Video: The Dark Forest Theory of the Web (... and generative AI)
My first recorded talk!
Here’s the video of a lightning talk I gave early last year at DevOps Kathmandu Connect 2025:
The main reason I love to write or tweet (or now give talks!) is for a selfish reason: to make other people excited about the things I find exciting, so that we can have further conversations about it!
This talk was similar, has been something I’ve not been able to stop thinking about for years, and so was the perfect candidate to speak on!
Also, none of the ideas in the talk are mine:
Mostly my talk is just an abridged version of Maggie Appleton‘s hour-long talk with the same name, which you should definitely watch if my talk whet your appetite!
And the phrase “The dark forest theory of the internet” is originally from Yancey Strickler (all the way back in 2019!!!)
This talk is just an attempt to help popularize this idea in my IRL circles1, and to anyone who is not in our corner of the web2
P.S. Rewatching the video, 2026 me (who has seen the current state of AI video) to my 2025 self (who was mostly worried about text):
I think the actual impetus might’ve been “I have already had to explain this to 4 people separately, I should just give a talk about it” 🤣
TPOT people, where you at?