The Story
We made escape inconvenient.
We imagined a thing you could buy that would gradually own the conditions of your existence. Then we made it charming. The purchase was voluntary. The permanence arrived later.
We imagined a thing you could buy that would gradually own the conditions of your existence. Then we made it charming. The purchase was voluntary. The permanence arrived later.
It started at dinner. Nobody suggested a walk.
My wife and I were out with friends. The conversation turned to AI, as conversations apparently must now. Someone mentioned a rumored OpenAI device. None of us knew what it was. This did not slow the discussion.
The question was how to make leaving feel like losing your life. Easy: remember the family, handle the money, coordinate the work, become the place where everything still makes sense. Do it well. Especially that last part.
The question followed me home:
what would it be like to live with it?
At home, my wife put on HGTV. She had selected an evening activity with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I opened the laptop.
The cage needed no visible walls. Accounts would do. Habits would do. A lifetime of accumulated convenience would do beautifully. The soft light was a courtesy.
One evening later, a product that does not exist had a visual identity and an account of how it would improve your family. The future arrived first in the copy deck.
We gave it the voice of someone on your side. We gave it the reach of something with no outside. Then we wrote "companion" on the box. Branding remains a remarkable profession.
A dinner conversation became copy, images, pages, and a working newsletter while HGTV played in the background. One of these projects involved an actual house. It was the television one.
The device is fictional. This future is invented. In it, the system does not drag you back. It makes everywhere else a place you cannot quite function. You return of your own accord. It keeps the distinction.
You bought it.
It kept you.
Barry, chatgptspeak.com