read field reports, ignore speculation

The easiest way to dodge the The Creative World’s Bullshit Industrial Complex in a hot field is to pay attention to case studies and field reports rather than breathless hype and over-generalized speculation.

Field reports are first or second hand accounts of concrete use cases and things actually happened. e.g. “here’s what I ran into when I built X,” “our team tried Y and here’s how it went,” etc.

Speculation may include a grain of reality (or not!) but is usually written by someone on the outside and followed up with baseless conjecture. e.g. “X built Y in 3 days and this is why AI is coming for all our jobs,” “the new oculus is so good soon we will all be living in the metaverse,” etc.