Something pretty interesting happened last week: Meta and Google were successfully sued by a woman who claimed their products were addictive and negatively harmed her health. The person in question (only known as Kaley) was awarded $6m (£4.5m).

There are a few different ways you could react to this news. One is slapping an L-shaped finger on your forehead and going, “duhhh, of course social media is addictive, who cares?” Another is thinking it’s another ridiculous American lawsuit where someone sues KFC for covering their fingers in chicken grease.

The third is pumping your fist and conducting a tiny joyful jig because this is some of the best news that’s come out in some time.

To start, let’s blast an obvious confetti canon: social media is addictive. Smartphones are addictive. There’s a deluge of research examining how companies like Google and Meta use psychological tools in order to keep people on their devices. Anyone who has used social media for any period of time innately understands that those apps and services are designed to keep you on them as long as possible. No one has a healthy relationship with Instagram. You’re either on it all the time or you’re never on it. And, come on, the average amount of time spent on TikTok is 1 hour and 37 minutes per day.

When you think about it, social media is similar to smoking; even if it makes you feel bad, you keep on doing it again and again. The only real difference is smoking looks cool while being on social media is lame and dull.

There’s also the fact that governments have attacked smoking for some time. Sure, there was a bit of a gap between the knowledge coming out that cigarettes caused lung cancer (1950) and banning cigarette adverts on TV (1965), but that was a different time. An older time.

We’ve known for a long time that social media is bad for people, especially young people, so why haven’t governments done much about it?

Much like cigarettes, it’s money and influence. Politicians don’t want to upset Big Tech companies not only because of the cash, but also because they control the flow of information. Social media wins elections, so best keep those companies on side.

That’s what makes the recent court case so important — especially in the context of the US and UK legal systems.

Basically, the UK and the US follow what’s known as common law, which differs from the civil law used in most European countries. This is almost an article in itself, but we can sum it up as so: common law generally governs by using the outcomes of previous cases.

Ergo, where civil law would create a specific regulation to tackle social media addiction, common law systems refer back to other court cases that tackled a similar topic.

Civil law uses written codes, common law uses previous rulings.

It’s why when something like abortion is talked about in the U.S., it’s through the lens of Roe v. Wade, not a specific case.

What we must hope for is that this social media addiction case is just the beginning. It’s wild to think that Big Tech has gotten this far without a proper crackdown. It’s clear that they’re effectively pushers, doing everything they can to manipulate humanity to increase screen time and make more money. That’s all they care about. Strip away any nonsense terms or thoughts of “connection” or “sharing” and you’re left with the cold, hard truth that social media is the same thing as smoking: get us hooked and keep us hooked.

The only saving grace is that, unlike cigarettes, social media isn’t cool. And the sooner more people sue the breeches off Big Tech, the better.

It pains me to say it, but AI videos are good now. Well, by “good” I mean that they now look like actually videos rather than something freaky and nightmarish. In a small way, I sorta miss those days. They were at least interesting, which is more I can say for what’s happening now.

The rise of the Actually, This Looks Okay AI video kickstarted a new era where the world’s most unimaginative people currently believe themselves capable of creating art and are hungry to share them social media.

As ever, I have a theory: sharing an AI-generated video you “made” is about as interesting as telling people your dreams. It’s a crime, it’s unbecoming, and it’s akin to public masturbation.

The whole thing was kicked off by the launch of Seedance 2.0. This new model is surprisingly capable of deep levels of copyright infringement and the imagination-less have pished that to the limit. Sometimes it’s people bragging about their “original” movie that’s somehow worse than just not making anything at all, but often these sexless losers are compelled to make two pop culture figures fight. It always seems to be fighting. Like the Predator or the Terminator. Or Dwight and Michael Scott from The Office. Or, the most famous of these situations, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt:

Sidenote: It appears that this fight wasn’t even entirely AI generated, and the creators had actors fight in front of a green screen before overlaying the faces of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.

One trend I’ve noticed in particular is the sense of pride the “creators” of these videos have, the idea they’ve created something valuable. It’s weird to watch. It couldn’t be clearer that the only way any of these videos exist is because someone else went to all the effort of actually creating these characters and familiar scenes before AI just smushed them together.

Bragging about creating this is like me buying a Hemingway novel, crossing out his name, putting mine on top, and telling people I redefined modern literature.

And the fighting. My god, all these videos seem to show people fighting. It’s like bad improv, like watching people play with action figures. Except… maybe it isn’t. I’d probably prefer to watch that. Bringing two inanimate objects to life suggests a level of creativity and playfulness that these AI-developed scenes simply don’t have.

No, when you get down to it, the closest thing to posting an AI-generated video online is forcing people to listen to your dreams.

To the dreamer these are vivid experiences, but for the listener they’re pointless, merely a self-absorbed monologue. When you’re talking about your dreams you’re not engaging in any dialogue, it’s entirely self-focused with zero chance for the other person to get involved.

It’s the same masturbatory action as sharing an AI video you generated.

What connects a good story and piece of art is how it draws you in. It’s about transporting you to situations, building a scene that feels real, and having respect for the receiver. These new type of AI-generated videos have none of that, they’re a series of disconnected images with nothing deeper going on below the surface.

I’m not saying that AI won’t improve filmmaking (think of digitally creating huge crowds or making sets look more realistic), but the technology will be used as a tool, not the end product. There simply won’t be an entirely generated movie because it’ll look like trash, be pointless, and lack the connection to the audience that all good art needs.

Sharing AI-generated videos is just publicly jerking off. You might enjoy it, but that doesn’t mean anyone else wants to watch.

It’s happening. Somewhere, it’s happening. Most likely it’s in a gleaming glass building in California or New York or London, a man — and, let’s be honest, it’s always a man — is twiddling with the zip on his Patagonia gilet and sipping at his Ippodo matcha latte and is on the cusp of coming up with the worst idea you’ve ever heard. Maybe, after he’s slurped the green dregs of his drink and rinsed his soft beige ceramic mug in the kitchen, he pauses. The tap. There’s something about the tap. He turns it on. Water comes out. He turns it off. Water stops. “What if,” he thinks, “you could get different water out the tap? What if,” he continues thinking, “you could charge people for that? What if,” he thinks, thinkingly, “you have to watch an advert before you can turn the tap on?”

Like clockwork, it’s happened again. The Tech Bro has reinvented a pre-existing idea with one important twist: it’s much worse than before.

The jaded amongst us might say that’s the nature of technology businesses, but I don’t entirely agree. The problem isn’t companies themselves, but the issue of allowing one type of thinking to dominate society.

But we’ll get there in good time.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because those Big Tech Boys are at it again. Netflix is buying Warner Bros Discovery.

This is intriguing because it shows we’re edging close to a streaming monolith, a Power Rangers style Megazord monstrosity. Netflix will own HBO, the DC universe, and a quite startling array of other content. It’ll be the most complete collection of visual entertainment in history.

Apart from libraries. But let’s not talk about those.

There are a million different ways to think about Netflix’s purchase, but what’s most pertinent in this instance is what Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Disney+ will do. If Netflix merges with Warner Bros Discovery the streaming market will have a clear dominant force for the first time in a long time. There are several ways the other streamers can fight this, but I think the most likely will be some sort of service that allows a bundle, a way you can subscribe to bits of their content and…

Oh. It’s cable, isn’t it. Subscription TV. We’re on the long road back home, only to discover home is now covered with shit.

The reimagining-a-thing-and-making-it-worse is a well-trodden path for technology. In fact, it seems that since the industry ran out of easy ideas about 15 years ago, there’s been an endless deluge of businesses rejigging existing things.

Like the Boring Company inventing… the subway. Or Hyperloop inventing… the train. Or Stockwell inventing… the vending machine. Or the Pause Pod inventing… the tent. Or Juicero inventing… squeezing.

Tech’s awful track record at reinvention isn’t an integral issue with tech itself, instead it’s linked to the type of mindset the industry celebrates.

Broadly, tech is good. It’s done positive things and made the world easier. I can listen to any song ever on my phone. It’s dope. But it has also unbalanced how certain people are valued. “Choose STEM” has become more fascistic slogan than gentle encouragement. Meta and Google and Apple and Amazon and all the other horrors made so much damn money with an engineering-led approach that this poisoned popular culture.

Much of the way Big Tech makes money is through quantifying. They’re effectively advertising platforms, selling companies an easy-to-understand way to judge their success. It’s why we measure things in views and impressions and time spent on page. You can’t put a number on “enjoyment” or “influence,” so this becomes a useless metric for Big Tech.

Online engagement is a reflection of the binary systems at the heart of computers: on or off. Companies live and die on this data, although it’s surface level at best. Like, come on, what does time on page really tell you?

But Big Tech businesses are valuable, so they must be right.

This methodology has now leaked into every aspect of society. Numbers are everything. Life must be tracked, reduced to a spreadsheet. Ponder, for example the rise of hustle culture and time maximisers, the very foundation of the Bro Podcaster scene; it’s an engineering mindset, one based on quantification.

In the early days of tech’s takeover, this data-driven approach was novel and valuable, and plenty of industries needed that methodical approach. This was at the core of tech’s goal to disrupt; some sectors required updating.

That period was so successful that this disruption, data-first mindset is now seen as a barometer of truth. Statistical thinking slipped into arrogant thinking. It’s no more beautifully summed up than in Elon Musk. He’s a man who made his original money with PayPal, a company providing a service that was better than what traditional institutions did. But Musk became so convinced of his own genius, the idea that he alone knew best, that he tried to tell experienced cave divers how to rescue children and even began to build a submarine to execute the mission. He knew nothing about this world, but his success in upending an old industry emboldened him to believe he did.

It’s this exact mindset that leads other Tech Bros to try and reinvent the train, the tent, and television.

Like all things, there has to be a balance. Nerds and theatre kids can’t dominate alone, that leads to Elon Musk and the Hamilton musical. They need to coexist together, to call each other’s bullshit.

Sadly, right now, tech is dominating. And I can’t wait to see what they reinvent next.

You’re having a good chinwag, chatting away, maybe in a buzzing bar or in a park on a crisp day or at a friend’s house; maybe you’re sipping on a frosty beer or cradling an oat flat white — and then, it happens. A question. A gaping cavern of ignorance: “Has a British Prime minister even been assassinated?” The universal response is to pick up your phone and find out.

Well, I say universal, but some people absolutely despise this habit, see it as a faux pas, an insult to the very nature of conversation, a stain on the trouser fabric of society, and they’re right, but they’re also very very very wrong.

Googling is good. Googling is modern. Googling is part of our generation’s conversation.

Sidenote: I’m going to use “Googling” in this piece as a catch-all term for looking up something online. Sure, it’s not entirely accurate in this age of AI chatbots and TikTok and reading signs in the entrails of small animals, but I think we can all agree that “Googling” works as an umbrella term for searching the internet. Tell me if you disagree, but I’ll probably ignore it.

Certain things I experienced as a kid stuck with me, managing to worm their way into my brain and still hold an oversized slice of real estate there. Like my Dad’s old Britannica encyclopedias. They were pretty incomprehensible to a child — why, hello there, the Deutsche Mark — but they were also miraculous, giving me a glimpse into a world of information.

The problem was that using them wasn’t fun. “Have you looked it up in the encyclopedia?” was a common question my parents asked and one I continually had the same answer to: “No, I have not and I will not.”

Then Microsoft Encarta came along, which was much more my speed. This was a CD-ROM encyclopedia that had a lovely user interface and included pictures, audio, and video. Really, when I look back at it now, it’s like a proto-internet — but one seen through the lens of optimistic futurists. It’s a little like The Jetsons, a show that takes place in a 2062 that I can guarantee will be nothing like the actual 2062.

Anyway, Microsoft Encarta had all the trappings of the internet (you could click on things and shit moved!), but lacked breadth. There was multimedia, but a limited amount. Although, if you wanted to listen to a snippet of a Winston Churchill speech, by god, could you listen to a snippet of a Winston Churchill speech.

This is why the internet was such a revelation. Suddenly, I could get answers. Cool answers. Interesting answers. About things like tanks. Sure, there was a small section on them in an encyclopedia, but if I, a Very Normal and Well Adjusted child, wanted to create a 50-page booklet ranking my favourite tanks, I needed the specificity of the internet.

The experience of not having access to answers and then suddenly having all the information you need as a child is why I suspect my generation (ergo, Millennials) have the strongest urge to Google. We know what it’s like to yearn, oh how we yearned, but, friends, we yearn no more. The data is right there, on our phones.

Each generation has habits enforced upon it by technology. It’s why older music fans stick to albums and younger music fans veer towards playlists; the former grew up with vinyl and CDs, formats in which the album was the de facto method of consumption. This is how they grew up consuming music, and it’s something many broadly stick to.

Millennials got stuck with Googling shit.

Of course, people of all ages search online for answers, but it’s this segment, the generation that grew up both with and without the internet, where it hits the hardest.

But now we swing to the crux: is Googling bad? Should we be Googling while chatting?

Let me fix this for you right quick: no and yes. Googling is fine, Googling is great, and Googling is a conversation enhancer — but with two conditions. Firstly, you signal that you’re going to look something up on your phone before you do it. Just disappearing into your screen is rude and pointless. Two, you talk through what you’re looking at while searching and then immediately return to the conversation after the search.

There you have it.

Oh, and that question you had? It’s Spencer Perceval. The only British Prime Minister to be assassinated.

Go on, delete your social media apps. Dare ya. Double dare ya.

It’s in the wind, written across the landscape. Like each and every year, the hills are alive with the sound of people saying, “I want to be more mindful” or “I want to stop doomscrolling” or “I can’t handle the news” or “I hate my life and everything in it so I should really, really chuck this horrible rectangle away and get a dumbphone instead.” My brother in Christ, right on. Each year I add my voice to this chorus, I boom, I holler, I may even conduct; how many other people developed a whole method of using different devices to get a handle on phone addiction and still failed? Truly, you’re reading the words of the Master Splinter of self deception.

Seriously though, delete the social media apps from your phone. Go on. You won’t regret it. Probably. You probably won’t regret it, so chuck those apps in the bin. I vouch for this approach, but it’s becoming increasingly tricky.

I’ve soured on writing about improving your life with tech. It’s become a sterile and flaccid field, innately unsexy, hospital-like but without any nurses or doctors or patients or uniforms or thermometers, just florescent lights and the stink of disinfectant. The podcasters are to blame. They ruined self-improvement. There’s a fine line between tweaking parts of your life to improve your health and happiness, and tumbling into the sexless, Action-Man-groined world of The Diary of a CEO / High Performance / Huberman Lab / Any Type Of Other Introspective Bro Podcast That’s Toxic In Its Desire For Non-Toxicity .

Wanting to improve yourself should be a positive. Getting up early and working out is good, you’ll feel better and probably get more things done. The issue is when this lifestyle becomes ouroboros-esque, a figurative auto-fellation where you’re so hooked on your own taste you can’t stop going down on yourself.

Life optimisation should have a reason; feeling better about yourself, wanting more time to paint Warhammer, writing some erotic fiction, whatever it is, it should be something.

This message missed the bro podcast scene, a group of people stuck in what I call the Bryan Johnson Paradox.

Sidenote: Sadly, this isn’t the Brian-with-an-“i”-Johnson Paradox, which would be named for AC/DC’s lead singer. Not entirely sure what his paradox would be, but we can work on that later.

Bryan Johnson is that American tech bro who’s obsessed with trying to live forever. He’s the one who injects himself with his son’s blood and tracks his son’s erections and will probably eventually be slain by his son in some Oedipal rage.

Johnson is the apex predator of the bro habit optimiser sect. He has the sort of Scrooge McDuck wealth where he can do all sorts of wacky-ass shit to spend another decade or two eking out an existence. It looks awful. Pretty much all his time is focused on elongating his life, meaning Johnson spends his life doing things to make him live longer while seemingly ignoring the things that actually make life worth living. It’s as though he based his life on a Greek myth without realising it was a cautionary tale, not an instruction. The very throbbing flesh of our time on Earth, the sweet bits you have to wolf down, the parts you revel in, are messy and bad for you and complicated and their whole point is letting the juice dribble down your chin; they don’t generally involve electromagnetic pelvic floor pulse machines. Unless that gets you off. Then it gets cool.

In essence, that’s the Bryan Johnson Paradox: living only for the sake of living longer.

It’s where the bro optimisers have ended up, addicted to the act of optimisation rather than what optimisation is meant to bring: being able to eat biscuits guilt-free in your oldest, most decrepit pair of pants. Streamlining your life should be about making time to do the things that make you feel good.

So, deleting social media.

When I got a new phone last autumn, I made the decision to remove social media apps from my phone. I could go into great depth about why I did this, but, fundamentally, I pissed away too much time flicking through feeds of stuff I don’t really care about. The amount I know about iShowSpeed is simply Too Much for a man staring down the barrel of 40.

The gambit worked. I’m doing better without social media apps. More time, less sense of dread. It’s okay.

Sidenote: Yeah, I redownloaded Instagram over Christmas as I was getting some new tattoos and that’s the only way artists communicate these days. Sure, I kept Instagram for like a month after that, but it’s deleted again now, so what do you want from me?

The key is avoiding militancy. Give yourself some slack. I have a spare phone I can check social media on if I want. If that’s too much effort, I can redownload it, post something, and then delete it again. I haven’t even abandoned the joy of endless scrolling, I now just use Apple News and try to read actual writing rather than wading through the racist freaks and porn bots on Twitter.

Delete social media, but do it for the right reasons. To live a better life. To achieve the things you want to. You know, like having more baths or reading a Lyndon B. Johnson biography or maybe even starting a podcast about how to optimise your life. Actually, if you want to do that last one, maybe just download some more social media apps. I hear good things about TikTok.

Turn it up, the dial moved clockwise. Turn it down and it spun the other direction. Anywhere in the room. Anywhere. Up and down. Clockwise and anti-clockwise. The sort of unadulterated magic that leads to cartels giving folks rather aggressive haircuts.

So here’s a theory: technology peaked with remote controls. If progress stopped there, we’d be happy. There wouldn’t be any cryptocurrencies or wars or flashmobs or people videoing fireworks on their phones and then showing you the videos of those fireworks on their phones and telling you how good those fireworks were.

Sadly, there is context for this. I had to replace an old remote.

My amplifier is one of my most treasured possessions. Ever since my early twenties where I maxed out a credit card and over-extended myself financially, it’s been integral to The General Enjoyment Of My Life. A fan of that fraud Freud would draw some sort of line from this reckless disregard for my bank account and childhood memories of my Dad’s stereo, but that would be a rather boring thing to say. What’s wrong with me is far more obscure and troubling.

In the 13-odd years I’ve owned the amplifier, I’ve used it almost every day. In that time the remote has seen a battering worthy of a journeyman boxer, a veritable Peter Buckley. Name a surface — marble, concrete, wood, whatever you fancy — and I can guarantee this remote has probably tumbled off a sofa or table onto it.

Its death was slow. Tedious, even. But to be fair to the amplifier remote, it never entirely stopped working, you just had to slap it around a bit before it did what you wanted to.

Sidenote: Another thing modern technology took from us is the physical connection with hardware. Back in the day you could assault something into working by giving it a good old wallop. I’m sure the “rational” and “reasonable” explanation for this working is down to confirmation bias or some other type of psychological skullduggery, but, by gum, it felt like it helped and that’s enough. Try smacking your OLED TV into order and see where that gets you.

There’s a balancing point when it comes to malfunctions. If something works just well enough, you’ll suffer a minor inconvenience to avoid the bigger inconvenience of actually doing something about it. Like a phone charger that kinda works but you need to wiggle it a lot. Sure, you’d save a few seconds once a day if you got a new one, but is that worth actually going online and ordering it? Be serious, now. We’re busy people with social media feeds to refresh.

My amplifier remote was stuck in that inconvenient valley for some time. Eventually, the ignominy of interacting with a treasured possession in this way got too much. Changing audio channels or tweaking the volume should be easy. So — a mere five years after I started noticing the remote wasn’t working well — I picked up a replacement.

The upgraded (read: regular) experience was so good it solidified my theory: all humanity craves are remotes. It’s why Click exists. It’s why all of us secretly hunger for the Megatron, even if it means we’ll be tarred as sofa masturbators. It’s why it’s called remote working.

What makes remotes special is we can just about understand them. You point one at a specific thing and that specific thing then does a specific thing. The remote fires out some sort of light to a receiver that accepts that light. You cannot play Doom on a remote, nor can you send a cryptic 2am text to someone you used to work with requesting their presence on some sort of psychosis-fuelled quest.

I get a remote. A phone I certainly do not get.

When I look at that shiny rectangle I’m an ape around an obelisk, I’m howling and thumping my chest and deadly afraid — I know nothing of its mysteries; what do you mean I can video call my relatives from the other side of the world, order a Pad Thai, and use a compass all on the same device? What are you talking about? What the hell are you talking about? How does it do that? What part of it does all those things? What are you talking about?

There’s comfort in a remote. Comfort and the promise of easier times. There should be more remotes, honestly. Everything’s an app now, and while apps have their place (I wouldn’t want to have some sort of water diviner remote giving me directions) they can also be fiddly and non-ergonomic and ask for my email and require me to slalom through a thousand flashing notifications in order to turn my kettle on. Give me a remote or give me, well, maybe not death, but fewer apps at least. Something that’s more understandable.

Click the button and the wheel turns. That’s not too much to ask for.

Of all the technological innovations that fell flat on their stupid faces, music recommendation algorithms may have fallen the flattest and stupidest. I’ll even go one step further: they’ve been detrimental to the general enjoyment and discovery of music.

To get all flat-cap-and-pipe-and-whippet-and-long-days-down-the-mine about it, the main way to find new music The Olden Days was fairly simple: family, friends, and media — normally in that order.

It’s how I began. Some of my earliest memories are music related, dancing and racing around the house to Queen’s ‘Headlong’ or whatever other tunes my parents spun. From there, it was those playground ditties, tracks that people share at school or you hear on the radio. You know, like Robbie Williams’ Rock DJ.’

At this point, music obsessives then tend to start treading their own path, veering away from the tastes of family and friends. In my time, this meant engaging with radio, television, magazines, and, eventually, the big daddy of them all, the internet.

This played out like a sliding scale. While TV introduced me to some new music, the majority of channels played a pretty mainstream selection of tunes. Even something like Kerrang! (a rock and metal channel) broadly struck to the big hitters.

Radio could be more obscure. While daytime Radio 1 was geared towards mainstream sounds, a lot of interesting and underground music emerged in the wee hours. I’d schedule my stereo to record late-night John Peel or Mary Anne Hobbs shows and then comb through those for something I liked, something that spoke to me.

Arguably, though, it was magazines that made the biggest impact on my music discovery path. I subscribed a brought so many, from NME to Kerrang!, from Guitar World to The Stool Pigeon. I read them from cover-to-cover, hoovering up every scrap of information I could. There was no easy way to actually listen to much of the music they discussed, so I read a description of an artist that sounded cool, I’d go and buy the CD. Sometimes, I’d go into a music a store and pick up an album because I liked the cover.

All of this feels strange to think about now because the internet utterly upended how I discovered new music.

Most magazines and radio shows were tied to genre. It was an indie channel, or rock publication, meaning it had clear borders on what it did or didn’t write about. The internet didn’t subscribe to this notion.

Through niche publications, forums, and private trackers I was suddenly introduced to thousands of people with unique and idiosyncratic music tastes. It was like the part in The Wizard of Oz when the world blooms into colour; I heard obscure outlaw country; bootlegged records from 70s Ghanaian artists; forgotten naive rock classics — things that were totally outside my point of reference before being subjected to the glorious opinions of other stinky music nerds online.

Things only got better when streaming services came along and (metaphorically) wheeled a shopping trolley of fireworks into the mix.

Getting into music at the start of the online era had a frizzing dissonance at its core; although you could talk about any track, it wasn’t a just few keyboard clacks away. To get a song, you had to go treasure hunting, boot up Limewire, search a torrent site, or beg strangers. Combine this with slow internet, viruses, and janky software, it meant there wasn’t often a clear route to just listening to a song someone said you just had to hear.

Spotify’s wet, hot birth changed this. It ruled. And by many factors, it still does. Having the entirety of the world’s music at your fingertips remains wonderful and magical — it’s a true modern marvel.

For a moment, I was convinced that This Was It. Music discovery was solved, the taste of the general public would skyrocket. Even Spotify seemed in on the game. Not only were interesting user-created playlists highlighted, the company actually hired curation teams to create their own.

The vibes, though, couldn’t last. Nothing good online can — apart from Wikipedia. Praise Wikipedia.

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Lo and behold, nowadays, Spotify’s pretty awful for finding new music (for some rather seismic reasons). Sure, there’s still a user-driven playlist scene, but the platform itself is increasingly geared to slop pumping. The goal is to keep you listening, not encourage exploration.

The beginning of the end of Spotify being a place for finding music rather than searching for it coincided with the launch of Discovery Weekly, a tool ironically meant to promote new music to people. Released in 2015, it was billed be a personal DJ, something that could recommend tunes which fit your taste.

The problem is it’s shit and misunderstands what loving music actually means.

It all comes down to how algorithms reduce taste to data. This excellent piece goes into depth about how these systems work, but we’ll run through the main points.

Effectively, music recommendation algorithms operate on two main plains: content and collaborative filtering. Content filtering is about digging into the nature of a track, while collaborative filtering concentrates on how it fits into the wider ecosystem.

For example, content filtering relies on both using tags (like genre, record label, etc.) and analysis of the song itself, such as BPM or an algorithm-defined feature such “danceability,” something that can be ascertained by tracking things like rhythm.

If content filtering is focused on internal elements of the music, collaborative filtering is about the the external elements. This looks at how a track fits into a network of people and tastes. Ergo, if individuals with similar listening profiles both start repeatedly playing a new song, it’ll get tagged with that information. Someone else with that listening profile are then more likely to be recommended that song.

Let’s take a surface-level example. It’s likely that fans of The Smiths will also listen to Morrissey. This connects those two artists innately. So, if Spotify notices someone listening to a lot of The Smiths, but not Morrissey, Discovery Weekly will probably recommend them the singer. It’s more complex than that of course, but that’s the basic principle.

There’s a hulking elephant wrecking the room though: similarity. Recommendations are connection networks. To put that another way, streaming services recommend you music that sounds similar to other music you like, stuff that’s directly linked to your pre-existing taste. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where most of the music you’re shown is deeply similar to your pre-existing taste.

Think of it like an averaging machine. Spotify will show you what the majority of people with a similar music taste will listen to. It’s not going to show you something out there or interesting.

For example, if you listen to modern punk music (like Pup), it will predominately recommend you tracks from that genre. What it won’t do is suggest an outlaw blues musician like Leadbelly, someone who is spiritually connected to the ethos of punk, yet sounds nothing like Turnstile.

Part of this is the nature of these large scale models, and the other part of it is deliberate.

People want to listen to music that’s familiar to them, we’re biologically geared towards it. While, for a company like Spotify, keeping people listening and on the platform is paramount. It makes sense for them to “recommend” you music that’s similar to what you already like because it can blur into the background. But if something more left-field comes on? A track that sits outside your specific likes? There’s a strong chance you’ll tune in to what’s playing and turn it off.

And this is the crux: Spotify and Discover Weekly are no longer primed to help you find new music, instead they’re designed to keep you statically listening.

The best music I’ve been introduced often comes out of nowhere, unrelated on a surface level to other stuff I listen to. Instead, the connection has been more tenuous, more ethereal, more associated with a feeling or approach — not how fucking “danceable” it is.

I’m a firm believer that algorithmic recommendations can never be great. They work too literally, they’re too divorced from the idea of taste. They’re programs, averagers, networking machines, not beings of grace and style and substance like you and I.

Spotify’s biggest mistake was moving away from people, of relying on machines to recommend us art that explains how it feels to be alive.

We lost something. A wonderful future vanished. Spotify can still be an excellent tool for finding new music, but you have to work against it, not with it. And that’s a crying shame. Steaming could’ve been so much more, but, like man other things in the modern world, it reverted to a very specific goals: keeping us thoughtless, quiet, and consuming.

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Black Friday. And, by complicated, I mean I thought it sucked and hated it.

When the “holiday” made its way to Europe in the 2010s it represented the worst kind of American excess; people bumrushing stores at opening times, trampling over compatriots for the noble goal of getting a few bucks off a TV.

Honestly? I was disgusted. I wanted no part of it. Sadly though, as much as these feelings still rumble deep under the surface, things done changed. I kinda love Black Friday now, actually.

And maybe, just maybe, this change in my opinion can teach us something about tech too. Maybe. Maybe maybe maybe.

So, Black Friday. A post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas shopping event. But why Black Friday? Why’s it called that? Although it’s not entirely clear, there are two main narratives about how it got this name.

The first is relatively simple. For retailers in the United States, the Black Friday weekend was said to be the time of year they went from unprofitability (in the red) to profitability (in the black).

The second explanation is a bit stranger and has to do with the Philadelphia police force. Supposedly, in the early 1960s, they began using the phrase Black Friday to describe the chaos that occurred when swathes of people entered the city after Thanksgiving to shop and attend sports games. This led to huge crowds, traffic, and an uptick in crime. The local officers referred to this as Black Friday and the theory goes that this name spread and stuck.

During this dive into the history of Black Friday, I was surprised about how long it’s been a thing in the US, with some records pointing as far back as the 1930s. Truly, they know how to throw a party (read: create a nightmare) over there.

The way Black Friday spread across the world in the 2010s is also fascinating. A quick browse of the Wikipedia page shows that an array of countries began celebrating it all at the same time, specifically around 2014.

The reason for this is two-fold: the growth of technology companies and globalisation.

By the 2010s, companies like Amazon and Apple were already a huge influence over retail. Black Friday was successful in the United States, so they started to export it globally. These businesses were so large and pervasive that it created a cascading effect, leading to other retailers adopting the event to get a taste of that sweet discount pie.

At the time, this caused a backlash. It felt like brash American culture trying to smash historical norms, creating a “holiday” that meant nothing. In the UK for example, Boxing Day (26th December) was the busiest shopping day. Why should anyone care about the made-up Black Friday?

Yet, as is always the way, the years wiled by and the concept felt less alien. Simply by existing, we got used to it. Adapted to it. Several years ago, I saw Black Friday as a scam, a way for companies to shift stock they don’t want.

But now? I look forward to the stupid thing. But on my terms — and this is the key.

The only things I buy are items that I use constantly, like contact lenses or underwear or suits or games. Things that I would’ve bought anyway, but am happy to save a bit of money on. You have to pick and choose, have a plan of attack and stick to it.

At this stage you know I’m going to loop it around to a wider point, so here we go.

In a sense, Black Friday is a microcosm of our modern, digital-focused world. Consider social media or smartphones. If you let them overwhelm you, they will. It’s what they’re designed for. But if you can be deliberate in your actions, only use them for what you want to use them for, then they’re a great boon.

You have to engage with them on your own terms. Whether it’s shopping or scrolling, the key is mindfully defining what control means to you.

Sure, Black Friday is vulgar and frustrating, but it can also be useful and fun. The choice is yours and yours alone.

And that’s why I love Black Friday, and it sucks.

Say one thing about Apple, it sure knows how to party. And, by party, I of course mean release a crazily overpriced bit of tat. Bless them for it. Go ahead, bless them, because without this propensity, today’s edition of The Rectangle wouldn’t exist.

This time, the tat in question is called the iPhone Pocket. What’s particularly interesting about this is it’s neither an iPhone nor a pocket. It doesn’t have a screen, so it’s not an iPhone, is it? While I’d also argue a pocket has to be attached to something else in order to become a pocket.

Let’s take a standard handbag as an example. It has two straps and a space inside to put things. In no world would you call that a pocket. It’s a handbag. But if you attach some fabric inside of the handbag that can store your keys, then that’s a pocket. A pocket inside a handbag.

What I’m getting at with this is the iPhone Pocket is clearly neither an iPhone nor a pocket:

Still, we’re not here to discuss the nature of pockets (no matter how enjoyable that detour was) because what’s most interesting about the Apple’s accessory is how it shines a light on how we view smartphones.

Let’s dive in.

Designed by Japanese fashion house ISSEY MIYAKE, the inspiration behind the iPhone Pocket is — and I quote directly here — “a piece of cloth.” I don’t know about you, but I think Apple and ISSEY MIYAKE achieved this in spades.

The only other thing I’d like to share about the accessory is this quote:

iPhone Pocket explores the concept of ‘the joy of wearing iPhone in your own way.’

Truly, the iPhone Pocket explores the concept of the joy of wearing (the) iPhone in your own way. We’ve lived far too long without something exploring the concept of the joy of wearing (the) iPhone in our own way.

Oh and I almost forgot to say it costs either either $150 or $230.

Unsurprisingly, the online reaction to the iPhone Pocket is scathing. Folks hate it. They hate how it looks, they hate how it’s presented, and they hate how much it costs. In fact, I’ve not found anyone being positive about it at all.

That sits strangely with me. Yeah, the iPhone Pocket is silly, probably dumb, but I wouldn’t say this is particularly unusual. It’s a high-end design statement, a collectors item, not something for the everyday person.

When it comes to clothes, we seem to accept this. Sure, you’ll get some people getting frothy-mouthed about the cost of an Acne Studios scarf, but, overall, they ignore the fashion industry. Most folks are aware that there’s a world of wildly expensive clothes out there that exist simply because others are willing to pay for it and let it be.

Considering this, what is it about the iPhone Pocket that got people quite so butthurt? It’s just an expensive designer thing for a small number of wealthy people, who cares?

You’ll be glad to know I have a theory: it’s a reflection of our relationship to phones.

Something that’s unusual about mobiles is they’re both expensive and totally common. For most people, a new iPhone Pro would probably be in the top five or so priciest things they own. Besides houses, cars, and computers, there aren’t many other objects people own that cost upwards of €1,000.

Handsets are premium, but we don’t really view them as so. Everyone has one. And often an upmarket one. For example, in the UK, about 51% of mobile owners have an iPhone.

There’s almost something utilitarian about this. Huge numbers of people have a comparatively high-end device.

This nature goes further the more you think about phones — and especially if you compare them to other expensive items. Take cars for example. There’s almost no limit to the amount of money someone can spend on a vehicle. Or how many they can have. It’s a point of differentiation for the wealthy.

Most of the priciest items we own also look different. A house, a car, or jewellery all communicate an element of their value. In fact, the same is true for almost any other type of product — but not really phones.

Sure, Apple has some more or less expensive versions of their devices, but they’re all in the same ballpark. There’s no Ferrari of smartphones, and the large majority of mobiles look borderline identical.

What this creates is rare in our capitalist society: a sense of product unity. We’re all swimming in a similar sized pool.

A side effect of this is it makes presenting your phone as something special, as worthy of its own special case (or pocket) counterintutitive. It’s a bit like building a supervillain-style underground lair to park your Vauxhall Astra in.

It’s this that’s fuelled part of the negative reaction to the iPhone Pocket.

Sure, we can’t ignore that it’s an overpriced piece of fabric, but the entire fashion industry is built on this premise. People are upset because it shakes the subtle, utilitarian thread that runs through smartphone ownership.

Which is a shame. Because it’s obviously far, far worse that Apple called something a pocket that’s clearly not a pocket.

About a month ago I delved into Apple’s new design language. Safe to say, I wasn’t a fan.

Named Liquid Glass, this aesthetic felt like pure dogmatism, design for the sake of design, with usability pushed as deep down as your dad’s mental health issues.

Don’t worry, there’s a but coming: with the latest round of macOS, iOS, and iPadOS updates (26.1), Apple has backtracked on Liquid Glass.

Well, kinda. On the surface this feels like a victory, but in reality this is one step forward after a whole marathon backwards. Before we get to that point, let’s sprinkle some context over these events.

Liquid Glass was a design language meant to mimic — you guessed it — glass. It’s slightly see-through and reactive to touch, but is also nonsensical. The design was inspired by the Vision Pro, which is the only place it makes sense. When you wear AR goggles, you want the menus to feel part of the world and not hard cut-outs blocking everything. Being see-through tracks.

The problem comes when you try to put this glass-like aesthetic on hardware that doesn’t have to overlay the real world, like phones or laptops. Here it’s a borderline nightmare that negatively impacts how you use the device:

To be fair to Apple, the company recognised this and launched a setting allowing users to alter how see-through the Liquid Glass effect is.

Sidenote: Want to make use of this? Here’s a quick guide:

• Go to Settings

• Click on Display & Brightness

• Select Liquid Glass

• Change the setting from Clear to Tinted

Sadly, there’s not a way to turn Liquid Class off, but this frosted approach is an improvement.

So what’s the story here? Apple realises a mistake and changes? Not really. It’s what’s behind the immediate that’s important, specifically where Apple is willing to adapt and, pressingly, where it isn’t.

Seemingly, Apple altered Liquid Glass on iOS, macOS, and iPadOS for accessibility and legibility reasons, but what’s particularly fascinating is how many other issues were ignored.

If you look online, there are swathes of people commenting on an array of bugs across the OS, from lagging and dropped frames to keyboard issues and battery drain.

This gets to the core of what’s going on: Apple is increasingly not Apple.

One of the company’s foundations is not being first to the party, but the best. It’s what the iPod, iPhone, and iPad were all about. They weren’t the original MP3 players, smartphones, or tablets, but they were the slickest and most well-rounded on the market.

Historically, the reason to pick up a MacBook is it just works better than other laptops. Liquid Glass marks a clear shift in this perception.

Sidenote: One of the key reasons Apple devices work “better” is because of the close connection between hardware and software. By strictly controlling the number of devices in circulation and the components they use, Apple can make operating systems and apps that complement one another. Compare this to Windows or Android that have to operate on a wide array of hardware.

This is why Liquid Glass stands out in Apple’s story. It’s buggy and unintuitive for no real reason. The only reason I can see it existing is… just because?

Yes, you can make an argument that the goal of Apple’s OS26 range is to unite design across different devices, but while that is an explanation, it’s not a particularly good one.

I can’t even say it’s enshittification. Apple’s not making more money out of Liquid Glass. It’s not serving greater number of adverts or grabbing cash from the OS. Nor will unveiling a new design lure punters. I doubt very much anyone will see this new UI and suddenly switch from Android on the strength of that.

Instead, this smells of internal politics.

Someone inside of Apple wants both change and yearly updates. It’s a contradiction. There’s nothing wrong with a redesign, but what is wrong is half-assing it to a self-imposed deadline. If Liquid Glass came out properly tested, broadly bug free, and aesthetically usable, it wouldn’t be an issue.

Rather than this, the opposite has happened. We’ve been served a steaming pile of half-baked shit. Just because. There’s no other reason than that.

Liquid Glass isn’t very Apple. Or maybe it actually is. Liquid Glass is modern Apple: poorly thought out and antagonistic to users.

It’s been a hectic few weeks here at The Rectangle. Whether it’s pieces about Apple’s design heritage or AI-driven bodyslop, we’ve published a lot of longform deepdives. The thing is, it’s all been a bit serious and downbeat.

If there’s one founding ethos behind The Rectangle it’s that technology isn’t a monolith; there’s good and bad in almost everything that happens. The way to approach that is through being holistic. We have to look at both sides.

This is why, today, I want to spend some time shouting about one of the gadgets that gives me the most joy: the digital photo frame. God bless each and every one.

The reason this came up again is because of a company called Aura. They recently launched a digital photo frame with a colour e-ink display. Imaginatively called the Ink, it’s designed to more closely mimic a regular picture, meaning it doesn’t need to plugged in.

Effectively, the Ink can last for around 3 months on battery power. This differs to most digital photo frames, which regularly use backlit LCD screens that require constant power.

Before you run and grab one, though, we must temper ourselves. The Ink is exciting, but this type of colour e-ink tech is definitely at the early adopter phase. Currently, Aura’s device costs about $500 and some reviewers have noted issues with the display.

Still, this is sick. When the price comes down, ya boi is picking one of these up because — as previously noted — digital photo frames are the bomb. I’d go as far to say as they’re one of my favourite pieces of technology.

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I’ve had a Lenovo Smart Display 10 for several years now and it’s one of the best things I have in my house.

Effectively, it’s a voice-activated screen with a speaker. Yes, it’s useful for asking the weather or putting on timers, but it’s the photo frame element that elevates it.

It works elegantly. Several years ago I created a shared Google Photos folder and, every so often, transfer pictures to it. The frame then cycles through these images. It’s glorious — and solves one of the biggest issues with modern technology in the process.

In the past couple of years I’ve gotten into analogue photography. One of the reasons I went this route is because digitalism has somewhat devalued pictures. Sometimes, it feels pointless to take a snap, and phone photography feels worthless.

This is for a couple of reasons. The first is that with modern drives and cloud storage we can take what amounts to an infinite number of shots. There’s no need to wait for the perfect moment, you can take hundreds of photos and then comb through for your favourites.

It’s the second part where things get interesting though. One reason why digital pictures have a tinge of worthlessness is because they don’t really live anywhere. In the days of analogue photography, you’d receive actual prints, a physical representation of the importance of the pictures.

Digital photography doesn’t really have anything like this. Beyond occasionally flicking back through the photos app when you’re on a flight and have nothing better to do, your shots just sit there, never truly valued or engaged with.

It’s this issue that digital photo frames solve.

Now, I have a reason to take pictures on my phone, because I have somewhere to display them. This not only functions as a way of giving photos more perceived value, but also acts as a great memory refresher and source of joy. Each day I see hundreds of photos of friends, family, and general good times.

That’s the magic of digital photo frames.

If you’re after a nice gift, or just want to bring some more joy into daily life, I can’t recommend one highly enough.

See, technology’s not all bad.

Smart glasses are the next step for consumer tech and it appears Apple finally got the message. There’s a problem though, a big one: humanity isn’t ready. Not by a long shot.

We’ll get into all of this shortly, but first, the news itself. Reports surfaced this week that Apple’s pivoting away from the Vision Pro headset and is instead focusing on creating a pair of smart glasses.

It’s not tough to see why.

Apple’s business model is about scale. It wants to sell as many things as possible. You don’t become a trillion dollar company otherwise. Yes, Apple keeps some super high-end gear on its product roster (think the Studio Display or Mac Pro), but these have dedicated user bases and are often used by companies within the creative space. In other words, there’s money in these devices — both from a commercial and PR sense, as it bolsters the idea of the Mac as a tool for the inventive and imaginative.

The Vision Pro for all intents and purposes hasn’t been successful. While precise sales figures are hard to come by, Apple has reportedly shipped under one million units.

This by itself isn’t a huge cause for concern, but what is is the fact the Vision Pro hasn’t found a niche. There isn’t much of a dedicated, professional community to keep the hardware afloat.

I wouldn’t go as far to say that the Vision Pro is a failure (as I’ve written about before, the Vision Pro was more prototype than final product, so it was never expected to become a runaway success), but it didn’t capture people’s imagination in the way Apple hoped.

Culturally, this is unsurprising. Hulking headsets will never take off. Long story short, they’re aesthetically inelegant and they make people look like fucking weird losers.

Virtual Reality will have a thriving life in business settings — just imagine remote surgery or drone piloting — but wearing a headset at home or out in public is just straight up strange. It’s like those photos you see of people taking a desktop computer out to a coffee store. Technically they’re not doing anything wrong but you know they probably smell wild and you wouldn’t want to sit anywhere near them.

But Apple is anything but stupid. If the company missteps, it rectifies it quickly. It evolves: and that’s what’s happening with the Vision Pro. While the company did update the hardware this week, this was only minor, with a new chipset and strap. Hardly the sort of change that inspires excitement.

If the reports are true, the Apple’s future in the XR space is smart glasses. These will be broadly similar to the new Meta Ray-Bans (which are receiving rave reviews); a pair of glasses that can play music, take videos and photos, and have Siri support.

For Apple, this is wise move — because smart glasses are the future.

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When it comes to a new bit of technology, I have a simple way of working out whether it’ll be successful. That’s by asking one straightforward question: how will this tech make my life easier?

As I’ve discussed in relation to AI, convenience is a core consideration in the success of any consumer-focused advance.

Let’s take one example: music. Records were replaced by CDs because the latter were more reliable and easier to change songs. MP3 players came next, and they allowed you to carry your entire music library in your pocket. And Spotify let you to listen to any song in the world from an app requiring no work to download and add the music.

Each evolutionary step provides a clear use case, a compelling reason of why you’d upgrade from records to CDs to MP3 players to a streaming app.

The opposite is also true. Let’s look at some technology that hasn’t taken off. NFTs, for example. This way of “owning” a digital image didn’t really solve a problem anyone actually had.

Nor, in this vein, did the metaverse. Everything that idea offered — from hanging out with friends in a virtual environment to going shopping — could be done easier with pre-existing technology.

This is why phones have been so revolutionary: they make everything easier. The rectangle resting in your pocket is the ultimate productivity and entertainment tool, it’s a Swiss army knife of modern life, allowing you to watch movies or book flights or learn a language or join meetings or do any manner of things. It’s no surprise phones have taken over the world. They’re so damn convenient.

But if there’s one piece of technology that could knock them from the top of podium it’s smart glasses. So, let’s apply my theory and ask the pertinent question: will smart glasses make your life easier?

The answer is an unequivocal “yes.”

Imagine you’re hungry. You ask your glasses to find you a good ramen spot. Three nearby locations show up on the screen with a short summary. You select one with your eyes. Once that happens, an overlay appears on the street in front of you, showing you the route to get there. When you arrive at the restaurant and sit down, you start tapping your feet to some music that’s playing. What is this song? You flick your eyes to a point on the display and the song is shown. All this without reaching into your pocket to grab your phone.

And this is simply one example — there are thousands and thousands more.

The benefits aren’t the only reason smart glasses are inevitable. There’s lots of tech that would be good for people (easily replaceable batteries in phones?) that simply isn’t done because it eats into profit. And that’s the thing: smart glasses are a huge opportunity for tech companies to make more money.

Think of it this way, as we’ve moved from PCs to laptops to smartphones, we’ve become increasingly intertwined with tech. We use it more regularly, it’s with us more often. This gives companies more data and insight into our lives, creating a rounder profile of us, allowing them to sell us more and more specific things.

Smart glasses are the next step in this data-hoovering journey.

Here, there would be a literal layer between our eyes and the real world. Tech giants can not only soak up everything we do, but can also define reality. Consider our previous example of asking a pair of smart glasses for ramen restaurants. What’s stopping Google or Apple selectively prioritising a restaurant that uses their products? Or deciding what to say about a specific landmark?

While a phone has a browser and different avenues to check information, it’s likely smart glasses will rely more on a voice assistant style interface that positions information as an ultimate truth.

One reason people use ChatGPT over a Google search is because of the way it relays information simply. You ask a question and you receive an answer. It’s not like trawling through a search page filled with contradictory messages. And although this is often the nature of life and knowledge, it’s not the most convenient.

Smart glasses would then not only be a goldmine, but would also represent a narrowing of our perspective.

And if there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that we’re not ready for this world.

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Fundamentally, humanity still hasn’t worked out how to deal with phones. These devices have been proven time-and-time again to be damaging, impacting our mental health, our ability to socialise, and societal cohesion, yet we still haven’t developed proper social framework to protect us from phones, nor the regulations that should be required to shield us from their worst elements.

For example, the more time goes on, the more I’m convinced social media should be treated like cigarettes or alcohol and have a minimum use age. So much research points to the damage it has on young people that it feels ridiculous it hasn’t happened yet. But politics takes time. As do the emergence of ways to deal with devices on a personal level.

Despite that, we haven’t got there yet.

There is one bright spark in this mire though: we aren’t that close to the sort of smart glasses I’m describing. While the technology is coming, we’re still probably 5-10 years away from truly society-shifting smart glasses hitting the market.

And that gives us time.

Time to think what we do in a world where everything is being recorded, time to consider what life is like when we’re always plugged in, and time to ponder what to do when Big Tech can shape reality.

On one hand, I’m an optimist. I think we can deal with it. Having seen my younger siblings grow up on social media and with phones as an ever-present, it’s clear that lots of the reactionary statements about technology destroying new generations is bullshit. People are adaptable and, at their very core, good. Society won’t crumble with smart glasses.

But, on the other hand, it’s impossible to say that phones haven’t led to some pretty negative consequences for the world — and smart glasses will amplify this impact.

It is possible to get ahead of the curve, but if we don’t learn lessons from smartphones and set up ways of dealing with this new wave of technology, then things will get a lot worse before they get better.

We’re not ready for smart glasses yet, but we have time to get there. The question is, will we?

Over the past week or so the internet has angrily frothed over Tilly Norwood. People are mad. My god, people are mad at Tilly Norwood.

“Oh no!” I hear you cry in worry, “what did this poor woman do?”

“Shh,” I say, caressing your lips with my finger, “Tilly Norwood isn’t a person. It’s an AI actor.”

“Oh thank god,” you’ll probably reply. “Hold on… what?”

Tilly Norwood is an AI-generated character created by awfully named Xicoia, a subdivision of equally awfully named Particle6, a production company.

By itself, Norwood isn’t particularly new or exciting. There are all sorts of AI-generated characters out there, with newsreaders being particularly prominent. Instead, the reason Norwood went viral is because talent agencies are reportedly interested in signing the synthetic performer to their roster.

Unbelievably, breathtakingly shockingly, this led to a backlash.

Actors and actors’ unions (and anyone in entertainment with a platform) decried the existence of Tilly Norwood and mourned The Death Of Art. This then inspired a wave of deeper thinkpieces about the nature of AI performers.

Sidenote: One I particularly enjoyed was this piece The Verge that posited the idea that Norwood is a psyop prepping us for a future where movies are populated with synthetic performers.

Many of these opinions are worth reading, but the majority gloss over a glaring issue: AI actors like Tilly Norwood are simply not very good. Hollywood shouldn’t be worried. Entertainment fans shouldn’t be worried. And people shouldn’t be worried.

Well, about synthetic performers taking over the arts. Because there is one thing we should worry about: bodyslop.

Before we get there, let’s have a closer look at why AI actors like Tilly Norwood won’t take off. First piece of evidence, have the enraged folks actually watched (and listened) to the video displaying what the performer is capable of? I dare you. I double dare you. Watch this thing:

Listen, it’s not horrible. It’s sorta impressive. But it’s also not particularly good. The whole video looks off, it’s not right. There’s no way this technology will replace actual people.

The counter argument to the above is something like, “Oh, but Callum, this is merely the beginning, generative AI is going to get so much better than Tilly Norwood, just you wait.”

First off, thanks for raising that. Secondly, I have some serious doubts about that.

There are an increasing number of reports suggesting we’re close to the peak of what’s possible with current AI models. This isn’t to say the technology will stop improving, more that it requires an ever-increasing amount of computing power to make smaller and smaller steps. A classic exponential curve.

To put that another way, the low-hanging fruit is already gobbled up and it’ll cost a lot of cash to reach even just a little bit higher.

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Cash is at the core of the AI actor problem. The technology costs an insane amount of money to run. The thing is, many of us don’t realise that because the whole industry is being underpinned by funding.

According to Reuters, for example, “about 46% of global venture funding for the third quarter [of 2025] went towards funding AI companies, with 29% invested in solely Anthropic.”

The rough plan is to get people hooked on AI and then start charging people. The thing is, this relies on AI getting cheaper as it matures — but the opposite is actually happening. The tech is getting more expensive to run. Companies in the space simply can’t get enough cash, with OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT) reported to lose $5 billion in a single year.

At some point, the funding will dry up. The cash loss will have to stop. At that moment prices for using AI will rise even further as venture capitalists try to claw some of the money back they pumped into the technology.

To explain why this is a problem, let’s look at it through the lens of movies. On the surface, a mediocre and a great film share a lot of similarities. They have a solid structure, memorable characters, and are enjoyable to watch. Despite that — and even if you don’t have the specific vocabulary to say why — a great film simply feels better. It’s there in the micro decisions, the little elements that keep you hanging around.

It’s this gap between what we have today and what’s needed to make synthetic performers watchable that’s the problem.

Where we are is impressive, but it will require far more work to take the leap from mediocre to great than it did to get to mediocre.

In summary: artificial intelligence is a ballooning, overvalued industry that’s bound to implode, most likely far before the time when it can make an engaging human-like actor for a reasonable amount of money.

But let’s say I’m wrong. Let’s consider that all the issues with artificial intelligence fade into the background and, somehow, genuinely brilliant synthetic performers emerge. Will this make a difference?

Well, various studies find that the majority of people want movies and TV shows to be made by humans. Folks are generally fine with creatives using AI, but they aren’t comfortable with AI producing art all by itself. In other words, having real humans behind art is important.

Beyond this, movies and prestige television will continue to use actual actors because it’ll communicate a sense of quality and authenticity. It’s like how good theatre productions hire real musicians instead of playing backing tracks. Although the music played on a CD will be “better,” as it’s performed flawlessly, it doesn’t feel as real or interesting as a live performance.

We can sum this up again by saying that even if synthetic actors exist, there’s no evidence folks will want to watch them. People aren’t going anywhere in art.

Sidenote: Although I think it’s unlikely that synthetic performers will become wildly popular, actor guilds and unions like SAG-AFTRA should do everything they can to resist the technology entering more and more of the industry. Although AI replacing an entire leading role is unlikely, it’s remains a good tool for manipulation and background scenes. For example, if you have enough footage of an actor, you could make them read aloud something that wasn’t originally in the script, change their voice, or even digitally insert them into some scenes. This needs to be resisted — as does any encroachment of artificial intelligence into the arts. AI should be doing our taxes and organising our diaries, not making movies.

Anyway, let’s ponder the Tilly Norwood saga actually means. On one hand, nothing. This is old technology and just shows the power of good marketing.

Another sidenote: The founder of Particle6 is Eline Van der Velden, a Dutch comedian and actor who was behind the Miss Holland character. Her biggest claim to fame was a video series where she tried to get England football fans to sing the lyrics to God Save The Queen. (Spoiler: no one knows the words).

But on the other hand, while Tilly Norwood might not be the shape of art to come, it definitely is the shape of slop and sex meandering over the horizon.

For better or worse, people love mindless, low-grade entertainment. It’s why soap operas, Instagram Reels, and Banksy prints are all such big business. Norwood and other synthetic performers embody this aesthetic.

These AI actors are bound to make it big in “radio television,” shows that aren’t created to be watched with rapt attention, instead being designed to play in the background while you’re on your phone or doing something else. A lot of reality TV falls into this segment, but there are plenty of other series out there that are just sorta background noise for distracted people.

And the audience does exist.

While research from IPSOS shows that 73% of people “prefer human-driven content [to] AI-driven content” that still leaves around 27% who, we can assume, don’t really give a shit. 27% is a lot of people. That’s a big market to sell mindless, AI-driven entertainment too and will happy gobble it up.

Prestige entertainment won’t be impacted, but bullshit television will be.

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The real money with “actors” like Tilly Norwood though will be made with sex and relationships. There’s already a huge and worrying trend of people becoming romantically intertwined with chatbots — and this isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Why have a tricky, real relationship where you have to adapt and grow when you can just have an AI model reflect back exactly what you want to hear? Or will do anything you ask of them? Will fulfil every desire you have?

This is what synthetic performers will become: cheap bodies on which we overlay our fantasies. And I have a word for it.

Recently, a term came to prominence that described the rise of AI-generated content in a professional environment. The report found that rather than increasing productivity, artificial intelligence tools are actually doing the opposite.

They’re using AI to generate work that looks good on the surface, but has no substance. This output is then sent to someone who has to spend time effectively doing the work again, hampering productivity and making basic tasks take long.

The Harvard Business Review refers to this practice “workslop.”

It’s a good angle to view Tilly Norwood through. Synthetic performers aren’t the shape of art, they’re merely artificial bodies through which low-quality content can flow, blank vessels people can watch and manipulate to their own ends.

Bodyslop, if you will.

And it’s coming thick and fast. Emphasis on the coming.

“The internet never forgets.”

The phrase is deeply embedded in our shared consciousness. It hovers and buzzes around us every time we consider sharing a photo, posting a Tweet, or leaving a comment, whispering that the content will be there forever, that it could come back and haunt us, so be very very very very careful.

But that’s not true, really, is it? The internet does forget. Things do disappear. Articles are taken down. Profiles are wiped away. Where’s your MySpace account now, bud? Is it here in the room with us?

But “the internet never forgets” is also not entirely untrue. There is merit to the saying. The world’s first website is still (sorta) running. And, when Earth is finally vaporised, Rick Astley will still be somewhere, dancing, singing, rickrolling. Some parts of the internet really are forever.

This digital dichotomy between the permanence and ethereality of the online world is fascinating. It’s something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, whether that’s through the disappearance of old digital photos or the way the online world can retain echoes of long-closed physical businesses.

Today, though, we’re looking at another intriguing wrinkle in this ongoing tussle: The Next Web (TNW) is shutting down. Soon, according to insiders, the entire website will go offline.

A fair few readers of The Rectangle will remember my TNW days. I joined the news organisation in 2018 as a reporter and, after several excellent years, I left as the managing editor in 2023. TNW was hugely influential to me. My career, my writing, and my continuing adventures as a “Human Being” would all be different without the place.

But I digress. This piece isn’t about tales from that time (my pal and former TNW colleague Matthew Hughes did a great job of that already), instead it’s dealing with a different question: what’s the nature of memory online?

If TNW does entirely shut down, it will be a relative rarity in the online media world. While there are some news sites that went completely dark (AnandTech for example), the broader trend involves rolling back services or selling the brand to a different company. For example, VICE restricted its writing output, places like Gizmodo and Lifehacker shut down local offices, and ReadWrite was purchased and turned into an iGambling publication.

What I’m getting at here is much of the legacy content on these sites still exists. Publications may roll back their services, but remain online. Reportedly, this won’t happen when The Financial Times winds down TNW. The articles on the site will no longer exist. Large amounts of my work will disappear. My writing, editing, videos, podcasts, event and moderating recordings, sponsored content, and more will simply cease to exist. Over five years of work, gone.

For some industries, this isn’t a huge deal, but for a writer? One who has worked predominately in digital? It’s a little like smashing a sculptor’s statues and dancing in the dust. Things would be a little different if I was a journalist in the days of printed media (imagine having actual! copies! of! your! writing!), but I wasn’t and I’m not.

When the news broke, panic ensued. This turned out to be needless, because what the internet takes, it gives in equal measure. But there’s a cost. There’s always a cost.

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Before we get there though, the solution to my disappearing articles. And here it is: Authory.

Recommended by a friend (thanks Tom!), Authory is a portfolio site that collects, collates, and downloads articles from a specific byline on sites. And it works well. Much of my work was saved. But this is where we circle back to the cost. As in, an actual cost. A subscription.

To use Authory and keep my articles stored, I need to pay a monthly fee. For as long as I want my public writing career to exist, which, to be honest, is pretty much the rest of my life, I need to part with cash for the privilege.

The internet lasts forever; as long as you pay.

The earlier comparison with physical media is relevant here. If I was a magazine writer, I could buy a few copies, store them in a box somewhere, and they’d likely last the rest of my lifetime.

It’s through this lens we can perhaps get a glimpse into the dichotomy between the online world’s permanence and ethereality, and come closer to understanding it.

In a sense, many of us view the online world as something akin to an atmosphere, this flowing thing that’s all around us, tangible and intelligible at the same time — but that’s not the case.

While digital files don’t degrade like paper, they are just as real. A digital file is a physical thing, something stored in cells you could touch and see. You may need a conduit to view them, but they’re there, contained in physical objects, objects that read and write a certain area in order to retrieve that data.

What separates a book or paper or magazine from a digital file is physicality. Something “real” is printed and remains static, a digital file, as intaginable as it seems, is stored in a machine that is in constant motion, reading and writing vast swathes of information whenever active.

A book may discolour over time, it may get worn, the page corners bent and the cover dented, but it won’t simply disappear one day in a flash or an error. It will remain, slowly degrading, rather than breaking into a thousand different pieces once it reaches the end of its life.

We may think digital files exist in a digital space, but they’re stored on physical objects, and physical objects break down and cost money to repair and maintain.

This, I think, is where this discordance between the permanent and the ethereal comes from.

Digital files have the potential to last longer than any book and so much more information can be stored in their form factor, but this data is also more vulnerable to disappearing, to being replaced with something else. Or maybe even all your writing being deleted, or something like that at least.

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Intriguing? Sure. It’s a glimpse into a contradiction at the middle of our world, but what does any of this actually mean?

Let me sum it up: you can’t rely on the internet remembering what’s important to you.

Back. Your. Shit. Up.

Unless, of course, you did something bad. Then there is literally no escape.

The one exception to both of these things though? Paying. On the internet, with cash, anything is possible.

A volume control you have to tilt like a spirit level; one where you have to shout to set the level; another that uses a digital air pump to keep the loudness static — these are the design jokes that predicted the state of our digital world.

It began on Reddit, around eight years ago. A group of designers and developers competed with one another to create the worst volume user interfaces possible and, by god, they succeeded.

The memes spread and entered internet lore. In a way, they’re foundational to a specific type of online humour, one where nerdy knowledgeability and irreverent creativity cross over. In other words, they’re very xkcd-coded.

In some senses, it feels that this corner of the internet was washed away with, well, whatever the hell’s going on with online communities these days, but despite all that, the trend (which we’ll name the Worst Volume Control UI Experiment) has a gem-like kernel that’s still frustratingly relevant today.

The Worst Volume Control UI Experiment stands the test of time because it elegantly and effectively highlights the danger of design for design’s sake. A regular volume slider works. It’s a nigh-on perfect bit of design: it’s functional, accurate, and easy to understand. In other words, the Worst Volume Control UI Experiment is an exercise in fixing what ain’t broke.

Which leads us on neatly to Liquid Glass, Apple’s new design language launched with the new OS 26 overhaul. And, pals, it didn’t change for the better.

Because this is that sort of piece (and I love a little historical burrow) it’s time to waltz into the past of Apple’s design language.

When the iPhone was launched, Apple was in bed with skeuomorphism, a type of design in which a digital thing looks like the actual thing it’s meant to be. For example, a camera looks like a camera, rather than an interpretation of one.

Sidenote: For a nice bit of information, in Greek skeuos (σκεῦος) means “container” or “tool,” while morphḗ (μορφή) means “shape” or “form.” So if you want to look at it that way, skeuomorphism is the containing of a form.

The easiest way to understand skeuomorphism is through a comparison:

Nothing is static though. While skeuomorphism was all the rage when Apple released the iPhone, it became stale as the years dragged on. In 2013, iOS 7 dropped and the company broke from skeuomorphism. Gone were 3D, realistic-influenced designs and, in their place, came a more minimalist and flatter approach. Whether you see it as Apple influencing design as a whole, or it simply being the biggest company moving away from 3D digitalism, this created a sea change in UX design.

This shift was discussed by Duncan Nguyen on his Medium page:

[iOS 7 and flat design] pushed designers to focus more on content and how it serves the user’s goal. Visuals took a back seat, and suddenly what you were reading or doing mattered more than how the interface looked. Content moved to the center of the stage, and that mindset stuck around, for better or worse.

This was how Apple approached design until Liquid Glass.

In many ways, tech design is simply a pendulum, swinging between 3D and flat. Over the course of about a decade, we’ve gone from the skeuomorphic design of early iOS and much Windows software to the minimalism of flat design and now we’re swinging back towards 3D. This has been hinted at in recent years, with more depth and shadows being added to the operating system, but with Liquid Glass Apple is fully back in the 3D game.

The video above gives a decent insight into the approach, but the easiest way to sum it up is that Apple is influenced by glass and wanted to make a fluid operating system that mimicked it. According to Craig Federighi — senior vice president of software engineering — the influence for this shift came from the Vision Pro.

So I would say the most obvious inspiration is visionOS, which uses glass, and you say, ‘Well, why did visionOS use glass? Well, glass is a material that allows interfaces to sit in the context, in this case, of a room, and feel like the chrome [or frame] — that is, the glass — is somehow consuming kind of less space. It’s allowing more of the context to come through. That was very powerful in the concept of visionOS.

Fluidity, change, and cyclicity are the bedrock of creativity, with industries constantly in communication with the past. There’s nothing wrong with a return to 3D aesthetics by itself.

The problem is Apple shat the bed with Liquid Glass.

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Sure, having a UI that’s influenced by glass on something like the Vision Pro makes sense — it’s a headset that puts information literally on top of the world, after all — but the same isn’t true on other hardware. Just look at what happens to the Liquid Glass aesthetic on iOS:

Since iOS 7 — and as Nguyen pointed out — content has largely been at the forefront of Apple’s design language. It’s not been perfect, but the idea that information is important has been central. Yet things have slipped — and OS 26 and Liquid Glass is an inflection point for Apple adopting a design-for-design’s-sake approach.

And if I was going to sum up this move with one element? One thing that embodies this ideal? The element that inspired this entire piece? Well, that’d be the new volume control on the macOS Music app.

War crimes have been committed that were kinder than this.

Back in the Glorious Before Times, there was a volume slider on the macOS Music app. You would move this up and down to change the volume. Elegant. Simple. Timeless. Then came the change: with the newly updated app you need to click on a button to reveal the volume slider to alter the volume.

Yes. That’s right. Eight years after the event itself, Apple finally entered the Worst Volume Control UI Experiment.

This is a decision driven only by the least charitable definition of design and is part of a wider suite of pointless changes in the Music app. Another, for example, is the player controllers moving from the top of the screen — where they’ve been basically since the birth of iTunes — to the bottom where it sorta irritatingly floats over important information. Even better, the area these controls used to be is now a predominately blank space. Sick. Sick sick sick. Sick.

And this is what it used to look like:

The only rational reason for this is that Apple wants the computer app to look more like the iOS version. Having controls at the bottom of a screen on a phone makes sense: that’s closest to your fingers. But that’s not true on a computer. These machines draw your eyes upwards and can be easily navigated with a mouse. It’s why browsers or word processors or any other bit of computer software you can name have the majority of important aspects at the top of the display.

Removing a volume slider on a phone makes slightly more sense because your fingers are already on top of a volume button, something that’s not true on a computer — especially if you’re using external speakers that aren’t tethered to the system sound.

This, though, is besides the point. The fact is I’m in utter shock that Apple is putting extra steps in front of a fundamental task. Making me click on a button before changing volume is a pig-headed, user-hating approach to design that’s repeated in a myriad of ways across the whole Liquid Glass rollout.

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What we’re seeing is dogma in action. Liquid Glass isn’t a regular pendulum swing between aesthetic trends, it’s not something that’s meant to make our lives better or easier, instead it’s Apple doing what it wants rather than what its users need.

The company wants the same app on a MacBook, an iPhone, and the Vision Pro to look the same simply because it wants them to look the same. They’re different platforms with different needs, but Apple is only interested in creating a brand experience.

So fuck me, right? Fuck me wanting to change the volume normally. Fuck me for having the audacity to buy a MacBook. Fuck me? Fuck me fuck me fuck me.

Apple doesn’t care and I’ll just suckle up what I’m given: volume control that’s a meme instead of a feature.

A few weeks back I decided to build a PC. This was a whole new world for me. Although I’d wanted a machine for years, I’d never actually taken the final step and pulled the metaphorical trigger. But this time? I did. I was ready. I was willing to dive in.

But this is where things got complex. Unfortunately, if you want to build a PC, you actually need to, you know, build it. Choose what goes in there. In my journey, this led to a glorious period of experimentation and research, one where I did a lot of things wrong, but, in the end, a lot right.

With this in mind, I wanted to walk through how I approached picking PC parts from a distinctly non-expert angle. I’m not talking about specific components or brand recommendations, but instead, a series of concepts about how to make those decisions.

And if you doubt me? Well, these concepts have already helped one of my pals build their own PC so, maybe, just maybe, they’ll help you too.

First up…

Figure out why you’re building it

What do you want to use the PC for? What are going to be the most pressing (and high performance) things that you need it to do? These are the demons you must slay to begin.

For me, this was a combination of media work (writing, audio, and video projects) and some gaming. This made it clear that I needed something high-power enough to last for several years of intense load. But, for example, if all you want to do is browse the internet, then maybe you don’t need an RTX 5090.

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Learn — and look for overviews

After reading that previous section you might be asking: “what the hell is an RTX 5090?”

The best way to answer that is by giving some advice; plough through some guides. Learn. Learn learn learn. There’s a lot of confusing terminology in the PC world, but there’s also a wealth of information out there to help you navigate it.

One step is watching YouTube. There are a huge variety of excellent videos out there, but I’d recommend this one as a good place to start:

Another option (and one I’m partial to), is reading. Go through articles that explain the basics of PCs, that go over how to choose parts, and that collate the best builds. To learn learn learn you should read read read.

The key here is absorption. Take some time, soak it up — there’s no rush. Understand as much about PCs as you can, get obsessed and consume consume consume.

Select a budget (and try to stick to it)

Set yourself an amount you’re happy to spend on your new PC and stay true to it. Yeah, you could quite easily spend €8,000 on a PC, but do you need an €8,000 PC?

To answer that rhetorical question: almost definitely not. Find a number you’re happy to pay (most likely somewhere between €1,000 and €3,000) and stick to it best you can.

And how to get to that number? Easy…

Spend some time on Reddit

One of the nice things about building a PC is that untold thousands of people have already gone through everything you’re going through — and many of them posted on Reddit about it.

When it comes to selecting the parts of your PC, the platform is incredible for giving you an overview of what parts are popular and recommended.

For example, type “$1,800 compact PC for video editing reddit” into Google and you’ll find people who were on this path and came up with something that worked for them. Another approach is heading to r/buildapc. On that subreddit, you can either browse posts, or search for components and parts to see what people are saying.

If that all seems too much work — and you want to outsource your build entirely — visit r/buildapcforme or r/buildmeapc and some kind soul will tell you all you need to know.

Personally, I preferred taking influence from other places and creating my own machine, but it’s all about what you want. Zero judgement here.

Case (AKA how big do you want it?)

As I said earlier, a large part of this article is concepts to help you craft your PC, and I believe one of the biggest of these is how you actually store your PC components. That’s the case. I’m talking about the case. Think carefully about the case you want.

In my house, I didn’t have the space for a large PC, and it needed to fit inside a Kallax (basically 35cm tall and wide). That then influenced every other decision I made, as this MicroATX tower limited the sizes of components I could install.

Basically, when you’re choosing the parts for your PC, begin with a case and then work outwards from there. It makes everything far easier.

PC Part Picker

It’s time to introduce you to the single greatest tool you’ll encounter when building a computer: PC Part Picker. It’s the holy grail.

Effectively, it lets you pick parts, shows you what’s compatible, and gives you recommendations of good components. On top of that, it also collects builds from other users, giving you great insight into what everyone else is creating with your parts.

In all honesty, you could probably design, build, and buy a computer only using PC Part Picker, but I think that removes some of the joy and learning opportunities from the process.

But, as I’ve said, whatever works best for you is what’s, uh, best for you.

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One final bit of advice: don’t be hasty

I’m sure that right now all you want to do is buy buy buy, but if I can offer a tiny little bit of advice it’d be this: wait.

Do some more research, double check everything, see if there are any deals or other recommendations. This saved me.

When I was choosing an AIO for my computer, PC Part Picker said it’d fit, but after taking some time out and reading on forums, I discovered that people who’d put one in the same case as mine had issues. This little bit of knowledge saved me hours of strife — and all I had to do was hold back buying something.

If you’re taking your first steps on your PC building journey, then I envy you. Going through all this process was some of the most fun I’ve had in ages — and I hope this helps you a little.

Until next time, lots of love.

On Tuesday night, Apple announced the iPhone Air. In regular parlance this means the company’s releasing a thin iPhone, something that’s only 5.6mm thick, but has a 6.5-inch display.

Honestly? It’s one of the most interesting things the company has done to the iPhone in a long time in a while, but… it’s also not that interesting. And a bit of a strange move.

So what’s Apple up to here? Why has it released an entirely new category of phone? Let’s dig into the whole thing.

Trying (and failing) to get people hyped

At the moment, I’m working on an article about whether phones can ever be “cool” again — and this is clearly something rattling through Apple’s mind.

Back in the day, the new iPhone was a big deal. It was something people were excited about. That’s no longer the case. Now, it’s become a yearly iterative update, something more akin to getting a new fridge than an exciting, vital piece of technology.

On first impression, that’s what the iPhone Air is trying to rectify. Apple wants it to capture the public’s imagination, to breathe some life into the range.

The issue is that I can’t really see how it would.

Who cares about thinness?

There comes a point when thinner hardware simply ceases to matter. In all honesty, we’re already at that stage with the iPhone. And that’s the thing: I’ve not recently heard anyone wishing for a thinner handset.

Instead, the only complaints I’ve heard are about the sheer size of the Pro Max and how it’s not great for people with small hands. But that’s why Apple has other phones and, until recently, the mini, even if that did die a horrendous death.

I’m not saying no one cares about thin phones, just that it’s not something that inspires or hypes up swathes of people — and that’s without the drawbacks of devices of this size.

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Oh no, the battery…

The iPhone Air is that has a substantially worse battery life than the other phones in the range. For streaming video playback, Apple claims the iPhone Air lasts 22 hours. The iPhone 17 (AKA the entry-level model) can reach 27, while 17 Pro and Pro Max have 30 and 35 hours respectively.

Don’t get me wrong, squeezing that many hours from such a small device is impressive, but after several months, the battery life is clearly going to deplete and become what the technically-minded amongst us will refer to as “pants.”

Thankfully, Apple has thought about this and has come up with an elegant solution: a MagSafe battery pack that doubles the Air’s thickness.

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And let’s talk about cases

In this day and age, only the most unhinged people use their phones without some sort of case. Sure, the phone is covered in the brand-spanking-new Ceramic Shield 2 on the front (and the old-timey Ceramic Shield on the back), but is that enough to go case-less?

Probably not, to be honest with you, probably not.

This leads us onto the biggest question of all…

What’s the point of the iPhone Air?

This is where I think things get interesting.

In the iPhone Air announcement video, the company went to great lengths to point out how much of the technology that drives the device is stored inside the plateau.

Sidenote: I honestly find Apple’s naming conventions to pretty impressive. For years we’ve called the camera bump the, well, camera bump, but the company has decided that with the redesign that stretches across the entire width of the phone they want to give it a different name. And they have: the plateau. That conjures ideas of nature and gorgeous vistas, not the awkward, almost diseased sound of “camera bump.” No matter what you think about Apple, naming this part of the device the “plateau” is a work of minor genius.

Effectively, the thinness of the iPhone Air forced Apple to install many important components inside the plateau, rather than the body of the phone. And you know what? It’s hard to look at this and not think the company is prepping for a foldable.

Think of it: a super thin phone where the parts that make it work aren’t stored in the body? That sounds like a trial run of a foldable to me. In fact, it’s the only thing that makes actual sense to me regarding the launch of the Air.

Apple isn’t a stupid company. It must know that many folks aren’t bothered by a thin phone and the inevitable downsides of such a device. If their main goal was to excite their audience, one assumes they could’ve done a little more with the handset.

Instead, this feels a little like the Vision Pro: a halfway point.

Apple has spent a lot of money on research & development and wants to recoup some of expenditure. The actual end goal (a pair of small glasses for the Vision Pro and a foldable iPhone for the Air) is on the way, but this is simply a stopgap until that point is reached.

In other words, Apple wants to not only test some of the technology that will be fundamental to its future products, but also to claw back some of what it’s spent so far.

And that’s the main reason the company released the iPhone Air.

It’s technically impressive, but that alone isn’t enough to capture the public’s imagination and make phones relevant again. No, instead, the Air is likely a way to prep for the upcoming foldable.

And will this foldable bring back the glory days of phones? Make the iPhone great again? I doubt it, pals, I really doubt it. But then again, stranger things have happened.

My good pal and former colleague Matt from What We Lost recently wrote a piece about an EU policy he’d like to see enshrined. His take? The governing body should submit Big Tech to a full-on war. A sensible measure for a sensible future.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because Matt’s article was inspired by an old editor of ours, the veritable Alejandro Tauber, publisher of EUobserver. With this in mind, I thought it was about time to fling my own hat into this crowded and somewhat incestuous ring.

So here’s my proposal for a tasty bit of EU regulation: ban phones in schools. Carefully collect them all, place the devices into a gigantic burlap sack, and fling them into the nearest river.

Sadly for the sake of The Rectangle, this view alone isn’t particularly controversial or eye-catching. In fact, many countries around the world are getting onboard with it. For example, about a week ago South Korea announced a ban of phones in schools, while, in June, the Netherlands declared classrooms should be free of the devices. These aren’t isolated events — plenty more nations are following suit.

This isn’t enough though. Phones being banned in schools should spread across the EU and, if possible, beyond. The evidence is simply too compelling.

Take me for example, your old pal, Callum. I’ve written extensively about my mobile addiction, something that’s impacted me deeply, despite only getting a smartphone when I was approaching 20. If it’s mushing up my mind, it must be doing worse to kids.

You’ll be sorta glad to hear the data backs this up. Phones, scientists and various other brainboxes have found, are incredibly bad for kids There’s this research, that finds a correlation between frequent use of mobile devices and behavioural problems in children; this study that suggests a negative link between use of phones and young people’s quality of life; and, finally, this paper showing how heavy phone use can negatively impact academic performance.

These studies are merely the poop-stained tip of the shitty iceberg though — there’s a ship-sinking, ocean-filling amount of evidence showing how harmful handsets can be. So much, in fact, that the only reason to be against banning phones in schools is if you really, really, really hate children.

But here’s where the wrinkle arrives: banning handsets in classrooms alone isn’t enough. In a similar vein to the Online Safety Act, solving this problem is deeper than enacted a straight removal. South Korea and other countries banning phones won’t be effective by itself, instead we need to remodel the relationship young people have with their device.

Let’s think about that in a different way.

Restricting something without explanation or logic achieves little to nothing if you don’t tackle the root of the problem. Sure, if mobiles are banned in schools, kids may not obsessively use their phones in the classroom, but any positive benefits of this will be shredded when they leave the premises and go back to their handsets again.

So how do we go about dealing with this? Easy peasy: look at teenage pregnancies.

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A few decades ago in the UK, teenage pregnancy was a huge issue. Instances peaked in the late 1990s, but, these days, it’s far rarer.

As a government report states, “The conception rate for young women aged 15 to 17 has fallen by 60% since 1998 with a similar reduction in conceptions to under-16s. Both are at lowest level since record-keeping began in the late 1960s.”

A key part of this success is down to education. A combination of teaching young people about safe sex, providing access to contraception, and communicating the negative lifelong impact young pregnancy can have on people sent the numbers teenage pregnancies spiralling downward. It’s been a true success story in changing the behaviour of young people.

What makes this even more impactful is how the opposite has happened in parts of the US.

While education in the UK led to fewer teenage pregnancies, areas of the United States where abstinence was encouraged and young people were kept broadly ignorant, teenage pregnancies rose.

This reveals something important about encouraging behavioural change.

The success of reducing teenage pregnancies in the UK shows that you can’t just declare something’s bad and expect young people to go, “yeah, that makes sense, it is bad, I’m now going to change all my behaviour because, you, adult, told me so, thank you so much for showing me the error of my immature ways, while I’m here, should I mow your lawn for free too?” Instead, behavioural change comes from treating people respectfully and giving them the appropriate information to make an informed decision themselves.

This is how we deal with mobiles in the classroom.

Banning phones in schools is a broadly good thing — especially as the mere presence of the devices has shown to reduce attention — but if the core goal of these initiatives (AKA stopping childhood phone addiction) is to be achieved, policy makers need to move beyond simple prohibition. After all, removing something and expecting young people to innately understand why won’t usher in long-term change — and that’s what’s needed.

Kids need to know that consumer tech companies aren’t their friends. In many cases, they’re the opposite. Whether it’s social media or computing devices, these things are designed to capture and ensare our attention. We’re all being manipulated, and it’s such an open secret that some technology executives don’t let their own children use handhelds.

We need to trust young people with this information and give them the tools to fight against it.

So, there we go. That’s my thesis for a new EU set of regulations: ban phones in schools, but explain why.

Written down like that, it doesn’t sound too impressive, but not every good idea needs to be complex. Sometimes they just need to be good.

Hello pals, The Rectangle has some big news: we’re going premium! That’s right, paid subscriptions are now live.

First things first, don’t worry. The newsletter you know and love will remain free, but this new premium tier will allow you to support The Rectangle and keep it going for years to come.

There are a couple reasons for this.

Firstly, I don’t want to put the newsletter behind a paywall. It should be open for as many people as possible to read, but, if you’re able, you can be part of ensuring it remains available to our entire community.

Secondly, as a writer operating in an increasingly tough media landscape, it’s important that I can earn a little bit from The Rectangle to keep the lights on.

If you are able to upgrade to become a premium member of the community, you won’t just receive a warm feeling of satisfaction, you’ll also get some special, subscriber-only writing.

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Like it or not, artificial intelligence isn’t going anywhere. And — somehow even worse than that — people like it. Lots and lots of people.

You can gnash and yap about how this reflects on society, but the key point is this: the world is using AI tools and will continue to do so. All it takes a brief glance online to see how widespread it already is.

Consider, for example, this piece in The Guardian revealing how many people are already using the tech at uni. AI is a fact of life — you can fight against it, but the war is already over.

What we really need consider is how this widespread use will impact society, specifically the unintended consequences of this shift. There are a deluge of these out there, but, today, I want to focus on one that’s been on my mind: the impact on the job market.

One of my key beliefs is that much of human behaviour can be explained through the concept of ease. People want convenience. If you look at many cultural shifts in recent years, many of them have ease as a core driver. People don’t necessarily like change, but will adopt it wholeheartedly if it’s easier than before.

Piracy is an interesting example. Back in the day, it was very tough to, say, get movies online. You had to go to a shop and buy them, or head to the cinema. This led to an explosive growth in piracy.

Yet, as streaming services have made watching movies and TV simpler, doing so illegally has dropped. In the EU, for example, film piracy decreased by about 25% in 2023.

For swathes of people with stable jobs, it’s easier to sign up to Netflix or Disney+ than it is to wade through understanding how a torrent works.

This is a key driver in the adoption of artificial intelligence large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT too. They’re easy. They’re convenient. Why would people bother writing an essay or job application when a machine can do it for them in seconds? Why trawl through an endless parade of SEO-written articles on Google to work something out when ChatGPT can give you a straightforward answer?

Yet ease as an influence on how people behave doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Instead, it’s ebbing and flowing against another concern: money.

Yes, humans are driven by what’s most convenient, but there comes a point where the cost of a service outweighs its effortlessness. Sports piracy is a good example .

It’s been reported that, in the UK, the cost to watch all major football competitions went up from £89.23 in the 19/20 season to £140.21 in 24/25. That’s close to a 60% increase in five years.

The easiest way to watch football is via official means, but the cost of doing so outweighs this convenience. A recent report from Enders, for example, declares that pirated feeds account for a “double digit percentage” of premium sports viewing. Although it’s understandably tough to get solid information on this, it’s clear that sports piracy is rising — and price is a key driver.

Convenience and cost, then, are in a constant balancing act.

I’m bringing this up because, in the workplace, AI models have the potential to deliver both things. And that should terrify you.

The biggest impact AI will have on the working world is on entry-level jobs and, unless properly dealt with, this will lead to a crisis.

Here’s the rough theory. The general way to get a career is by being a bit crap.

Take me for example. I didn’t emerge from the womb a professional writer. Outside of doing it for my own enjoyment, I began my career by getting an entry-level job and being lucky enough to have an array of people to teach me.

In those days, my writing would often be overly verbose, loosely structured, and unable to actually get to the fucking point. My boss would then work with me to edit that into something approaching readability.

Without that experience, I wouldn’t have gained the skills I have today.

This has been the same across all manner of industries for time immemorial. You begin sucking, learn the ropes from an older colleague, and slowly become useful until you’re able to teach someone else. It’s a cycle that works and is beneficial.

The problem is this is neither convenient nor cheap.

Not only do you have to hire someone full time to do an entry-level role, a senior person has to spend their time editing them. I’ve done this for different people and, although it’s rewarding in the long term, it’s tougher in the moment. You’re busy with your own work and it’s inconvenient to have to handhold someone who’s just getting started.

To the casual observer, then, artificial intelligence is a blessing.

Why pay an entry-level coder or writer or marketer when ChatGPT can throw up a passable example of work a senior professional can edit at any time they want? It’s cheaper and more convenient.

Indeed, the market is taking notice of this opportunity. Between 2022 and 2023, there was a 38% drop in entry-level job postings in the US. The problem, as always though, is the short-sightedness of this approach.

Not hiring people for entry-level roles works now. It’ll work for the next few years, but there’ll come a point when the entire ecosystem breaks. There won’t be anyone learning and progressing and there’ll be a vacuum of skilled editors to shape the slop AI produces.

This would be fine if AI tools get as good as experts — but I severely doubt that’ll actually happen.

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One element of artificial intelligence that isn’t often spoken about is its ceiling. Although we’ve seen amazing leaps and bounds in recent years, there’s a growing amount of research that suggests we’re hitting a plateau of what LLMs and the like are capable of.

Effectively, the big gains may well have been made and taking a further leap will require huge amounts of processing power for increasingly diminishing returns. But those returns are important to produce high-quality work.

We can see it a bit with self-driving cars. Technically, they work. San Francisco has a fleet of them, but they basically only exist in that city. Many experts believe that we won’t really see the technology become widespread in our lifetimes.

Part of this is regulatory pressures, but another part of it is making a self-driving car that can go anywhere is much, much harder than it seems. Although they can drive in cities that are completely mapped, venturing into the big, wide world is so much more complex.

What we can perceive as a small difference (i.e. driving in the countryside compared to a city) is much bigger in computing terms.

To reposition that, artificial intelligence will likely remain a middling writer, rather than an excellent one. The low-hanging fruit has been plucked: AI is better at writing and coding than most people, but it’s far, far away from being an expert. That’s an exponential curve.

If you want to give AI a single prompt and get a perfect app, website, or blog post, those days aren’t coming any time soon.

But let’s return to the job market.

If there are fewer and fewer entry-level people being hired, then there are fewer people being trained and becoming true experts. AI-created work needs these experts to be useful and, without them, a chasm opens up.

This skill gap might not be noticeable now, or even 10 years from now, but further down the line it will become be a huge problem.

Thinking and learning will have been outsourced to AI that’s simply not good enough to do it at the cutting-edge.

Really, it’s hard to blame humans for using these tools. They’re easy and cheap. But what you can blame are companies that take this shortcut, because all they’re doing is kicking a problem down the road for short-term gain.

So hire real people to do entry-level jobs. Otherwise, you may not even have a company in the future.