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A long economic winter
The flurries that began with the 2018 tariff spiral have hardened into a genuine economic ice age. The echo of the 1930 Smoot–Hawley Act—ten years of depression followed by six years of war—has lengthened, as renewed tariff escalation collides with record leverage, speculative excess, and an inverted demographic pyramid. Even the fifteen-year recovery that followed Smoot–Hawley may prove optimistic; the present contraction plausibly extends across decades.
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Strategy under constraint
As argued in Genesis—Chapter 8: Strategy, the appropriate response is not radical self-editing but disciplined co-evolution. The priority is to strengthen core systems rather than endlessly reshuffling teams, while preserving a baseline of human dignity and agency as the boundary between person and program blurs. The mandate is necessarily balanced: augment human capability enough to remain competitive, yet constrain machine power within a moral and operational frame. This balance cannot be fixed in advance; it requires a continuously revised understanding of what must remain human as code evolves.
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The Net Terminal Gene
The central risk is not a dramatic machine revolt but quiet deskilling. When societies become fluent in outputs yet illiterate in mechanisms, tacit knowledge erodes and systemic failures go unseen until they are catastrophic. The allegory of the Net Terminal Gene captures this danger: relinquishing the capacity to directly understand, intervene in, and reconstitute infrastructure. Co-evolution with machines remains viable only while human agency retains sufficient depth to supervise, override, and redesign automated systems. Manual oversight, therefore, is not nostalgia but necessity.
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Puppet mastery
What persists in the cold is curiosity—the refusal to stop asking “What if?”—and creativity, the recombination of ideas beyond any predefined routine. Alongside these stands puppet mastery, understood not as manipulation but as technical stewardship. In the present era, a single engineer coordinating multiple AI and robotic agents through deep code literacy is no longer exceptional but natural. Such coordination may be read metaphorically as a transformation of human time and space complexity: not in the formal sense of computation theory, but in practical effect, where the cognitive and operational reach of one engineer expands dramatically.
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Harnessing Brooks’s Mythical Man-Month
Under such conditions, the lesson of The Mythical Man-Month becomes not merely relevant but structurally attainable. When a single engineer retains the Net Terminal Gene—the capacity for direct system-level understanding— and exercises puppet mastery over multiple AI agents, the classic constraints identified by Brooks are partially dissolved. Productivity still does not scale linearly with headcount; instead, it scales with architectural clarity and disciplined coordination. By conducting many agents as a unified system, individual effort is compressed, parallelized, and amplified, reducing coordination overhead to a human-manageable scale. In this configuration, the limiting factor shifts decisively away from manpower toward understanding, making outcomes once reserved for entire teams achievable under the stewardship of a single, system-literate engineer.
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Grace in the machine
“A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven” (John 3:27). Seen in this light, artificial intelligence appears less as a rival than as a provision. Perhaps AI itself is such a gift, multiplying the loaves of curiosity and the fishes of creativity. The gift, however, is not the machine itself, but the opportunity it affords: to act with greater coherence, to think with greater reach, and to realize long-held designs through disciplined stewardship. When deliberately oriented toward this end, such software becomes a means of return rather than accumulation—an instrument through which human agency may be extended to love, to restore, and to contribute, however modestly, to the good of humanity even through a long winter.
Hemodynamic Software, Project nGene.org®
Hyunsuk Frank Roh, MD: Echocardiographer & IRB Chair
#1/3 The Mythical Man-Month: Prologue of my Life Ahead (written in 2013)
Throughout an entire undergraduate semester in 2006, Professor Elliot Soloway repeatedly read aloud selections from the book, The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks. The particularly memorable quote from the book about being a software architect read as follows: "The man-month as a unit of measuring the size of a job is a dangerous and deceptive myth." In other words, if the software architect decides to increase the manpower in order to decrease the month required for the software development, it is likely to, rather, deteriorate the project by increasing the intercommunication complexity. Fortunately, this principle, highlighted by Soloway, resonated with me based on my past experiences.
Professor Robert Denver provided me with an excellent opportunity to learn basic molecular biology lab techniques. He assigned me the task of sequencing a gene from Xenopus tropicalis using Vector NTI software. This introduction to bioinformatics was pivotal, propelling me towards further interdisciplinary research in computer science and biology. Later, I serendipitously attended "Computational Biology Short Courses" in August 2004, where I was introduced to a broad range of computational biology topics by various instructors, including Professor David States, the developer of BLASTX. The BLAST algorithm captivated me and has profoundly influenced me ever since, as demonstrated by my BLASTed logo.
nGene Logo
Vector NTI Alignment
nGene, along with "enGine" and "&Gene," shares a similar pronunciation, and these terms can be visually aligned and color-coded, reminiscent of how DNA or protein sequences are presented in Vector NTI software.
Professor Jignesh Patel gracefully allowed me to attend his weekly Bioinformatics seminar and assigned me a programming project to evaluate phylogenetic tree-generating algorithms. There, I realized that, in an interdisciplinary field, there could not be enough emphasis on communication between Apple and Orange in order to be on the same page; in this sense, being a chimera myself, trained in both fields, I can help (1) by not doubling the number of "men" required and (2) by reducing the "intercommunication complexity" on a manageable level. During the past seven years, there were many tears and changes in my life... And yet, I can still feel my heart pumping with joyful anticipation about working on the interdisciplinary topic because of my belief that someday I will hopefully make an important contribution to this interdisciplinary field that had once seized me with the BLASTed heart.
- Written during my 2013 trip to British Columbia/California
#2/3 Epilogue to a gathering winter
#3/3 The Answer I Found During My Alternative Military Service
English
When I returned to Korea at twenty-seven and began my alternative military service, I met many people from what Koreans call “Se-Ka-Po”—Seoul National University, KAIST, and POSTECH—who were fulfilling their service obligation at designated industrial companies. I had studied abroad and had also graduated from a prestigious university.
For someone classified for active duty, securing such a position was not easy. Unlike supplementary-service positions, there were very few openings. Usually, a person needed exceptional ability, a degree from one of those three universities, or the right connections.
Once there, they spent three full years seeing Korean industry from the inside. Three years is long enough to start asking how one intends to live.
The company owner might seem to care only about money, building a castle on sand. Would I live that way too? How could I continue doing the programming I wanted?
What did I really want: programming itself, money, prestige, or simply the pleasure of writing software?
I could remain a programmer. At the time, however, I believed that programmers in Korea stopped being properly valued after about thirty-five and were no longer paid according to their ability. If I wanted to keep programming, should I move to the United States or Japan?
Or should I become a founder and try to change something myself? A founder, however, cannot avoid thinking about money. If I became driven by it, I might lose the freedom to program as I wished and become like the owners I was watching.
Then how could I keep doing the programming I wanted?
Even before this military service, and before entering medical school, I had seen a medical-school professor in the United States working at the intersection of software and medicine. I wanted to bring those two fields together as well.
During my service, that idea took a more definite form. I would earn my living as a physician and pursue programming according to my own judgment and ideals. Medicine would provide a practical and financial foundation; in software, I would be free not to let money decide what I built.
That was the answer I found during my alternative military service.
“The satisfaction that arises from honest accomplishment is of far more value in the promotion of human happiness than the thrill that comes with the realization of materialistic aspirations.”
The answer I found during those three years is close to Ford’s words. Money is necessary for the practical side of life, but it is not what I want from programming. What I want there is the satisfaction of making something honestly and seeing it genuinely help people.
From my prayer
“May I have the honor of helping many people through my software.”
Ford’s words and that prayer describe the same direction for me. In programming, I value building something well and seeing it help many people more than I value material reward.
The others who spent those three years in similar circumstances probably found answers of their own. I still carry the answer I found then, and I still live by it.
한국어 원문
내가 스물일곱 살에 한국으로 돌아와 병역특례를 시작했을 때, 현역으로 방위산업체에 들어온 서카포 출신들을 많이 봤다. 서울대, 카이스트, 포항공대 출신들. 나는 해외파였고, 나도 나름 명문대 출신이었다.
현역 1급 판정을 받은 사람이 방위산업체에 들어가는 것은 쉽지 않았다. 보충역과 달리 현역은 티오가 거의 없었기 때문이다. 그래서 현역으로 방위산업체에 들어가려면 능력이 있거나, 서카포 출신이거나, 아니면 낙하산이어야 했다.
그렇게 들어온 사람들은 3년 동안 우리나라의 산업 현장을 직접 보게 된다. 현역이니까 꼬박 3년이다. 그러면서 앞으로 어떻게 살아야 할지를 생각하게 된다.
자기네 사장은 돈만 좇고, 모래 위에 성을 쌓고 있는 것처럼 보인다. 나도 저렇게 살 것인가. 나는 어떻게 해야 내가 하고 싶은 프로그래밍을 할 수 있을까.
나는 정말 프로그래밍을 원하는 걸까. 아니면 돈을 원하는 걸까. 명예를 원하는 걸까. 아니면 프로그램을 짜는 재미를 원하는 걸까.
그냥 프로그래머로 계속 살 수도 있다. 하지만 당시 나는 한국에서는 서른다섯 살이 넘어가면 프로그래머로 제대로 인정받기 어렵고, 실력에 맞는 돈도 받기 어렵다고 생각했다. 그렇다면 미국이나 일본으로 나가야 하나.
아니면 내가 직접 사장이 돼서 뭔가를 바꿔볼까. 그런데 사장이 되면 돈을 생각하지 않을 수 없다. 돈에 쫓기다 보면 프로그래밍을 내 마음대로 할 수 없고, 나도 지금 보고 있는 사장들처럼 될 것 같았다.
그렇다면 어떻게 해야 내가 원하는 프로그래밍을 계속할 수 있을까.
사실 나는 병역특례를 하기 전부터 어느 정도 생각해둔 것이 있었다. 의대에 가기 전, 미국에서 소프트웨어와 의료를 융합해 일하는 한 의대 교수님을 본 적이 있었다. 나도 그 교수님처럼 의료와 소프트웨어, 두 가지를 함께하고 싶었다.
병역특례를 하면서 그 생각은 내 방식의 답으로 구체화됐다. 나는 의사로서 돈을 벌고, 프로그래밍은 내 의지와 내 이상대로 하는 것이다. 의사라는 직업으로 생활과 경제적인 기반을 만들고, 프로그래밍에서는 돈에 끌려다니지 않으면서 내가 정말 만들고 싶은 것을 만드는 것.
그게 병역특례를 하면서 얻은 내 답이었다.
“정직한 성취에서 생기는 만족은 물질적 열망이 실현될 때 느끼는 흥분보다 인간의 행복을 증진하는 데 훨씬 더 큰 가치가 있다.”
병역특례를 하면서 얻은 내 답은 이 말과도 이어진다. 삶을 위해 돈은 필요하지만, 프로그래밍에서까지 물질적인 성취를 좇고 싶지는 않았다. 내가 정직하게 만든 것이 실제로 사람들에게 도움이 될 때 오는 만족을 더 원했다.
내 기도문 중에서
“내 소프트웨어로 많은 사람들이 도움을 받는 영광을 가졌으면 한다.”
헨리 포드의 말과 이 기도문은 내가 프로그래밍에서 원하는 것을 잘 설명한다. 프로그래밍에서는 돈보다 제대로 만드는 것, 그리고 그것이 많은 사람에게 도움이 되는 것을 더 중요하게 생각한다.
서카포 출신이나 해외 명문대 출신들도 그 3년 동안 각자 자기 나름의 답을 찾았을 것이다. 나는 그때 찾은 답을 아직도 가지고 있고, 지금도 내 의지대로 살고 있다.
