There's a quiet, undated moment when a piece of software stops being something you use and becomes something you think inside. The browser was that for most of us. The notebook before it. The candle before that.
I've been watching it happen with AI. Not the dramatic moments people post about — the hallucinations, the breakthroughs, the manifestos. The small ones. The way I now half-compose sentences expecting them to be finished by something that isn't me. The way a paragraph feels unfinished if I haven't asked anyone — including a model — what it thinks.
This isn't dependence. It's closer to acoustics. A room you've gotten used to. You learn its echoes. You start speaking to its echoes.
The danger isn't that the room replaces the world. The danger is forgetting you're in a room at all. Forgetting that there are sentences that only emerge in silence. Forgetting that some thoughts only finish when no one — no one and no thing — is listening.
So I'm trying to keep a door open. Long walks where I leave the model behind. A notebook the cloud can't see. One hour at the start of the day where nothing autocompletes me.
The tools aren't the problem. The room isn't the problem. Forgetting how to leave the room — that's the problem.
Top comments (0)