Some thoughts after reading A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction.

I was re-reading my reflections on prose and poetry.

Prose and Poetry. In prose, words in a pattern language have a simple single meaning, but in poetry there’s a deeper more profound meaning because of the density, and overlap of the connections. This interlocking illuminates the whole. This compression is the only way to create buildings which are poems.

It got me thinking.

Generative AI is putting together many cromulent web experiences. Polished, balanced, refined.

But is this compression — this shorthand of clues, hints, and suggestions — something only humans will be able to do?

By the time the models pick up on it and implement it will it be a cliché or a trope? Imitation without understanding* or parroting?

I suspect that gen-ai will only be able to put-together prose. Or at best use peoples poetry in a prose-like way.

Let’s see.

Until then we can enjoy all the numbered serif headline resurgence, tiny eyebrows, and cards with tangentially related icons. In some ways, this is a shorthand of its own.

Reference: https://www.patternlanguageindex.com/understanding-a-pattern-language#prose-vs-poetry

* gen-ai doesn’t understand things, but hopefully you know what I mean