Through a remarkable set of circumstances, the relevant facts of which I’m not at liberty to discuss, I have just this weekend availed myself of the no doubt highly unique opportunity to take my pick from among an abundance of affordably priced used Time Machines, in the future, and used it to go back and visit myself in 1999.
The experience was entirely unpleasant as I found 1999 me to be unconscionably boorish, thoughtless, and arrogant. 🤣
I figure I should take the time right away to record the substance of our conversation before I dispose of its memory and get on with life.
I’ll jump ahead to 6:02 PM Friday night, minutes before which, 1999 me was attempting to get his ideas through to 2025 me, in lecture format of a kind, or more like, hectoring.
You can’t, for obvious reasons, tell anyone you came from the future, and that they, are you.
To him I was just some old dude stuck in some ancient past while he was busy, in 1999, pioneering the future, or something.
The “lecture” I endured was 1999 me’s “vision” about a future architecture and construction industry in which (digital) models were king and drawings abandoned.
Rhetorically he stood on this like it was granite a mile deep.
https://youtu.be/ORe2PulqyEg?si=rM_hB1TyBq9eJ-le&t=115 (Bob Seger, “Like a Rock”)
1999 me was obstinate, would hear no dissent, was hostile, resorted to name calling. You can imagine it. I’ll skip all of that and jump ahead.
As you can see for yourself, I wasn’t very happy with the old me and lost control of my tone. Somewhat. Maybe I should have escalated further. Who knows? I’m back in 2025 and won’t be going back.
2025 Me 6:02 PM, Friday
You are deeply bothered. What is your problem?
You’re above question? You don’t like discussion? You enjoy smearing people? What is it? You don’t answer questions? Do you generate questions? What is it?
You have everything figured out. People should listen to you and do what you say. I’ve seen plenty of that attitude elsewhere.
I’ve asked you meaningful questions. Why won’t you answer? You found the secret of model handover but you keep it to yourself? It’s not worth sharing with others?
I’m certain you won’t read this or the pages linked from it:
Can you please at least say what you think drawings a r e ?
Things get tricky when you’re time traveling, and here I’m sharing with myself back in 1999 a blog post from 2024.
But — like “the “can’t kill your own grandfather” paradox, also known as the grandfather paradox, the classic thought experiment in time travel that explores the potential contradictions of manipulating the past” — space time intervenes to prevent 1999 me from looking at the blog.
I never look at it no matter what I try, to get myself to do that, so I never recognize the future date.
Cue Bob Seger again.
You’re devoting yourself, 2025 me says, to the dumbest of all ideas in AEC, the most counterproductive. I wonder if you’ll ever change.
1999 Me 6:05 PM
Dude relax.
I’m all about discussion, but you apparently have some agenda I don’t understand. To make it easy for you this is how it’s done.
Design team -> modeling and calculations -> third party control of both -> iteration until acceptance -> delivery of model (in some project hotel) -> contractor builds.
Feel free to have concrete questions, but some vague semantic misconceptions about drawings vs. models aren’t really productive.
This has proven to work with fewer errors in design than before. I assume you haven’t tried.
Cheers dude.
2025 Me
Dude (?) I’ve done model based design at firms large and small since 1998 (he thinks I started yesterday).
I’ve talked with others about this “drawingless” claim that’s gone around because of one vague article that mentioned it. People involved in the work say the claim is exxagerated because they do use drawings in the “drawingless” projects, just fewer of them.
But the claim is repeated all the time anyway.
I’ve heard this aspiration, to “abandon drawing” since it was discussed at the large firm round table in 2003. (because of the time travel, young me just thought he was talking with someone in some stage of dementia forgetting what year it is).
It’s never backed up with coherent thought, I said. It’s a slogan. It’s counterproductive, for everyone and stunts meaningful software development. There is nothing vague in the distinction between environment (model) and the expression of attentive focus within a model (drawing).
Nor the interplay between those, which is thought itself, or the dynamic of it.
If that’s too vague or semantic for you, really sorry, I just have no respect for the idea of promoting silent film while we’ve had the fusion of sound in film for a hundred years already. You’re promoting a regressive idea and calling yourself a champion of the future.
It’s just absurd.
I wanted to go easy on myself, because it’s me after all, but the ideas are just dismal.
Knowing it can have no effect, that at this point 1999 me concludes already he’s enduring a crazed person, I just continue. What harm can it do?
You want to lead the industry, I say, into a future of models only, when we’ve had (in 9 softwares) the fusion of drawings IN models since 2012. You want to roll back time, 2025 me says, in regressive action counterproductive to model development, model quality, and model utility. You want to stunt everyone and everything.
You know, this has happened before.
You’re like Jack Warner:
In September 1926, Jack L. Warner, head of Warner Bros., was quoted to the effect that talking pictures would never be viable: “They fail to take into account the international language of the silent pictures, and the unconscious share of each onlooker in creating the play, the action, the plot, and the imagined dialogue for himself.”[146]
1926 was 27 years after the first demonstration of equipment putting sound and film in fusion.
2025 me went on, having lost the interest of 1999 me entirely. I just walked the sidewalk of my old neighborhood rambling out loud to passersby and myself.
😂
Fusion (V2.0) is not enough. It’s just the prompt for what comes next. After the fusion of sound into silent film, the FORM of sound evolved, and the FORM of film evolved.
The same thing will happen with drawings and models. In fusion, the FORM of both will evolve.
I specify that evolution in form for software developers here:
Just like I specified the (automated) FUSION of drawings in models in 2007 and led the team that developed and commercialized that first in 2012.
1999 Me
Cool story – Seems like you already have it figured out.
You didn’t provide a single concrete question about the workflow I provided, just overlooked what I’ve written.
Call it whatever you want, believe it or not – it’s not important for me to convince you.
2025 Me:
You really are flippant. You didn’t answer the simple questions I asked you.
(I had raised the points here: https://tangerinefocus.com/2025/04/03/achtung-baby/ )
What equipment are you using, with regard to your modeling, to articulate your sustained act of visual close study, and affirmation (that what must be shown, is shown, here) at critical areas within the model? So that people you deliver the models to can understand that, and so you can too, as you develop your models and QA/QC them…
What are you using to articulate that, and also document that you did that?
No answer, while you toss away technical drawing without even grazing interest in what it is.
Under a mantle of “pioneering the future”.
1999 Me
Hahahah
2025 me
Exactly. Flippant
The narrative, pseudo idea, you promote has been for 20 years already the greatest single obstacle to significant advancement of the modeling endeavor itself and software development supporting it.
Congratulations!
Enjoy another 3 decades of silent film!
1999 Me
This is still funny. Peace out!
2025 Me 6:33 PM, Saturday:
Back in 2025 now and there is some commotion out on the sidewalk out front, an old man pacing, talking to himself, arms raised in disbelief.
Crazy dude!
🤣
OPEN VCS, a lens for looking at models 