We were promised that technology would return something to us. Time, freedom, ease, perhaps even a greater capacity to live. Yet somewhere between the promise and the implementation, the tools became obligations, convenience became compliance, and the hours they were meant to save disappeared into the machinery required to keep them functioning.

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How is it that, with all the so-called advancements of remarkable and astonishing technology, we are more stressed, anxious, angry, lonely, depressed, financially strained, and desperate for more “free time” than ever before?

What’s worse, especially over the last five to ten years, is that so much of this technology, allegedly meant to save you time and money, is designed so piss-poorly, constructed so cheaply, and built with planned obsolescence that it costs more to purchase — though you’ll likely opt to finance it — while offering far less useful and practical functionality, durability, and reliability. It’s another inversion of reality based upon the lie of parasitic capitalism and collusionist corporate culture.

The singular idea of artificial intelligence, and the notion that it will become some kind of savior that solves every problem and fills in every equation, suddenly rescuing us from all the things we’ve been trying to solve for the last fifty or sixty years, may be the biggest lie of them all. It’s as plain as day and becoming more evident by the minute in mid-2026.

AI as savior is particularly insidious because the idea is that its code, algorithms, and large language models can be applied and integrated everywhere, easily, efficiently, and immediately. It has become the consummate corporate cop-out. Technology is ubiquitous in our era, specifically digital, software, and computer-based technology. The devices that surround us and pervade, intrude upon, and persistently disrupt our lives now involve and network virtually everything we do, every day of the week.

Because “there’s an AI for that,” anxious tech adopters and other greedy, impatient, and clearly inexperienced fools throughout various industries and institutions have bought into the hype hook, line, and sinker. They believe it can be integrated into all of these important, critical, and commonly used technologies without causing any undue disruption or interference.

The idea that this so-called AI revolution will be the singular force that brings everything into alignment, saving us from all the worries and concerns we have yet to resolve after a century of “astonishing advancement,” is, in my view, puerile nonsense. Everywhere you look, and nearly everyone you talk to, will tell you that, in practice and real-world experience, it is doing just the opposite — and worse.

It is increasingly frustrating — and a massive time suck — to do even the most basic things. It takes more time to sign up, register, sign in, link accounts, prove your identity, save yet another unique password, sign in again on another device, prove again that it’s really you, and download “critical and important security updates” every other day than it did only a few years ago, before AI exploded into the public sphere.

Customer service is now primarily AI-driven, and you can hear it in the voices of those distracted, disinterested humans with whom you eventually manage to connect: they would have preferred that you sort it out with their automated, machine-based assistants — the same ones that referred you to a human helper in the first place. Apathy is already at industrial levels. Quiet quitting is only increasing in scope and scale.

This brings up some rather critical issues to pay attention to — not to fear, but to remain aware of, become educated about, and be prepared to determine your own level of involvement, acceptance, complacency, confidence, and complicity in.

A few things to be wary of, which have been making the rounds in the conspirasphere for decades, are now deeply integrated into and broadly connected with the idea of a highly technological, centralized, perpetual-surveillance state: UBI and CBDCs.

It is a seemingly “natural progression” toward something that purports to be precisely what this modern era of humanity has been seeking. It is about how we earn, why we earn, whether we will need to earn, how our money will be stored, and how — or whether — we will be permitted to spend it. Since we live in a world that long ago made a god out of money, this discussion is central to virtually the whole of civilization. But to make my point, it will also most assuredly involve misleading state and institutional propaganda, aggressively controlled and manipulated narratives, and the usual action-reaction-solution trifecta of sociocultural engineering.

They will flat-out lie — as they have many times, even in the recent past — about ushering in a golden era of ease, relaxation, comfort, convenience, personal freedom, cost-cutting amalgamation, and the concentration and conglomeration of services, property, and production for the sake of safety or efficiency — already a trillion-dollar fiction. Machines and computers will supposedly do all the work, and all the massive wealth created therein will be shared.

And, of course, you’ll have all the free time you could ever want, to do with as you please. That’s a red flag, folks. We don’t want more free time. That’s marketing lingo. Corporate coercion. State misdirection. Social engineering. What we really want is to discern and comprehend how all of our time was stolen and reappropriated in the first place. They did it right under our noses. And they’ll do it again.

According to the self-anointed experts and indoctrinated futurists, the paid shills and sock puppets of industry, it is going to be just as it has been described in various utopian works of science fiction and fantasy many times before: humans will finally be free to do only what makes them happy, pursue their joys and dreams uninhibited, and allow the software-controlled, algorithmic, AI-based system to take care of everything else.

There will be peace unlike anything we’ve ever known. Innovations and reality-shaking revelations will arrive every other week. Social and cultural unification across the realm will finally be possible and sustainable. Because we’ll all be permanently signed in and logged on, everything will be more efficient, everywhere will be safer, and every budget will be effortlessly balanced.

It’s total nonsense.

Just think about it for a minute, minus the shiny-object hallucination or honeymoon phase you may presently be experiencing. The requirements, regulations, restrictions, and conditions attached to these purportedly universal solutions will be many, and nobody is going to read the fine print. They never do. Regardless, everything remains an offer. Everything.

They will simply have to, yet again, bring class-action lawsuits to bear after the fact, trying once more to remedy all the corruption, deception, theft, ecological and economic damage, and other criminality foisted upon them by the parasite class and its various predatory forces — forces that were permitted to gain an unprecedented advantage over the human collective.

In a society already drunk and high on perpetual distractions and endless content that is titillating, tantalizing, triggering, tormenting, teasing, and troubling, the logical progression will be toward a full-spectrum service suite — offered through a “voluntary” subscription, of course — administered by an entirely centralized, controlling, coercive, and unmistakably corrupt authority.

It will be led by those who are already of the mind that the human collective needs to be managed, monitored, and manipulated so that it never poses an existential threat, never dares to ask the right questions, and never fully comprehends the law, its true nature, or its authentic purpose in this one short life.

Forget about metaphysics, spirituality, deeper meaning, or philosophy. Get busy pretending to be busy: doing busywork, completing bullshit tasks, performing constant time-wasting administrative labor and systemically transferred work, filling out forms, answering surveys and public-opinion polls, and “voting” for your next leader.

Be careful what you say online, from any device, and even what you say around someone else’s device. It’s all connected. It’s all watching, listening, and targeting you with ads and content designed to keep you engaged in monotony, maintaining a quiet, unspoken, unquestioned desperation, and promoting ever more vapid spiritual emptiness.

All the while, you will exist within a contracted reality bubble that keeps you believing the world is one way, when, if you would only go and see it for yourself — if you would truly utilize your senses and immerse yourself in the miraculous aliveness and splendid wonder that is Earth, alongside your predominantly real, caring, and curious human brethren — you would discover it is nothing of the sort.

Why are you always busy? Because all of your time has been stolen.

This is, of course, merely one possible path. I believe it is highly unlikely to actually play out in this manner, but it makes for intriguing speculation and provides a kind of epistemic catharsis through its expression. Already today, this week, this year, many millions, regardless of age, race, sex, or cultural background, are shutting it off and walking away. They’ve had enough. They’ve been pushed to the edge, and they’re liking what they’re finding there.

It’s realization. Remembrance. Quiet.

It is human. It is alive.

No technological savior required.

Solvitur ambulando