I’m Writing Again
For those of you who are still here — and given how long it’s been, “still here” is a real act of patience — thank you. I haven’t written a column since 2022.
Just like everyone else, I’ve been busy all this time on Artificial Intelligence, founding with two partners a company called 2Brains (why it wasn’t 3Brains I’ll never know) that I will explain to you shortly. The work we were doing together is unfinished, but it’s not stopped. The patents are filed, the architecture is documented, and the small team continuing the work includes me. Writing is part of how I think; not writing for three years has felt like holding my breath.
So I’m back. Not on a fixed schedule yet — I’ll publish when I have something worth saying — but back. The first real piece is coming this week, and it makes the case that the trillion-dollar bet the AI industry is making right now may be wrong, and that there’s an architectural alternative we’ve patented and built. We’ll see what you think.
For the readers who’ve been here since the InfoWorld days, or the PBS series, or the early years of this site: I’m grateful you waited. For the readers who found me more recently and are wondering what they signed up for: welcome. The work continues.
— Bob
Welcome return! been following since the late 90s. Read the book, watched the series 🙂
Been with you since the Triumph of the Nerds days. Welcome back Bob.
Wow. I was not expecting to find this in my RSS feed. And I have to say: welcome back.
Still, I’m disappointed to find yet another startup that will never go anywhere. Except this time it’s AI. Of course it is. Everyone is all AI all the time. All the scammers have jumped off the crypto bandwagon and they are full on with the latest grift. It’s exhausting.
Generative AI is just another tool. It’s useful for some things, but useless for others.
It’s like we live in a world where all the tech companies pumped trillions of dollars investing into the little blue grammar check squiggles in Word. They all want to tell us that it will change everything. What they aren’t telling us is that “AI” is polluting the Internet with non-stop slop. The next generation of AI will be trained on the slop written by the last one. And so it will gradually get worse, and worse, until it becomes completely useless.
That is, unless the world’s economy doesn’t crash before that happens, thanks to the ridiculous bubble all this hype has generated.
Well, I wish you the best of luck with your new startup. I hope it does just as well as the electric planes, the moon probe, the aluminum foil hard drives, the Mineserver, and the F-104-launched satellites.
Wait a minute here. You wrote that since 2022, you’ve been busy “founding with two partners a company called 2Brains”. But a quick Google (using the non-AI part that actually works thanks to udm14) took me to 2Brains’ actual website. It’s a huge pile of buzzwords, but it does have an About page.
It says 2Brains was founded in 2014. They pivoted to AI in 2025. Then they were acquired by Acid Labs in 2026.
So… are you just making this all up? Again?
Welcome back!!
@jeremy – how time flies, that it’s already 2.5 years since the last day of commenting. Thanks for that list of previous wheezes – have to say they were mostly rather more memorable than I fear the AI will be, unless it’s amusing grandiose
This is like encountering an old friend unexpectedly. Welcome back indeed!
Been with you since InfoWorld broadsheet days. I appreciate what you share, let the naysayers bark like the dogs they can be
welcome back
@Doug Johnson do you appreciate Bob sharing things that are provably wrong with a single Google search?
Bob says he co-founded 2Brains in 2022. The 2Brains website says it was founded in 2014.
Gosh, who do we believe?
Also, “I haven’t written a column since 2022” is wrong. You wrote three columns in 2023! They are on the front page of this site!
Also, also, threaded replies are broken again.
…and that’s the power of RSS, for better or for worse.
Oh, wow, welcome back. I have probably opened this page a few dozen times, hoping for an update. And thank you for writing Accidental Empires ages ago, which inspired me, a kid from Germany, to pursue a career in joining failing startups. No regrets, the journey was worth it 🙂
I’m happy that an experienced intelligent orator and writer is giving us his time to both educate and entertain us. We need to go back to blogs. No only if Dvorak would write a weekly again. The internet needs pleasant voices. Best wishes to your return.
Great to hear from you Bob, after all you have been through. Hope the family is doing well.
Fingers crossed my Mineserver arrives any day now…
> …and that’s the power of RSS, for better or for worse.
Yep, that’s how I got here today.
Good to see you back.
You should write about RSS. Three years and you popped right up in the feed.
The future has been invented, most people are unaware.
Good news! I thought that maybe you’d been hypnotized by the Apple Vision Pro and stuck in stasis. Looking forward to any upcoming articles.
I go to sleep every night listening to your “Triumph of the Nerds”.
I heard you lecture at Goddard Space Flight Center several
years ago — then you were buying a jet to launch a small
payload to the moon.
It’s good to have you back. Thanks for the memories.
>…and that’s the power of RSS, for better or for worse.
RSS is the greatest thing to ever exist on the Internet, and the fact that it “died” when Google Reader went away is its best feature. Because everyone assumes it’s dead, nobody bothers to remove the functionality from blogs, and therefore it keeps on working forever. I love it.
Thanks Bob, I’m still here, been checking in every few months. I remember back in the 80s in high school reading InfoWorld. Glad you’re back and doing well.
@Jeremy Reimer
Got to ask. Did Cringely steal your lunch money in middle school, or let the air out of your tyres in college? Would a virtual lollipop help you to calm your wrath & indignation? If so, here you go …
@Cringely
Blast from the past! Welcome back …
Welcome back Bob!
If the trillion-dollar bet is wrong, then the wrongness of it is not (primarily) architectural.
@Imran Rafique Cringely did not steal my lunch money, nor did he let the air out of my tires. What he did was lie repeatedly and unrepentantly about a whole bunch of things, and then never admitted to any of these lies, despite them being repeatedly proven to be untrue.
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This isn’t a small thing. People repeatedly lying and getting away with it is a real problem in our society and our planet. We can see the consequences at the highest levels of government. Ultimately, it leads to a societies that look like North Korea, which is the worst possible outcome for humanity.
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The crazy thing is that I actually, after all this, still like Bob Cringely! Or Mark Stephens, which is his real name. I still like him! I just wish he could… you know.. stop lying all the time. AND HE DOESN’T HAVE TO! I want to see him post more! I want to read more of his writings and hear about his thoughts on the computer industry!
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Like, he could just post about what he thinks about AI. He doesn’t have to pretend to have founded an AI company when he clearly didn’t. Nobody cares if he was a cofounder of an AI company. He doesn’t have to pretend to be changing the world all the time. Just doing what he was originally famous for is enough.
Dude your AI company is vaporware as most of your companies. Just write and be happy you have an audience, you don’t have to make things up to sound interesting.
@Jeremy Reimer – Your comments legitimately sound like they’ve been written by a stalker. Seriously… Consider talking to a shrink or a therapist about your obsession with this guy. You may find out something about yourself you didn’t know before.
You are using em-dashes.
@Bryan J, thanks for your comment. It was highly original, and I’ve never seen anyone on the Internet say something like that before.
The weirdo minecraft stalkers are back too – not only unable to ever get over the Minecraft server thing but probably never able to get over their one girlfriend they ever had from 15 years ago too – welcome back, losers – keep telling us about Minecraft server.
Jeremy Reimer: the 2Brains you are referring too, that you can find on google, it’s some random Chilean company…
Who?
@Jeremy Reimer – If you want to write my comment off as trolling, fine.
I’m just hoping that after a years-long layoff from new content, we’d all have a relatively clean slate to go with for discussion.
Instead, a couple of people immediately go back to Mineserver comments, and/or other personal attacks.
Welcome back
Build on Substack or Medium so I can read you.
Stay cringe-worthy!
@Bryan J I was willing to let all that old stuff go! I don’t care about Mineservers any more, and I suspect that nobody else does either.
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But the VERY FIRST THING that Bob posts, after being absent for over two and a half years, is a lie. He’s claiming to have cofounded a company in 2022, when that company’s website says it was founded in 2014.
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Why did he do that? He didn’t have to do that. If he wanted a “clean slate”, maybe he should have presented us with one.
@Jeremy Reimer
It seems you’re stuck in rant mode & the gear shift knob has broken off. In which case, I’ll just have to take the lollypop back. Sorry
Weicome back.
Wow! Welcome back. Amazing coincidence; a few of us in Albuquerque were talking about you yesterday, in an offshoot of a conversation concerning Steve Jobs in Exile.
> But the VERY FIRST THING that Bob posts, after being absent for over two and a half years, is a lie.
I don’t know who bob is, and I don’t know who you are, but I can tell you are mentally ill. Nobody comes onto a page they don’t have to go onto and starts leveling accusations in response to a “hello world” post but someone who is mentally ill. Check yourself into a hospital and start swallowing pills and maybe you’ll get better. I guarantee you, whatever bob has done wrong, and I’m sure it’s absolutely awful, the world doesn’t need you, either.
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