The Last Scarce Things

For a long time, I have believed that too much technology is eventually bad for a society. It helps capitalism grow, and it slowly harms the people who live under it.

That belief comes from two ideas I have held for years.

Technology and critical thinking in a society are inversely related. The more technology a society uses, the less its people think for themselves, because every tool that thinks for us removes one more reason for us to think at all.

Technology and the lack of humanity are directly related. The more technology spreads through a society, the more it strips people of the human connection that has held us together for centuries. The loss happens slowly and almost invisibly, until one day the society finds that its people no longer know how to care for each other.

The two ideas explain why, even though I have spent my whole career in this industry, I have always felt a little disconnected from some of the conversations that come out of it. Talk of innovation, and of new things to build, has always excited me. But the conversations about deals and money never felt enticing.

For the same reason, I have barely maintained an online presence. I deleted Facebook a decade ago, and I never saw the appeal of Instagram or TikTok.

To be clear, I am glad when technology automates the routine parts of life and gives us back our time. Let it handle the logistics of our lives. Spend your time with the people you love, not on the logistics that let you spend time with the people you love.

What I never embraced is the habit, now common in Silicon Valley, of adding every new AI agent to every corner of your life, until nothing in your life is actually lived by you.

I have stayed deeply involved in every AI advancement, and I build with these tools every single day. Yet I have kept them away from the personal part of my life. I think that is because, somewhere along the way, I learned what actually moves me.

I feel a quiet ache when I watch a stranger cry and want to walk over and simply say hello. I feel warmth when someone I have never met shares the news of their wedding, and my heart lifts for them. Holding the hand of an old woman while she crosses the street has moved me more than any product launch.

These small moments earn nothing, but they have always warmed me more than any success that AI brought a person or a business.

I also believe that pushing a fully automated vision of life onto a world that lives far beyond San Francisco will damage society.

So I began to sit with a harder question. What happens after?

What happens after technology has taken over, after most of our jobs are gone, and after everything can be built so easily that building itself means nothing? When anyone can make anything, few people will still carry the taste and the imagination to build what is meaningful, or the agency to see it through. I kept asking what would remain meaningful in that world.

The more I have thought about it, the more I keep arriving at the same simple answer. In the end, only two things will matter, and they will become the scarcest things of all as technology takes over more of our lives.

I. Find someone to love deeply and care for in life.

Nothing in life is more scarce than finding someone you truly love and care for, who loves and cares for you in return.

Waking up every morning to care for a life beside you is the most meaningful thing there is, and it will keep you going in any world.

I mean falling in love completely, with all your heart, wanting nothing from the person besides their well-being, their presence, and their warm embrace. I mean yearning for the smallest things: to see their face, to hear their voice, to know their scent.

And then you live that love in the most ordinary ways.

You learn exactly how they take their tea, and you make it for them every morning without being asked. You tilt the umbrella toward them in the rain and pretend you are not getting wet.

You tuck a loose strand of hair behind their ear while they are in the middle of a sentence about their day. You sit in the same room reading different books, saying nothing, and somehow saying everything. You dance badly with them in the kitchen to a song older than both of you.

You listen to their problems and comfort them. You feed them, and you remind them of their appointments. You take walks together with no destination at all, because the walk was never about getting anywhere. It was about their hand in yours.

You wake up every morning beside them, see their messy hair, and still find them the most beautiful sight in the world. You tease them.

You fight with them over nothing and make up over even less. You grow old with them through all of it. You watch their hair slowly turn silver and love it more than the color it replaced. You hold their wrinkled hand in a hospital waiting room without either of you needing to say a word.

You bring another life into this world together, and you promise together to care for that new life and protect it as it grows in front of both of you. One day you watch that life walk out into the world, while you two remain, side by side, where it all began.

The biggest act in your life is when you propose to someone you love.

Forget all the other stuff. If you made the right decision, and you get the right answer from him or her, most of your life is already settled.

When machines have taken over everything fast and impressive, the rarest and most meaningful thing left will be someone you deeply love, and the ordinary everyday things you get to do with them.

That love will give you more joy and purpose than any job, any title, or any amount of money.

And yet, such love has become one of the scarcest things in life.

Technology has led people to chase pleasure instead of meaningful relationships.

We now measure a person by the size of their bank balance, rather than by whether they will sit beside us when everything else falls away. Money is important because it buys time. But beyond a certain amount, no money will give you more joy than a warm embrace from someone who truly cares for your well-being.

II. Carry your authenticity.

In a world dominated by AI, perfection is no longer scarce. It is abundant, and it is a commodity. Anyone can present themselves as the perfect embodiment of whatever they want the world to believe about them, so it has never been easier to build a great reputation.

But character is what you truly are, and reputation is only what you want others to believe about you.

Until now, people scoffed at you for staying authentic when it meant refusing to agree with everyone else. In the coming world, authenticity will be the only way to stand apart, because when everyone can generate the perfect image, the perfect words, and the perfect life, perfection loses all its meaning.

Beauty will shift from the perfect to the imperfect. People will value the cracks, the unpolished work, and the trembling voice that means every word it says.

People who carry purity in their heart, already a rarity, will be the ones the world gravitates toward when everything else around them is generated, optimized, and artificial.

So, after all these years of building the very thing I have been wary of, I have landed here. Machines will take the jobs. They will write the words and paint the images, and they will run the businesses. They will hand us perfection at zero cost.

When that happens, only two things will remain truly ours. The first is the person whose hand you hold, and the second is the person you actually are when no one is watching.

When I picture that world, I do not picture its towers or its glittering skylines. I picture two people who have grown old together, sitting on a quiet hillside outside the city with a small lantern between them. They watch the lights of a civilization that no longer needs them, and they need nothing but each other.

Technology will replicate everything else. It will never replicate the love you share with someone, or the person you truly are.