CONCEPT
The Abstraction Sequence
The cumulative history of computing as a sequence of jurisdictional events, each creating new professions and contracting old ones, with AI representing the most radical step because it abstracts the entire process of translating intent into implementation.
The history of computing, read through Abbott's jurisdictional lens, is not merely a story of technological progress but a sequence of jurisdictional shifts. Assembly language created the programmer; compilers created the high-level programmer; frameworks created the application developer; cloud infrastructure created the cloud-native developer. At each transition, practitioners of the previous level mounted gatekeeping arguments that were empirically accurate and jurisdictionally irrelevant. AI represents the most radical step because it abstracts not a specific technical operation but the translation from human intent to implementation itself, eliminating the requirement for any specialized technical language and creating the conditions for a profession defined by judgment rather than technical knowledge.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The structural consistency of the sequence deserves recognition as a law of professional evolution in computing: every increase in abstraction triggers the gatekeeping argument from the previous level, and the argument fails whenever the new level produces output adequate for