Just the other week, I was writing a blog post about the conferences I had attended, and I felt like, at the end of those two events, I'd come to realize that my progressive left wing politics actually exist inside of the web community that, I feel like Post-pandemic have been really disbanded to the wind, partly because we couldn't physically meet up anymore, partly because Twitter... was really, really, really terrible place to be.

So we didn't find a home. We couldn't talk to each other. And for some reason, after that pandemic, even six years on, we haven't really gotten back into the swing of how things were before, because that's how time works. It just moves forward, and things change.

But even still, after those 2 events, I was reminded that the web that... I was always drawn to... was this inclusive... open web. where people cared about accessibility, I cared about their craft. They cared about... the usability of the websites and all of this was for... Making sure anyone could access their websites.

It was about opening doors, both in the teaching that we did, but also in the websites that we released. Except... As great as we think we are, and as great as I think, the open web is, there has always been This property, where we behave like we're mightier and better than other people, which is at odds with the idea of being open and inclusive.

One of the web events that I was at the last month. There was a... way of sharing the websites that you had built. And this was really welcoming for new people, or even old developers in the game that want to show off, what they've been working on, and to have fresh eyes on it.

And one of the lovely things that our web community can do is share really positive, encouraging words for the work that other people do. I've always seen. The people who care about what they're doing, behave in a kind and welcoming way to beginners. So anyway, there was a discord channel where people could share their websites, show them off, and I didn't drop in myself, but I was talking to someone at the after party about it, and they were telling me how all these indie websites, 1st time websites were turning up, and it was really encouraging.

But that they had spoken to, someone they had met that day, who was just starting out in the industry, and they felt they couldn't share their website. And the reason that they felt like they couldn't share their website was because they had used React. And in particular, next, to build their website.

They'd never build a website before. So this, understandably, is a reasonable path to take. But because of the... rhetoric that we, the open web community, use... this person, who we would want to feel welcome, who we would want to share their new work, to show us what they've done, so that we can encourage them. couldn't do it, because of fear of being ashamed, for creating a website, using, react, and next.

Their first website.

Now, as I... write this blog post, or, in fact, right now, I'm dictating it to, a piece of software that is doing a pretty good job of taking my words and turning it into text, and my plan is to then kind of go back and edit it and check kind of, the text makes sense.

But as I work on this blog post, Right now, in the background, is Claude code, running, and building me a piece of software that, I know how it works, but I definitely couldn't write it myself, and I certainly couldn't write it in the time that I want it.

Specifically, that piece of software is building a web UI that can take a Game Boy ROM and show all of the VRAM in a way that I can quickly inspect what's going on. And the reason I need it in the webpage is because I need to be able to instrument it and do some testing with that webpage.

And I couldn't find anything that exists that I can instrument. So I'm asking Claude Code to build this for me. I'm not building this to monetize it. Probably not even going to release it to anyone.

It's just a tool that I need. I think that's pretty cool. I think it's pretty cool that it's, Buzzing along and doing that. But I can't say that on social media.

Not because I can't say that on social media and not because someone might hurt my feelings. But it's because the community I'm part of. Really? We're becoming increasingly Anti-AI. When in fact, I think what we're anti is, The big tech corporations, stealing content, passing off for their own, burning through resources, physical resources such as water, land, having a direct impact on impact on people's lives.

But those 2 things aren't quite the same. They don't swim in the same lanes.

I read a social post just the other day, which sort of prompted this, but it really wasn't the prompt. It was kind of more the straw that broke the camel's back into making me want to write something about it. The post was really about... AI and it comes across as saying the people who use AI are grifters or idiots.

Now, I don't agree with that at all. And I'm not 100% sure that was the intention. And Really, this was one post, but I've seen the same thing posted multiple times. similar kind of messaging. Someone who's telling me I should use AI, or someone who's telling me is telling me not to use AI.

I'd like to think they had a real reason. I'd like to think that there was some evidence to back it up. One of the big problems or differences between saying, don't use AI or don't use react, is react is quite a tangible thing. It's a single framework.

There are alternatives to get the same job done. The word AI, which is a marketing term made up in the 1960s, I believe, covers a huge range of things. And to say that you've never used AI, as a web person, as a person, as part of this work community, it's total nonsense.

Even if you didn't know you were using AI, you were using it. Your phone is packed full of AI, whether it's onboard or off, you know, in the cloud. When you were using Siri on your Apple phone, years ago when you still wanted to use it, that was AI.

When you go to Netflix and start scrolling and it's like, here's what you should watch next. That's AI. We're all using it. So let's pretend Let's stop pretending that we don't.

That's not really the argument here. We as... left leaning, quasi, liberal, progressive people. What we're talking about here, really, is the using AI to supplement our work is being shamed. And I don't see, I don't see any open web developer, an inclusive developer talking about how they're using AI.

And I think the reason that we're not seeing it is not because no one is using it in our community, but actually because they fear speaking out. And being ostracised for it.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am... Definitely not on board with Big tech AI being used in the NHS. I'm not on board with Video nasties being produced by ChatGPT or open AI, rather. I'm not on board with the disrobing of people on Twitter using Groc.

I'm not for using a company's technology to drop bombs on land. But I'm not naive enough to think that I can 100% stop using all of that technology, because I don't have access to the full supply chain. The same way is I couldn't stop eating sugar and be 100% sure that I'm not eating sugar.

Because it's everywhere. That's not to say that I can, I can't cut down on sugar, that's not to say that I can choose not to pay specific companies. I can do that I can choose to do that. But if someone is working in their job, And the company has given them, AI tools, either from open AI, from Google, from Anthropic, They're going to use them.

And they should be allowed to use them. And they shouldn't be shamed into feeling bad about that. The accessibility community kind of carried this around for a long time as well. There was this aspect of shaming developers for not making websites accessible.

And that's really changed now. That doesn't, I don't see that anymore at all. This was happening maybe 15 years ago. Because shaming people is not a way of teaching them how to do a thing better.