Hyperlegible 003: Julian Lehr

Hi friends 👋,

Happy Wednesday!

After almost two years, Julian Lehr is BACK to writing.

He wrote a piece called The case against conversational interfaces, arguing that we're not going to be talking to our computers instead of using graphical user interfaces. GUIs work pretty well!

Instead, he thinks that conversational interfaces are going to be a complement to existing workflows. We'll talk to our AI while doing what we do now, to do things like tell other apps to start doing things while we stay in flow.

Julian shares his writing process -- chat through a draft with AI, write ~60% of it by hand, and then pull it together in Figma, or sometimes, Google Docs. He said that like some people need a change of scenery to write, he needs a change of tools.

So why did he come back after two years in the wilderness? Simply: too many people were too consistently wrong on the internet. After seeing one too many "we're all going to be chatting with our computers" takes, he had to write the other side. And he delivered.

We cover a lot, from why he keeps coming back to Kevin Kwok’s Arc of Collaboration to how he uses his "thanks to" section to status signal. For this essay, he thanked Blake Robbins, Chris Paik, Jackson Dahl, Johannes Shickling, Jordan Singer, and Signulll -- an absurdly high signal roster.

Conversations like this one - where I get to nerd out with the people I've read for so long - is exactly why I'm doing Hyperlegible. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

You can find this and all Hyperlegible episodes wherever you watch and listen:

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Hyperlegible is now sponsored by our friends at Readwise, which builds software that helps you get the most out of your reading. When you go to readwise.io/hyperlegible, you can find all of the essays that we discuss on Hyperlegible in one place. I want this to be the best place to go whenever you’re looking for something fresh and high-quality to read (and listen to).

We’re getting serious over here. I’ve started working with an editor, Jim Portela, so if you notice that this episode is higher quality, that’s why.

As always, I hope you enjoy, and please keep sending me your favorite essays!

We’ll be back in your inbox on Friday with a Weekly Dose, and I will be back with a fresh Deep Dive next week.

Thanks for listening,

Packy

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.notboring.co