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Where are we going?

Apr 21, 2026•
#Erraric Thought

As a UI/UX/Product/Digital designer/researcher/lots-of-slash-because-of-so-many-titles-being-thrown-around-in-the-tech-world…

AI is… great! It’s an amazing piece of technology since 1984 when Apple introduced graphical user interface. Since I touched a computer for the first time, it’s just that: pointers, icons, folders, apps, and everything in between.

But something feels… I don’t know… off.

Tech has enabled many convenience in our lives:

  • Instead of burning WAVs of your band’s demos to a CD and send it to labels via post office, you can just send an email to the A&R guy.
  • Instead of printing your CV and letter to apply for a job, you can send an email to the HR guy.
  • Instead of going to a radio station to buy a concert ticket, you can just queue on a site and wait.
  • Instead of buying game CDs, you download them.
  • and so much more…

Notice the things I listed above still came with frictions or byproduct inconvenience. But… you know… I guess it’s fine.

Then AI kinda changed everything:

  • Instead of using a grammar checker, you simply ask a bot to make the CV more compelling, conversational, less-jargony, whatever you need.
  • Instead of using a chord generator, you simply ask AI to generate a draft (or even a finished product) of your music.
  • and more things…

Then the byproducts became… more overwhelming.

You use AI to write your CV, and the HR guy use AI to read and shortlist them.

You use AI to create articles and short videos, and then a bot farm somewhere watches them, giving engagement numbers.

You use AI to synthesize a whole book to post your so-called original opinion on a forum, then other members use AI to synthesize and summarize the sentiment.

As I write this, I feel like this is a love-letter saying “I miss you” to the slow web (thus a slow life in general).

I miss spending 3-to-6 months in an online course learning about web development instead of using NotebookLM to upload a bunch of PDFs, YouTube videos, and generate a step-by-step guide.

I miss spending days or weeks writing a song using a guitar and a notepad, instead of throwing a bunch of influences to generate a so-called original sound of “mine.”

I miss the nervousness of a job interview with a fellow human being, where sometimes the conversations can be drifted into something like “Oh you live in Bekasi, I used to live there before I moved to X” instead of being interviewed by a soulless robot that synthesizes my tone of voice and choice of words.

Where are we going?