The Dry Well
Patients need health infrastructure over Big Tech assistants.
Consumer health AI bottoms out where the context runs dry. The platforms that hold the full record are the only ones that can safely guide the journey.
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Eric Turkington
est. 2026 · Amherst, MA
I think, I write, I build. This is where I put it all.
I build AI products for healthcare by day, and write about what all of this is doing to us by night. Essays on meaning, attention, and the human side of a rapidly shifting world. Photographs from wherever I happen to be.
“The patient doesn't archive and curate. Infrastructure does.”
— The Dry Well
“Apparently, AI is not ashamed, and it does not know what it does not know.”
— The Hippocratic Oath AI Needs
“We don't fully trust its judgment because true originality requires bravery — breaking the rules in some way, not just summarizing them.”
— Lost on the Token-Room Floor
“We are the bottleneck in our own revolution.”
— The New YOLO
“We are building a new form of higher intelligence. The least we can do is look it in the eye before we hand over the keys.”
— The New YOLO
“The agent manages the volume of the data; the physician manages the value of the care.”
— Agentic Entropy
“Intellectual growth and progress demands the messy, inefficient collision of different perspectives.”
— Agentic Entropy
“Carelessly deployed AI doesn't just substitute for our thinking; it actively reduces our tolerance for the friction required to do hard work.”
— The Scaffolding Deficit
“You end the day having produced more, but feeling proud of less.”
— What Work Was Doing for Us
“Some inflection points are only visible in hindsight, at which point it will be too late to catch up.”
— What Happens When 'Generation Voice' Grows Up?
“We don't want service to get in the way of the product. But we don't want the product to go entirely unattended. Call it "Self-service+".”
— The Self-Service Conundrum
Latest essay
Patients need health infrastructure over Big Tech assistants.
Consumer health AI bottoms out where the context runs dry. The platforms that hold the full record are the only ones that can safely guide the journey.
Read the essay →
More essays
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Everyone is arguing about AI and jobs. A deeper question intrigues me more: what was work doing for us that the paycheck wasn't?
Currently
Reading
AI 2041 — Kai-Fu Lee & Chen Qiufan
Building
Voice AI for operating rooms — Orva at RST
Listening to
SABLE, fABLE — Bon Iver
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