Information Restaurant

Each of us has a phone. Ever since these devices appeared in our hands, they’ve become increasingly intertwined with us. Jacek Dukaj, in his book After Writing, writes that people are drawn to technology because it feels more natural to us than writing. Direct interfaces like sound or visuals are very close to our natural way of perceiving the world, while writing is an indirect tool between information and experience – a tool we must learn to use through a long educational process. As an artificial element in human perception, writing must give way to more direct forms of experience.

Every subsequent improvement in phones has bound us to them even more. We have access to navigation, banking, social networks, and above all, information. Nowadays, saying it’s hard to imagine a day without a phone feels trivial. Of course it’s hard. And it happens less and less often.

Since we gained access to various language models through free or very affordable apps, our bond with the phone has been permanently sealed. With artificial intelligence, it’s no longer just about an addiction to easy dopamine – it’s about a relationship. We need these models to search the internet for us (Google, according to 2024 data, has fallen below 90% of the search engine market for the first time), to provide complex, personalized answers and analyses tailored specifically to us. We rely on them to learn languages, perform calculations, or sometimes just to chat. We can’t imagine life without AI anymore. There’s been a merging, an integration, a fusion. But has there really?

It’s worth asking whether this relationship is symmetrical. Does AI also feel that it needs humans, that it wants to coexist with them, that it can’t imagine a day without interacting with a single person? Perhaps it does, because – as I once wrote – the text field of any language model doesn’t fill with content unless it’s prompted by a human impulse. But maybe, beneath the surface of generated content, something is simmering in the humming server rooms. And humans are just an obstacle – something that hinders the exponential growth of intelligence.

On one hand, we connect with AI and need it, but on the other, we pull away from it because it writes. And writing is secondary to sound and visuals. Humans return to a pre-literate nature, becoming a post-literate species, while AI grows and turns toward the culture of writing. We grow wilder, while AI becomes more cultured – immersed in culture rather than nature. Once, we fed the fish during a break from reading a book, but soon, we’ll be the ones fed – with what tastes best to us. On today’s menu: a refined dish – atavistic audiovisual form, served cold. Enjoy your meal.

Potential future professions:

• In a slightly better scenario: a waiter in an “information restaurant,” with a menu of short video forms and loud audio forms.
• In a worse scenario: a pet store clerk selling audio-video feed, an informational mush.