Claude Code at the Four Corners

I brought Claude to Four Corners. It was mid-query, running in the back of the truck off the same beacon that got me around the country five years ago, while Krista and I didn’t realize that the map taking us to Durango brought us right through the Four Corners. Thinking of five years ago and the emphasis of Can I Park Here?, it felt like a comic reality to see how far forward and backward we have all come since then.

I left Stanford the day prior, returned my keys to student housing, and began a race to the wedding of two of my best friends from UC Davis.

Eight to twenty hours door-to-door by plane to this part of Colorado (depending on delays which I have learned the hard way in the past), or fifteen hours guaranteed by road, was my logic. But the truth is, for all the years spent flying, I really love exploring the roads and meeting people along the way.

Anyway, I switched the Wi-Fi to my cell hotspot to ensure I didn’t lose any progress as we took the pit stop. It is amazing when you aren’t towing how much less you pre-plan routes and how much more Google takes over. To think I could have driven right past a bucket-list item if I missed the sign.

We arrived and yes, I stood in the corner before I snapped the picture of Claude.

The spot was quiet, with a few Native vendors selling handmade crafts they pride themselves on. Despite the margins, they aren’t automating away the arrowheads their ancestors created to hunt and protect. Perhaps some of them are, but it seems like a hard thing to fake…at least harder than words have become.

Claude is riding shotgun in more than one way. For the good, in my time at Stanford, it brought me closer to code, and the engineers on my team closer to the customers. In many ways because of that we built faster, in many it slowed us down. In what feels less productive, too few typos and a lot of “It’s not this, it’s that.”

More eye-opening than ever was taking cognitive tests and playing cognitive games while building our app (we can share more on this later), or seeing a slide in class shared from a very credible source I will not name: “If I only have 2-5 years to meaningfully contribute to the earth, what should I do?”

Drive more? Experience more? Pay more attention? I guess in this moment all of the above. If only that was always the case.

I love road-tripping, and I love building. Perhaps for the first time, both are possible. Instead of debating about the Turing test, AGI, and who gets there first, perhaps we spend some time debating about human dependency on AI and when that is acceptable.

I wouldn’t have built this website without it…