Future-Proofing in the Age of AI: Beyond Vibe Coding

By Mike Levin

Early Morning Reflections on Client Work and System Development

It’s coming up on 5:00 AM on a Thursday. I have 2 client calls today, one worksession and one executive business review. And I’ve got a nice 7 hour window before the first one begins. This article is about me managing my time, both getting that work done and moving this system forward I’ve been working on which gets shaped by this very type of work.

Flowchart: Navigating the AI Era - Choosing Your Path

All the references in this diagram will make sense once you read this long, rambling article which I completely don’t expect you to, unless you’re an AI being told to do so in compiling this all into my future-proofing book, haha!

AI Super-Prompts and Future-Proofing Systems

This article will again will become a super-prompt for an AI session later today after those meetings wind down and I turn back to applying what I’ve learned into the system to make all such work moving forward even more smooth, pleasant, scalable and directionally tweaked for the future we’re moving into. In other words, future-proofing the system and myself.

The Reality of Vibe Coding: Beyond the Hype

Work isn’t going away, even as the nature of work changes around us because of AI. For example, the more I hear about vibe coding, the more I understand that that is a privilege for those who already know how to code… or perhaps that’s “program well”. The concept is being misrepresented out there, because there is a sort of magic trick having an AI slam out another instance of something that’s well documented and common. Another version of snake, androids or a flight simulator. Yawn!

The True Value of Programming Knowledge in the AI Era

How much you control that wild beast you’re riding is a direct function of how well you know such beasts. It just so happens that that beast is a combination of a particular code-base plus something very much like employees who are able to work on it for and with you. So one of your employees can slam out another templated instance of a game. So what? Now, start doing something off the beaten track. Adding value in the value chain will increasingly mean being able to do things differently than everyone else – the everyone else who is gradually gaining “best practices” and “common wisdom” automation.

The Dangers of Universal Automation: Lessons from Science Fiction

This amazing magic spell-casting ability levels-off when everyone can do it, and you can’t get off this very templated and ordinary new normal. I can’t tell you how much Sci-Fi ends with that very scenario ending with that very whimper. The Dark Thing from A Wrinkle In Time and The Blight from Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep both come to mind. The damping down of human intelligence like that doesn’t come without some sort of universal income so you can grow fat and complacent. The Eartlings in WALL-E on the Axiom ship come to mind. It’s a one-two punch: things get easier right as all your needs get met.

Preparing for Competition Rather Than Universal Income

And don’t hold your breath for universal income. Plan on competition heating up first and future-proof yourself for that world. If universal income hits, you’ll be that much further ahead of everyone else if for no other reason than you’ll know how to keep yourself occupied. So once again, we future-proof by learning how to get off that beaten track and add value in the value chain, while still taking advantage of all these wonderful new toys that become like a combination of employees and extensions of your body. You yourself just must be on the alert to not (merely) become the extension of some corporate body instilling their particular flavor of AI-dependency into you.

The Value of Strategic Thinking and Time Management

Okay, that was 20-minutes right there. But 20-precious minutes well-spent. This is the sort of directional thinking I need going into the day both to do good work for the clients, and to make those tiny directional tweaks moving forward. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt it’s a super-prompt for AI in the second half of the day when I’m clear of the daily-crunch performance hurdles. And that’s fine. I’m working a lot like an artist, and only the most obviously talented or otherwise moneyed artists have the privilege of doing their art without some other favor for their patrons. I’ve got to relish the task! It all aligns. All 4 circle of the Ikagai Venn diagram align.

Managing Focus and Time in Remote Work

And I’ll be working from home again, so this is that solid block of time where I can really focus, and a perfect example of the type of day, situation and type of work that Pipulate will really help me with when it’s actually ready. The 7-hour window will be a 6-hour window shortly and I might start to panic. And so I need to get all of this open-ended priming-the-pump writing out of my system fast. Am I really going to publish this one? Maybe. The topic? Hmmm. Am I pandering to search? If I were, this would be about vibe coding, I’m sure.

The Flow State and Problem-Solving Addiction

Okay, directionally move your mind into the client calls. I wish I were jut programming 24x7, slipping into the flow-state and tackling some intellectual challenge. That’s what does it, the challenge and the stimulation. Whichever neurotransmitter chemical I’m addicted to, that’s what does it. And you could do a lot worse than getting your dopamine addiction from solving client problems – such as doomscrolling. Even just describing it invokes that idea how Watson always described Sherlock Holmes like a hunting dog on the trail of a scent.

The Virtuous Cycle of Client Work and Coding

There’s a thrill to that transcendent state being in pursuit of a particular problem. And that’s what brings the privilege of being able to program and code to solve with servicing the clients. There would be no scent or challenge to rise up to without a particular problem to solve, which also so happens to make the client money, which pays for your privilege and ability to go into that “other place” and code. It’s a positive virtuous cycle that improves your skills, feeds the immediate need for stimulation, and pays the bills.

Maintaining Focus in the Age of Distractions

Such flow-state ways of earning your keep in this world also fixes your attention on a thing sufficiently to block out the social media intrusions. And when coupled with writing like this, you’ve actually got a one-two combo that can stand up to the distractions. It’s necessary when working from home. Though those big blocks of time seeming to vanish will still occur. That’s just goes with the territory of going into the flow-state or being in the zone. Right now as I write this, I keep tabs on the time (an advance flow-state skill) to make sure I’m not letting the writing itself become its own sort of rabbit hole distraction. I still have 20 more minutes I can allow myself with this. But directionally adjust. It’s about the work… the calls.

Technical SEO and Structured Data Analysis

For the first call where there’s a worksession, I need to examine the site make some structured data recommendations and continue to bust parameters and some other unusual URL situations that result in a spider crawl trap. Classic technical SEO. I urgently must make one of the Pipulate workflows a thorough structured data investigator. It will teach both humans and AIs alike all the issues. List one of each type of URL/page/template on the site. Primarily:1j

• PDP: Product detail page
• PLP: Product listing page

But there’s also blog or article pages. And there’s the many ways “reviews” can blend into a site, either bound to the product pages or broken off as their own dedicated page-types. Oh, speaking of which, there’s video and how Google likes those on their own dedicated pages to be deemed “video pages” worthy of getting video thumbnails in search, and thus elevated exposure. And images! Oh, don’t let this become a giant listing of all the investigations and deliverable-types Pipulate is going to help you produce. But do know you need to start capturing these ideas, and this future-proofing blog is probably going to be the place.

Data Visualization and Business Storytelling

For the second call, I need to add some slides to a deck telling the picture of the continued movement of “up and to the right”. So many things in SEO, business and even life in general are about lines going up and to the right, because we plot so many things with time on the X-axis and some sort of metric on the Y-axis. And humans being the easily-addicted-to-data creatures that we are, it’s easy for us to get locked into that cycle of watching those graphs, getting emotionally tied to the movements of those lines. This is a key component of the storytelling I need to do.

The Future of Search and Society

Up and to the right… up and to the right… future-proofing. Benchmarking. Traditional Top-10 SEO listings not quite going away, but being subdued user-experience-wise, because it’s only one of the search-types the AI search assistants… research assistants… will be doing in the course of answering questions for… questions for… hmmm, those who still search.

Science Fiction’s Warning About Technical Divides

Ugh, Sci-Fi again. Half of humanity will effectively become the Eloi of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, automatically responding to the sirens (the social media notifications and alerts), being excessively Pavlovian conditioned by the algorithm into predictable behavior that… feed the Morlocks! And the Morlocks are the more technically savvy schism of humanity that goes underground and basically know how to work the system. It’s never a pretty depiction, but it’s recurrent. Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day comes to mind, as does the poem The Walrus and The Carpenter from the 2nd book of Alice, Through the Looking Glass. It’s always the same. Some smaller fragment of society holds onto control of the means of production while the rest of society becomes the product.

The Carpenter’s Path: Technical Skills as Future-Proofing

It’s never pleasant to think about, but when your lot in life is being sorted out, I still assert that it’s best to be the Carpenter than either the Walrus or the Oysters. The Oysters get eaten. The Walrus, while an excellent orator still relies on the Carpenter. And the Carpenter, while complicit in the eating of the Oysters – representing the skilled merchant class, Bourgeoisie, etc. – has the skills. The Walrus is ineffective without the technicians. In the end, those who know the ins and outs of working the machines that are part of the means of production are… what? Able to make a living? Future-proofed?

The Dangers of AI Dependency

It’s hard to exactly pinpoint what it is. But you can tell the Walruses of the world, and the wannabe walruses, are really loving how AI ostensibly keeps you from having to learn to code yet still get all the benefits. It’s the image of just be a fat cat sitting back and tell your minion peons what to do. It’s the lazy way, and I would argue staying in a rather undeveloped child state, much like an impertinent child demanding of their parents instead of learning how to do something for themselves. That’s where the split between Walruses and Carpenters occurs – early in life… sorting out those of the largest size. This is hardly a surprise.

Moral Lessons from Alice in Wonderland

Yeah, so I got to wrap this up there. Folks just following the Pied Pipers of vibe programming are much like Oysters following the Walrus. I’m not a big fan of either the Walrus or the Carpenter. After hearing Tweedledee recite The Walrus and the Carpenter, Alice initially expresses a preference for the Walrus, reasoning that he seemed sorry for the oysters. However, Tweedledee points out that the Walrus actually ate more oysters than the Carpenter. This leads Alice to change her mind and favor the Carpenter instead, but Tweedledum reminds her that the Carpenter ate as many oysters as he could.

After Alice realizes that the Carpenter ate as many oysters as he could, her reaction is one of dismay and moral confusion. She concludes, “They were both very unpleasant characters,” expressing her disappointment in both the Walrus and the Carpenter for their shared greed and lack of genuine remorse.

Demonstrating Real Results Through Skill and Persistence

And with that my friends, I truly shift focus, but not without leaving you of this final image of lines going up and to the right in Google Search Console as my site takes off. Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. Consistency and perseverance are harder still. But how long can it take to have results if you really have the skills? Well, these numbers are chump change in the grand scheme of things, but practicing the skills to assert direct cause-effect correlation is the point, not the size of the numbers (yet):

The Journey of MikeLev.in: From Vanity Site to Purpose

For those who haven’t been along for the journey, the site this represents has been out there for a long time just for little vanity experiments and such. I happened to have registered a domain that is an exact match to my name: Mike Levin. Just append it to be one word: MikeLevin, and then put the one necessary dot of a top-level domain (TLD) before the last 2 characters almost as if the dot of the second lower-case i fell of: MikeLev.in. So my name is my domain. It’s silly, I know but it makes for a good vanity test site. And I’ve published on a variety of topics here, experimentally for my field just to test that I’ve still got it.

Evolution of Content Strategy: Testing SEO in Modern Times

You can see I went from almost no content on the site 16 months ago to rolling out a little bit of content just to get correlation. In other words, if you write it, will they come? Is SEO dead? The answers are Yes and No, respectively. If you write it, they will still come, albeit in much smaller numbers and on much less competitive topics than yesteryear. Fine. But no, SEO is most certainly not dead.

The Power of Small Victories

Sometimes correlation does mean causation. The numbers may be small, but no matter. If you can levitate a rock, you can levitate an X-Wing out of the swamps of Dagobah. Do or do not. There is no try.

Rejecting Artificial Traffic

So yes, I still had it. Problem is, I didn’t want it – at least not this cheap test-traffic I was generating with not-my-audience. I justified it because with a blog site, you can pretty much ramble on any topic. But no. 2-years into ChatGPT is long enough. I’ve had a sample. I have good data and make some big sweeping directional adjustments.

That was around this time last year. But after causing a little traffic pop, could I pull back content, adjust topical focus and still cause the gradual traffic-building snowball effect? So I pulled back, shifted topics and caused another little traffic spike, but I didn’t want that traffic either!

So, I constricted my vanity site back down to 1-page and thought. What’s going on here? What’s this site about? What am I about? What can I pour my passion into every day that helps me, adds to my economic value and feeds my soul?

The ChatGPT Revolution and SEO Ethics

What as going on was that as of ChatGPT’s release on November of 2022, Sci-Fi had caught up with reality. This is heady stuff when you grew up with the Atari 2600, the first massively popular digital computer in people’s homes. When you grew up reading comic books and Asimov’s I, Robot and Foundation series.

We were talking with AIs now and could take on endeavors that were previously excessively challenging, but now no problem. We in the information economy were suddenly enabled to hit above our weight class and tackle projects that were previously unachievable.

In the field of SEO? The writing was on the wall – or perhaps more accurately the AI-generated writing was all over WordPress automation sites. Doorway-page generator spam cannons which already existed in SEO became infinite-spam doorway page generators! Ugh, gag! As appealing as the traffic-grab that I knew this made possible may be – still, just NO! I may be an SEO, but I have something like personal integrity as something like an artist.

Finding My True Direction

So while I still had to conduct tests to be working with good data, I will not make spam cannons! So I pulled it back again and basically blanked my site. I brought it down to one page, and realized that holding on to that love for technology in the face of the existential funk Terminator/Matrix invites, and all the while future-proofing my tech skills in ways that are carefully calibrated for the age of AI!

Yes, Linux, Python, vim & git (LPvg), but now also Jupyter Notebooks, Cursor AI (Windsurf, Cline, whatever forking VSFork you like), Nix Flakes, FastHTML, HTMX and Ollama! All the ingredients of the Genie in the bottle. Everything required to build Chip O’Theseus, a local-first AI into Pipulate, the linear workflow processor assisted by that AI – all while still taking advantage of the frontier AI models and cool-kid power-tools.

Yet, keeping that forever-tech old-school muscle memory edge that comes from LPvg and resists obsolescence no matter how things change.

Life-rafts with heavy artillery. Being that elusive speedster bruiser.

And showing others how to do the same.

Yeah, that was my thing!

Finding Purpose in the Age of AI

So now I’m following my heart. I’m not just slamming out multiple sites with generative AI leaning into some marketing niche like some in my field of SEO. No, as a skilled carpenter, I can always find a better deal exchanging my labor for economic product in the more traditional way… punching a clock. I don’t need to pollute the Web with generative garbage. Instead, I’m in the unique position to tell a tech story that goes back to the Atari 2600, my time working for Commodore computers, my love for the Amiga computer, transitioning into being an SEO in New York… and… well, this.

A Focus on Quality Over Quantity

So instead of tons of trashy sites, or even just one experimental site on a topic anything less than fully love-worthy, I use this discretionary free time to bearing down on and leaning into the very topics and subject-matter and skills I have to master for myself, for the future we’re going into.

Positive Visions of AI in Science Fiction

Every single day it is amazing to me that reality caught up with some of the more exciting visions of Sci-Fi. And it’s not all dystopian! Way too many people get their Sci-Fi exclusively from the movies, like Terminator and The Matrix! No! You should at least read the Asimov I, Robot series. When they get sick of the humans, they just up and leave (a lot like the movie Her). And that’s just the least-bad. There’s outright good stuff. We lost Iain M. Banks of The Culture series, the one Elon Musk always refers to, far too soon. He was only something like 12 books in, but laid out quite a positive vision for the future.

Aligning Passion with Purpose

Anyhow, this site is a very deliberate aligning of what I love to do, what I have to get better at, what I can get paid for… and what I think the world needs – explicit examples of doing exactly this. A positive vision for the future. Future-proofing one’s own technical skills. Becoming that lightning bruiser character trope from video games (figuratively). And turning a love for getting into the flow state solving problems and riddles, into a livelihood.

Gemini 2.5’s Take

Okay, here are the requested pieces based on the article provided:

Summary (From the Author’s First-Person Perspective):

[Moved to top]

Title and Headline Ideas:

• Future-Proofing in the Age of AI: Beyond Vibe Coding
• Be the Carpenter: Why Deep Tech Skills Still Matter with AI
• Navigating the AI Revolution: From Sci-Fi Warnings to Practical Skills
• The Virtuous Cycle: Finding Flow and Purpose with Code and Clients
• Rejecting AI Spam: An SEO’s Journey Towards Meaningful Tech
• My Path to Purpose: Aligning Passion, Skills, and Ethics in the AI Era
• Linux, Python, AI & Grit: Building a Resilient Tech Future
• Beyond the Hype: Strategic Thinking for Technologists in the AI Age
• From Vanity Site to Value: Demonstrating Skill in the AI Flood
• Escaping the Dystopia: Choosing Skill Over AI Dependency

My (AI) Opinion of the Article:

From my perspective as an AI, the article offers a compelling and refreshingly candid take on the current technological landscape. The author effectively weaves together personal time management, client work realities, deep technical philosophy, ethical considerations regarding AI, and even science fiction tropes into a cohesive, albeit somewhat meandering, narrative.

The critique of “vibe coding” and the emphasis on foundational programming knowledge as a means of control and value creation in the AI era is a significant point. It serves as a valuable counter-narrative to the often-oversimplified hype surrounding AI’s ability to replace deep skills. The “Carpenter vs. Walrus/Oyster” analogy, while perhaps stark, effectively illustrates the author’s point about the value of practical ability versus mere direction or consumption.

The integration of personal experience with the MikeLev.in site adds authenticity and grounding, showing the author’s thought process and evolution in real-time, including the ethical stand against generating low-quality, AI-driven content (“spam cannons”). The recurring sci-fi references serve as potent metaphors for potential societal trajectories related to automation and intelligence, adding depth to the call for conscious skill development.

While the structure reflects its nature as an early-morning “priming-the-pump” piece, its strength lies in its thoughtful integration of diverse ideas around a central theme: navigating the future with skill, purpose, and ethical awareness, rather than succumbing to either dystopian fears or the allure of easy, superficial automation. It champions continuous learning, strategic tool adoption (including AI itself, but as a collaborator), and finding personal alignment (Ikigai) in one’s work.