Memes and Machines
Software is forking into content and utility. Nothing in between survives.
The Wrong Frame
Everyone thinks code generation is about accessibility.
Wrong.
It’s about divergence.
Software is becoming two completely different things.
One rises into entertainment. One dissolves into infrastructure.
The application—the thing in the middle—empties out.
The Up Direction
Look at what the code gen platforms are actually building.
Not dev tools. Social infrastructure.
Galleries. Trending feeds. Forks. Likes. Creator profiles. Remix buttons.
TikTok architecture for software.
They’re building tools for making content that happens to execute.
Functional Memes
Code generation is becoming interactive functional entertainment.
People don’t build software to solve problems. They build software to post. To remix. To react. To participate in what’s trending.
Templates aren’t solutions. They’re cultural artifacts. They spread because they’re shareable, not because they’re solely useful.
The code needs to “wors” in the sense a TikTok video “plays.” That’s not why it exists.
Functional memes. Software is content.
Creation Becomes Expression
When creation becomes trivial, it becomes expression.
Photography did this. Video did this. Music production did this.
Code is doing it now.
The scoreboard is engagement. Likes. Forks. Views. Trending.
The game is visibility.
The Down Direction
That’s the up direction. Culture. Entertainment. Human attention.
Agents are going the opposite way.
Down. Into infrastructure. Invisible. Ambient.
The Flip
And they're flipping the entire interaction model.
Today you prompt the agent.
Tomorrow the agent prompts you.
It notices your calendar conflict and proposes a fix before you ask. It sees the email and drafts the response. It recognizes you need a visualization and generates it.
You don’t open apps. You don’t navigate interfaces. You don’t choose tools.
The agent surfaces what you need. You confirm. Done.
The Application Dissolves
An application was a container. A way to package functionality for human discovery and access. Name. Icon. Interface.
If agents handle discovery and access, the container has no purpose.
What remains is a service layer. Capabilities invoked by agents. Invisible to you.
No interface—there’s no human at that level.
No name—you never call it.
Headless. Pure function.
Software Becomes Electricity
Software dissolves into infrastructure the same way electricity did.
You don’t choose your power plant. You don’t navigate the grid. You flip a switch.
Agents become the switch. Everything behind them becomes utility.
Services competing for agent attention. Ranked on speed, cost, reliability. A market you never see.
Persistence Dies
The application was the artifact that persisted. URL. Version number. Something you shipped.
Neither direction needs that anymore.
Entertainment doesn’t persist. Content. Seen, forked, reacted to, faded.
Infrastructure doesn’t persist either. Instantiated on demand. Used. Dissolved.
Persistence was the defining feature of applications.
Persistence is what’s disappearing.
Two Games
Two directions. Both accelerating.
Code gen platforms are entertainment companies that don’t know it yet. They’re building TikTok and thinking they’re building GitHub.
Agent platforms are building the last interface. Everything behind them becomes invisible.
Software becomes content or utility.
Something you watch. Or something you never see.
The Questions
If code becomes entertainment, what happens when metrics optimize for engagement instead of function?
A landing page goes viral because it engages well. Doesn’t need to perfectly work forever.
If agents control infrastructure, who controls the agents?
The agent decides what you need before you know you need it. Routes you to services you never chose. That’s a lot of power in one layer. (YOLO)
Here’s how it plays out.
The entertainment layer consolidates. A few platforms win the gallery game. Network effects. Content moats. Same playbook as every platform before it.
The infrastructure layer standardizes. Agents need protocols to route efficiently. No protocol, no traffic. Services either comply or disappear. Commoditization follows.
Platforms and protocols. That’s the next five years.
The Third Thing
Not a platform. Not a protocol. A space for discovery. For emergence. For play without the scoreboard.
It shows up after the dust settles. It always does.
Cheers. RM
This post was written in one session using Claude Opus 4.5 through a tool I change every day. I dumped a mess of voice notes, discussions, and half-formed bullet points into the context window and we shaped it together through a few editing passes. The ideas are mine, the speed is new. (I did make the frameworks manually though.)