Don’t sharpen your tools. Keep changing them.

Were you a heavy ChatGPT user swearing by it in your daily life? Did your daily routine get transformed in the last couple of years? Well for some it might come as a shock that the new kid in the block is DeepSeek. What to do? Stick to ChatGPT or switch to DeepSeek?

This is the kind of dilemma that we keep facing in the tech world and the non-stop changes would make our forefathers’ heads spin. The Blackberry was the ultimate handheld device. Till the iPhone came on the horizon. (That even killed the iPod). CDs and DVDs were the in thing. Just when you thought Blu Rays would rule, we entered the streaming age, first illegally, then legally. Hotmail was cool. Then not so much. Then it simply ceased to exist. The Internet Explorer killed Netscape. Then self-destructed. Orkut ruled India. Then came Facebook. And then came WhatsApp. 

These changes are getting more and more frequent. You have no choice but to be an early adopter of every tech tool that hits the market. Stick with it if you like it. Discard it if you don’t. That’s the only way you will stay up with the times.

You don’t want to be left behind. One of the best jokes that can be found about DeepSeek is: ChatGPT lost its job to AI! AI tools are being used to plan your day, write applications, generate content, create images and videos and God knows what. It is not enough to have one tool in your kit. Have as many of them as possible.

Evolution of tech tools

If the 1980s had a computer-native generation, the 1990s an Internet native generation, the 2010s had a smartphone native generation then the 2030s will produce the AI native generation. What comes after that? How long will the human mind be able to keep up? One has no choice but to keep pushing the limits. If the singularity has to come and we all become cyborgs in the end, then so be it. 

Now the changes are also global. Regular TV programming came late to India in the 1980s. We had a delayed dotcom boom and startup revolution. But no more. All these changes are felt simultaneously all over the world. The change ripples travel at the speed of light. Already the Covid era seems miles away in the past. 2022 was the ChatGPT era. 2025 is the DeepSeek era. Whatever will come in 2026? (Or will it come in 2025 itself?)

Meanwhile keep gathering as many tech tools as you can and discarding as many as you don’t need.