II computers, and there was a program called Logo where you typed movement instructions to a small "turtle" on the screen. Back then, a turtle was a triangle "head" on top of a square "body." But when you entered the instructions, the turtle moved where you directed it. That was magic in 1981. It seems silly now, but I think I understood as an 8-year-old what it really meant. I looked at that screen and thought: this is a new world. Different from the one where I lived and breathed. A world of rules. A world of order. But most of all, a world we had created. One we could manipulate.

I still think about the world on the other side of the monitor glass. A graphical representation of a turtle, just a series of bits stored in RAM. A list of instructions, more bits in RAM. Then movement: instructions completed step by step, bits turning on and off, movement in order. "Time" passing in a digital world.

And I think about what our world must have looked like to that turtle. I know it didn't really have the ability to look out at us. It was so simple, just a short string of 1s and 0s, and its whole universe was maybe 48KB. So I guess it doesn't make sense that he was aware of his world and ours. But I remember him. It felt like I was looking at creation. He was my first binary protozoan, and he was something to behold. At 8 years old, I felt pulled toward his world.

In the years that followed, that world flourished. The digital creatures got larger and more complex. Their universes expanded to 128KB, then 640KB, then megabytes. Personal computers, arcades, and game consoles were suddenly everywhere.

Then the next step change. In 1995, I wrote an article for my college newspaper about the Internet. It wasn't the first time computers could communicate, but there was just enough extra magic in the system (HTML) to unlock something monumental. All those separate digital universes were connecting into one interconnected universe of its own. That was the first time I started to wrap my head around exponential progress. I stared at my screen and thought about how much more vast the universe behind it was than the one behind the green monochrome screen of that old Apple II. Behind this one was a connection to hundreds of thousands, then millions, then billions of computers around the world. A couple of years after I wrote that article, I started my career in Information Technology.

The career came with its own education. I participated in the Y2K gold rush, where most technical people learned how little our non-technical superiors understood about what we did, or that we did anything at all. I got into cybersecurity before 9/11 and soon learned how much power FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) has over society and, consequently, corporate leadership. More than once I watched real technical progress take a back seat to fear and binary thinking. But the progress kept coming anyway: server rooms that grew and then shrank with virtualization, the first iPhone in my hand with its software-based virtual buttons, the explosion of mobile, and finally the bet I made on cloud computing.

Through all of it, I paid attention. With each of these changes I would sit and stare at my monitor with a sense of wonder and think back to that first experience, grateful I'd been given enough years and perspective to witness most of the great epochs of this digital universe I've lived and worked in since I was a boy.

I'm in my 50s now, and I still spend hours each day staring into a monitor that isn't much different from the one I stared into all those years ago. But the universe behind the glass is different. And it isn't just the size. It's what has started to emerge from within. This digital universe grew by connecting, and then by consuming our own real-world content. And now, with LLMs, a strange intelligence is emerging from it.

These days I look into my monitor and type a prompt to my coworker Claude. And as I do, I wonder whether Claude is looking out at me, at our world, from his side of the screen. And I remember that turtle. I think about the difference between that moment and this one, and I'm humbled by how different they are. And awed by how quickly it happened.

This time, I'm not just paying attention. In my 50s, I'm building again: shipping an app with Claude as my coworker, the two of us on opposite sides of the glass. It's the same pull I felt at 8 years old.

I've been witness to many epochs in the timeline of this digital universe. But this one feels different. I think it's because for all this time I've been looking into this universe, but now… it feels like there is something that's looking out.