On Wednesday, May 13, 2026 at 6:50:42 PM UTC-4 [email protected] wrote: Just my two cents on my position about all this "agentic programming fashionware", I don't want to delegate big parts of my understanding of complex systems, including software, to non-deterministic systems that "hallucinate" in non detectable ways. I try to confine the stuff I don't understand about the software artifacts I build to small parts, where I ask specific questions to the AI (or Apparent Intelligence, as I like to call it) and do small commits.
I keep my tokens usage small, use anonymous AI systems like duck.ai or Lumo, that don't use my data for training and I think that in all that rush of AI, seems a minimalist approach with little compromise. I doubtful and worried of a grandiloquent visions with a unique convergent future for diverse people and worldviews, particularly when it comes from tech bros. Unfortunately "agentic programming" seems one of such visions. A friend just returned a book that I loaned her before the COVID-19 pandemic upended so much of civic life: *Stand on Zanzibar*, by John Brunner. Seeing it brought to mind one of Brunner's creations for the book: Shalmaneser, a supercomputer that does work that greatly benefits giant corporations. The Wikipedia article on the book <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar> mentions published praise of the novel: In his 2021 book *Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe*, historian Niall Ferguson lauds *Stand on Zanzibar* for foreseeing the future better than more popular novels such as *Fahrenheit 451*, *The Handmaid's Tale* and *Anthem*. [Wikipedia article quotation of Ferguson begins] *Yet, on further reflection, none of these authors truly foresaw all the peculiarities of our networked world, which has puzzlingly combined a rising speed and penetration of consumer information technology with a slackening of progress in other areas, such as nuclear energy, and a woeful degeneration of governance. The real prophets turn out, on closer inspection, to be less familiar figures—for example, John Brunner, whose Stand on Zanzibar (1968) is set in 2010, at a time when population pressure has led to widening social divisions and political extremism. Despite the threat of terrorism, U.S. corporations like General Technics are booming, thanks to a supercomputer named Shalmaneser. China is America's new rival. Europe has united. Brunner also foresees affirmative action, genetic engineering, Viagra, Detroit's collapse, satellite TV, in-flight video, gay marriage, laser printing, electric cars, the de-criminalization of marijuana, and the decline of tobacco. There is even a progressive president (albeit of Beninia, not America) named "Obomi".*[End of quotation] I recommend reading *Stand on Zanzibar*, it is an astonishing experiment in form, written to immerse the reader rather than argue in a manner suited to debate - it introduces the technique used ("The Innis Mode") as a necessity of urgency. . . . which is sobering to the reader approaching it in 2026, since it was published in 1968. In addition to the other forecasts made in the novel, Shalmaneser is sure to strike the current reader as a single Artificial Intelligence. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/leo-editor/c6172cc5-5b91-4e8e-a2e3-fac9679cd0d2n%40googlegroups.com.
