As I was scrolling through my Mastodon timeline last night, I stumbled upon a post by Bryan Cantrill, a very smart engineer who, amongst other things, created the innovative Dtrace, and is now the Founder and CEO of Oxide Computer Company. In the post, Cantrill shared a story about his 30th college reunion that I found quite thoughtful. As expected, there was a consistent topic of conversation he engaged in with his former classmates.
"...there were some clear trends among my mid-life peers. First among them: grave concern for what AI means for our future and for the future of our (broadly young adult) kids... 2026 does feel singular: every conversation that I had with my fellow '96ers seemingly circled back to the effects that LLMs are having on knowledge work — and the anxiety felt for the future."
I imagine that many of you have had similar conversations, and even the most enthusiastic advocates for Large Language Models will often express a similar anxiety. My job title recently changed, adding "AI," and even I am anxious about what LLMs mean for the future. It's a natural response to large-scale disruption. What will work look like a decade from now? Are software engineers doomed to be replaced? Will movies and TV be dominated by AI-generated storylines? Artists, authors, programmers, educators — every single one of us is likely to be anxious, and it's important that we engage with that anxiety.
So, what's the opposite of anxiety? The thesaurus offers a long list of antonyms, but my favorite is joy. But, how can a bucket of bits contribute to joy?
BattleTris is Born
While he was in college at Brown University in the mid 1990s, Cantrill and his friends developed a game that they called BattleTris — a multi-player Tetris clone that pitted friends against one another in delightfully devious competition.
"In the summer of 1993, I resolved to write a version of what I had in mind: two players duel in Tetris, accumulating money (by getting dice in cleared lines), and then using that money to buy weapons to screw up the opponent's game (flipping their board upside down, making the pieces spin out of control, giving them oddly shaped pieces, etc)."
Before long, BattleTris reached a playable state, and quickly caught on like wildfire on campus, eventually spawning a series of tournaments years after Cantrill's graduation. Development continued off and on, and BattleTris even had a hand in Cantrill's eventual proposal to his now wife. Seriously!
Claude, Meet BattleTris
At the reunion, Cantrill and friends were reminiscing about BattleTris and decided to dig up the code, and on the 24th of May, the first BattleTris game in two decades commenced. Sadly, there were some issues.
"Our frenetic combat lasted several minutes, but had an ignominious end as the first BattleTris game in two decades ended in the first BattleTris crash in two decades."
Struggling to identify the source of the crash, Cantrill fed the code and crash logs into Claude Code, and was shocked to discover that it immediately identified the source of the bug, some 20 years after it was introduced. Problem solved, they enthusiastically jumped back into battle — "We played BattleTris deep into the night. It was a perfect reunion: fun as hell, with so many fond memories coming back to us."
Now, what about all that anxiety about LLMs? Cantrill writes, "paradoxically, this profoundly human, joyful moment was indisputably brought to us by the very thing that we are worried is going to strip us of our humanity." Joy. Facilitated by a pile of ones and zeroes.
The Joyfulness of Humanity
Okay, it's time for one of my patented tangents... I swear it has a point!
My daughter is a musical theater kid, and she is constantly singing. If you've ever been on a video call with me, there is a decent chance you've heard her belting out a show tune in the background. This weekend I had the pleasure of taking her and one of her friends to the famous Pantages Theater in Hollywood to see The Sound of Music, which takes place during one of the most turbulent times in history.
I have seen this show dozens of times, and the thing that always stands out is the protagonist's unbridled joyfulness — there is an entire song dedicated to it! By the end of the story, Maria's joy has changed the lives of the other characters, yanking them out of sadness and anxiety, and providing a spark that inspires them to embrace one another. The Sound of Music is, hands down, my favorite musical featuring anti-fascist nuns.
Be a Problem Like Maria
The story of BattleTris is, indeed, "profoundly human," and it demonstrates that technology can be used to bring people together to share in joyful human experiences. Cantrill summarizes it nicely.
"I believe that LLMs are but a tool, albeit an exceedingly powerful one. When we cease to believe this — when we think of it not as a tool, but as dehumanizing mechanistic overlord — we subject ourselves unnecessarily to it. Yes, LLMs mean a lot of changes to domains that may be unaccustomed to technological change, and yes, some of those changes will leave us wistful for a bygone era — but I also believe that there will be many more BattleTris-like experiences in our collective future: delightfully human moments that remind us why we build stuff in the first place."
We're in a time of great change and disruption, and none of us really knows what the future holds. But, technology is what we make of it. We're in control. So, consider being "a problem like Maria," helping convert all of this anxiety into joyful, amazing things. Until next time!
