Are you lying on a sofa at home just consuming yet? Embrace our future!
The tricky nomenclature around neurodivergency and some thoughts to ponder while we still can
PRODUCT ANSWER
The guesses are small but holding steady. Two people got the right answer this week. The product is a paintball and teargas shooting security camera. This raises so many questions in my mind:
Does it warn before shooting?
What about if friends or neighbours show up unannounced?
Who pays for the dry-cleaning after a paintball hit?
Teargas? Where are you living? What type of person readily teargases others?
QUICKBYTE: Your digital PAs aren’t going to listen to you
On top of the new SUPER app I reported Monday, that defines / confines our lifestyles, comes a prognostication that is chilling where it could lead. Amy Webb, one of the top technology forecasters in the world, just discussed the concept of Agentfluence at a recent digital marketing conference in Hamburg.
She also coined a new expression AI2C (AI to Consumer) where digital agents and other AI tools will be bombarding hapless customers…….providing intelligent people with unbiased and appropriate information about goods & services to help them make well-thought through buying decisions based on their autonomous free choice. 🤣🤣🤣
Who am I kidding? Most people will be drinking the AI brewed kool-aid like there is no tomorrow, justifying it because of convenience and “all my friends are”. But there is more. Much creepier to my mind.
Let’s return to Elon’s vision of the one app doing everything people like him can conceive you want. Refresh yourselves here if you need to. Supposedly you control his ennobling vision through your own digital agents. They save you the hassle of booking trips, ordering food, and choosing streaming entertainment. Thinking as well, if you like.
Amy throws some cold water on this. Frigid in fact. She sees digital agents running through the internet interacting with one another. Lots of them. One likely future is digital marketing agents developing special PR packages to influence your personal procurement digital agents.
Not influencing you. But your high tech factotums.
This will explain why your upcoming vacation is booked to a Sandals resort even though you hate hot weather and sand, you are having a two-for-one Dominos pizza special despite your gluten intolerance and cut rate pet food shows up by the gross for Rover.
Your role is to merely consume what is given to you. You should be grateful for everything Silly Con Valley provides.
WORD SALAD - Can majorities truly be divergent?
Without getting into the complex, complicated and controversial concept of neurodivergence let’s look at the coinage of the term. From England comes a story where suddenly everyone there is neurodivergent, driven as always by technology: awareness from social platforms like TikTok and handy little online web tests to quickly pinpoint your particular divergence.
BBC reports that there may be “more neurodivergent self-identified people than neurotypical people”. Leaving aside the purported 18 years backlog to get all of these people formally assessed, I want to go through some nomenclature “logic”. If neurodivergent people are in the majority, then doesn’t that make the neurotypical people a minority. Which means who are the majority divergent from? Shouldn’t the neurodivergent then switch to being the neurotypical and the old “typicals” are now the true neurodivergents?
A LITTLE SPICE
“ You have permission to be ordinary.
To live a quiet life. To go for a walk without turning it into content.
To do good work without chasing viral.
To be present with your people instead of always ‘building something.’
Your life doesn’t have to be optimized to be meaningful. The Ordinary creates space for what truly matters,”
- David Keeler.
WHAT’S REALLY COOKING
How much agency do you really have in your life?
Thats to all my readers. I appreciate the dialogues I have with some of you via the commenting features. We live in interesting times. Forward or restack to help this little newsletter grow, if you feel so inclined
A paint gun and tear gas!!! What?!? Well I guess that will keep the stray cats out of your yard!
We are going to be like the Truman Show with Jim Carey but AI 🤖 2025 version.
Remember when all we had to worry about was junk mail and telemarketers?
Now it’s algorithmic sabotage by well meaning bots and AI paintball snipers.
Simpler times David.
Happy Friday eve..........