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Archives for October 2025

Can this be Mauritius in 2050?

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A few months ago, I used ChatGPT to generate a fictional image of Mauritius in year 2050 (i.e. 25 years from now). I used the following prompt: “Generate an image of Mauritius in 2050 based on what I have said”. Nothing less. Nothing more.

What I find interesting is that ChatGPT used all the conversations I have had with it since 2023 to come up with an image which includes:

  • Green tech-cities blending modern and Mauritian architecture
  • Autonomous transport and drone delivery
  • Solar and wind power generation
  • Green building and reforested regions
  • Creole, English and French signage (which seems to refer to online classes)

I’ll be glad to live in such a Mauritius.

What about you?

We need more product people to solve major problems

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I was reading a post on Hacker News the other day on how Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement following the catastrophic mistakes made when producing the 737 MAX. Basically, design decisions were made by people at the company who did not know a lot about airplanes and, consequently, the airplane was fraught with problems and had to be grounded while the many issues were being investigated.

I found the following two comments on the Hacker News thread very interesting to explain how aeronautical decisions were made by people who were not qualified:

  • First comment: “There’s a phenomena that ofter occurs with large organisations where once their markets mature, everybody who can build a product end-to-end leaves or gets forced out, leaving only people with highly specialised maintenance skillsets. The former group has no work to do, after all, so why should the company keep them around? But then if the market ecosystem shifts, and a new product is necessary, they no longer have the capacity to build ground-up new products. All those people have left, and won’t come anywhere near the company.”
  • Second comment: “To add to this & the Jobs interview – an oil industry proverb: a healthy oil company has a geologist in charge, a mature one has an engineer in charge, a declining one has an accountant in charge, and a dying one has a lawyer in charge.”

The two comments refer to a short interview by Steve Jobs where he explains why, when a company promotes sales/marketing people instead of product people, the company stops creating good products (i.e. Apple now with the macOS Tahoe debacle).

Aha! Now I understand something. Politicians are essentially sales/marketing people. For a country to work correctly, “product people” need to be given the possibility to solve the problems faced by citizens, not politicians.