3 a.m. in the server room
The sound of the server room fan spreads like white noise at 3 a.m.
I'm here again. For the 10th year, in the same place, in front of the same monitor. The log of the crawler I just ran pours out like a waterfall on the terminal window with a blinking green cursor.
[2024-12-19 03:14:22] Crawling started...
[2024-12-19 03:14:23] Found 1,847,293 URLs
[2024-12-19 03:14:24] Extracting data...
HashScraper. The name of the company I created. Precisely like a hash (#), persistently like a scraper. We were experts who dug into every corner of the web to extract data.
Or is it the correct expression to say 'we were'?
The smartphone placed next to the monitor vibrates. It's a news notification.
"OpenAI unveils new AI model... capable of analyzing entire websites with 1 million tokens of context"
My finger stops. Resting on the keyboard.
The XPaths I crafted for days, finely tuned CSS selectors, and the thousands of lines of code I wrote while waiting for JavaScript rendering. All of this replaced by a single prompt line era.
# My first crawler written 10 years ago
def my_first_crawler():
# Those days of manual parsing...
pass
# And now?
ai.crawl("fetch") # Done
I look out the window. The city lights twinkle. Each of those lights is someone's data, someone's story. We collected it, organized it, and gave it meaning.
But now...
"How should we survive now?"
My muttering echoes in the server room. Suddenly, the buzzing sound of the servers sounds like whispers.
No. This is not a whisper.
This is... an invitation.
An invitation to change.
An invitation to evolve.
And perhaps, an invitation to transcend.
I stand up from the chair. For the first time in 10 years, I stop the crawler.
[2024-12-19 03:33:33] Crawler stopped by user
[2024-12-19 03:33:33] Total crawled: 0
[2024-12-19 03:33:33] New journey: Beginning...
This book is the record of that journey.
From the crawler becoming an alchemist.
From the hand disappearing and the eyes opening.
To grasping meaning from data.
And ultimately, learning to dance with AI.
Will you follow along?
Then let's begin.
First Chapter: The Disappearance of the Digital Hand.
June 2025, Seoul
CEO of HashScraper