My thumb felt like it was made of lead. The screen of my phone was bright, too bright for a room at three in the morning, and the red heart icon pulsed with a life of its own. I had just liked a photo Sarah posted in May 2018. We had not spoken in 128 weeks. The image showed her on a beach in Crete, the sun hitting the water in a way that I used to try to capture with my graphite pencils. Now, I am just a ghost in her notification feed, a digital echo of a mistake made in the dark. My heart rate is hitting 98 beats per minute. This is the danger of the modern interface; it permits us to move through time and space without friction, until the friction of our own stupidity stops us cold.
The $188,888 Theater of Innovation
Marcus walked into the office 48 minutes after I arrived, his face glowing with the fervor of a man who just discovered a new religion or a new subscription service. Marcus is the Director of Creative Synergy, a title that costs the company $188,888 a year and signifies almost nothing. He wanted to use a generative engine to create a talking avatar of a prehistoric hunter to announce that the coffee machine had been fixed.