The Tower Keeps Rising

I feel that some vibecoded software changes somewhat randomly and unexpectedly. That made me think about Bruegel’s “The Tower of Babel” which shows an already quite chaotic depiction of the Tower of Babel. The story is usually told as one about pride and ambition and ultimately why people no longer speak the same language. But it is also a story about the unity that makes technological progress work. The text begins with a technology upgrade: And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. They use it for a civilizational project: let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven But when God assesses the situation the bricks are not what concern him: the people is one, and they have all one language, […] and now nothing will be restrained from them.1 The source of their power is coordination. They share a language and with that shared language they can combine their work…