Every movement, every sound, every detail, all captured by cameras and microphones and sensors and all feed into the always-watching AI. When I ask people what will be the future of humans raised by BIG DATA, this is what I mean.

The computer becomes the authority. Parents don’t interpret their child’s cries or experiment with bedtimes; they consult the dashboard. The algorithm, fed by immense datasets aggregating millions of infants, knows what’s “optimal.” It tells you when to feed, when to sleep, what to adjust. And because it’s backed by data, and because it tracks trends across huge populations, it becomes nearly impossible to refute.

The machine is always right. It’s the god of babies.

The counterargument is predictable: these devices make babies safer. And there’s truth in that because early detection of breathing irregularities or health anomalies can save lives. But safety isn’t enough to justify mass adoption without examining what else we’re normalizing.

These devices don’t just collect vital signs, they slowly teach infants that constant monitoring is normal. And while safety is the usual justification for these kinds of devices, the parents unwittingly become the chief surveilers, the first link in a chain that extends outward to cameras in living rooms and bedrooms, Elf on the Shelf teaching children that invisible watchers track behavior for judgment, Ring doorbells capturing neighbors, workplace productivity software measuring keystrokes, and social media platforms monetizing every click.

We’re building an informal surveillance network where everyone watches everyone, and we’re teaching our children that this is normal, natural, and even protective.

That’s not a safety feature. That’s cultural conditioning. And it’s also a dangerous kind of unchecked control. In addition to state authority monitoring your every move, now you have to question who in your family or friend group is watching every breath you take.

And here’s what else worries me on these topics, especially baby monitoring and surrendering control to the god of babies: when trial and error disappears, when every decision gets routed through algorithmic authority, what kind of humans emerge?

If every conceivable behavior gets monitored, measured, and optimized toward some statistical mean of “accepted” norms, are we engineering a regression and a flattening of human variation?

Instead of small groups of grandparents lending advice (and often unsuccessfully concealing their judgment), it’s the all-knowing supercomputer delivering the right answer, backed by millions of use cases and datasets too vast to question.

Let’s do another thought experiment and think about strip malls. In San Diego and San Antonio, the Olive Garden looks identical and the food tastes the same. Perched next to a Target or Bass Pro Shop, it all looks the same. Same Olive Garden, same stores, everything is the same same same everything.

It’s so predictable. And sooooo boring.

Nobody gives travel advice that involves visiting an Olive Garden or Target because there’s nothing memorable about the Olive Garden in San Diego that isn’t exactly the same as the Olive Garden in San Antonio. Or Phoenix. Or anywhere.

(Every Olive Garden looks as generic as this.)

The same is true for all the national chain restaurants and stores. They are identical and there is nothing memorable about them.

They’re fine. They’re boring. They’re predictably safe. They are optimized.

What if BIG-DATA-raised humans become like that? Behaviors calibrated toward population norms and personalities shaped by what the algorithm deems healthy, appropriate, and efficient.

Not dangerous or broken, just profoundly and uniformly bland.

All raised by the same invisible authority, all trending toward the same acceptable middle.

The question isn’t whether these technologies work. The question is: what are they working toward?

Crazy things to explore if baby monitoring AI is new to you:

Nanit Pro Website and YouTube Short of the Nanit Pro

CuboAI Website and YouTube Short of the CuboAI

Owlet Dream Sock Website and YouTube short of the Owlet Dream Sock

One of CuboAI’s taglines is “CuboAi: Always By Your Side”. I want them to finish it with the rejoinder, “Constantly Surveilling You.”

-|- Two things worth your time -|-

• Featured This Week: I was recently on an episode of Curiosity Entangled with New York Times bestselling author, Daniel H. Wilson, and we had great time discussing and debating all things AI and the future of humans. Come find us doing a fireside chat in a fantastically appointed recording studio:

And if you’d rather listen, you can find the episode podcast below or wherever you get your podcasts:

• From the New York Times: Big Tech Wants Direct Access to Our Brains: As neural implant technology and A.I. advance at breakneck speeds, do we need a new set of rights to protect our most intimate data — our minds?

  And you thought strip mall babies were all we had to worry about.

-|- Keep Evolving -|-

What happens to autonomy when the algorithm always knows better than you do?

Future newsletter topics to include the following related topics to AI powered nurseries:

• Welcome to the Peeropticon

• Debating the Gods of Good and Why You Will Never Win

• Once a Camera Gets Installed in a Social Space, It Only Comes Down When It Breaks

Find me on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

www.ericanctil.com

New content weekly.

[ * _ * ]

He was right. Except now, thirty years later, we don’t even notice we’re obeying anymore.

-|- Field Notes -|-

Technology made us a promise: life would be easier, cleaner, longer. And it delivered. Spectacularly. So when it asks for more (more attention, more data, more control over how we work and communicate and move through the world) we give it. Not because we’ve weighed the costs, but because the gifts have been so good that questioning them feels ungrateful.

This is what Postman saw coming. Not that technology would fail us, but that it would succeed so completely we’d stop examining what it takes in return. We’d mistake convenience for inevitability. We’d confuse the fact that something makes life easier with the idea that it makes life better.

The problem isn’t that we use technology, it’s that that we’ve stopped asking whether the trade is worth it. We’ve stopped noticing that every technological “solution” is also a claim about what matters and what doesn’t. Speed matters more than reflection and efficiency matters more than encounter.

And because technology has been with us so long, and is woven so deeply into how we live, we don’t see it as something separate from culture anymore. We see it as culture itself. Which means we don’t question it any more than we question breathing.

And for someone like me? Someone for whom so much of my personal and professional life is defined by the cultural of technology, it’s overwhelming and very sobering to realize how much my core identity is stitched to modern technology. I simultaneously love and loathe it. And if I’m being honest … truly honest … I love it far more than loathe it.

But here’s what makes this particularly dangerous: technology doesn’t just change what we do. It changes how we think, what we value, and what we believe makes life worth living. It’s not neutral, and it never was, and when we treat and accept every update, every automation, every frictionless interface without asking what we’re giving up, are are not adapting, we’re surrendering to a not-neutral agent that has ultimate control over us and our actions.

Postman called this Technopoly: a culture that believes technology is the solution to all human problems, and that any problem unsolvable by technology isn’t a real problem at all. It sounds familiar because it is. He was spot on.

I don’t think we’re powerless here. But I do think we’ve become passive. We’ve accepted the idea that technological change is inevitable, which means we’ve stopped believing we have any say in how it shapes our lives. We’ve confused what’s possible with what’s desirable. And we’ve forgotten that the most important question isn’t “Can we?” but “Should we?”

So what does resistance look like? It’s not absolute rejection, nor is it refusal. Resistance is rooted in examination and asking what the trade actually is before and as we make it. For me, it’s a system that often chooses friction when it matters and when I know it keeps me grounded and in control. I work hard to protect the spaces and practices that make me human, us human, even when they’re inefficient or involve additional steps to completion. In fact, it’s often when they’re especially inefficient that I know my resistance gains are being made.

Because if we don’t, technology will keep optimizing our lives right up until there’s nothing left worth living for and we are nothing but the last line of executable code for a program that was written long before we even knew we were part of the equation.

-|- Three things worth your time -|-

• Your morning routine: Notice how many of your first actions are dictated by technological prompts rather than your own intention. What would it feel like to choose differently?

• One “upgrade” you resented: Think about a time technology forced you to adapt to a new interface or system. What did you lose in that transition that nobody acknowledged?

• Postman’s test: Ask yourself: What problem is this technology solving? And is that a problem I actually have, or one the technology created?

-|- Keep Evolving -|-

What’s one piece of technology you’re loyal to not because it makes your life better, but because you can’t imagine life without it anymore? And how has your relationship to it evolved over time?

A video version of this essay (with additional commentary) will be posted to YouTube along with the companion podcast episode tomorrow. If you prefer watching or listening to reading, you’ll find both on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts. Same ideas, different format — pick what works for you. If it were me, I’d pick all three.

[ * _ * ]

That’s my main point. Full stop. But I know it’s more complicated than that, and I know you’re going to push back on this absolutism, which is exactly what I want you to do.

The tension between convenience and cost (between what technology promises and what it actually takes from us) is worth sitting with.

-|- Field Notes -|-

There’s an illusion of convenience when it comes to self-checkout. In some cases, it’s just being thrust upon us and we don’t really have a choice in the matter, which I understand. But at those times when you do have a choice, when you’re at the grocery store and there’s self-checkout alongside human checkers, it’s worth asking why you’re choosing it over the alternative. What invisible assumptions make that choice feel obvious?

Sometimes it really is more convenient. You’re buying three things, you want to get in and out, and self-checkout is legitimately the fastest path. I’m not here to condemn that choice or deny that efficiency sometimes matters most.

But there’s an invisible set of assumptions built into this model, and they’re worth examining. Self-checkout presents itself as speed and control and your best route out of the store. But most of the time it’s just shifting costs rather than eliminating them. It reduces the number of checkers, which makes the store more efficient while simultaneously reducing the human interaction you experience.

When I go through self-checkout, I find myself wondering: why I’m doing work that used to be someone’s job? why this is now the expected labor I’m supposed to perform just to buy groceries? how long is it going to be before I’m stocking shelves here? and in some cases, why am I being asking to leave a tip? who exactly am I tipping, me??

And more than all of that: what am I not getting when I’m doing self-checkout?

What I’m not getting is that moment of human contact; that brief exchange with a checker who might comment on the weather, notice I’m buying ingredients for a specific meal, or simply make eye contact and acknowledge me as a person. It’s small, sure. Sometimes perfunctory. But it’s a thread of social fabric that self-checkout eliminates, one transaction at a time.

The promise of self-checkout is autonomy: you are in control; you are efficient; and, you don’t have to wait while someone in front of you makes small talk. All true.

But the reality is often frustration. The scale doesn’t register your produce. The machine can’t determine if you’ve placed the item in the bagging area. You need assistance for age-restricted purchases. Suddenly you’re standing there waving at an employee monitoring four self-checkout stations simultaneously, wondering why this was supposed to be faster and why you feel so frustrated and alone in it all.

This isn’t about being anti-technology or romanticizing the past. It’s about recognizing that every technological “solution” makes a claim about what matters and what doesn’t. Self-checkout claims that efficiency matters more than engagement, that speed matters more than social contact, that labor costs matter more than the dignity of employment. Maybe sometimes that trade is worth it, but we should at least acknowledge we’re making one.

So, here’s what I’m asking: the next time you’re at the store and you have a choice between self-checkout and a human checker, pause. Notice your default impulse and why it exists. Are you actually in a rush, or have you internalized the idea that faster is always better? Are you avoiding human contact because you’re tired, or because we’re all being conditioned to see other people as friction in our consumer experience?

I’m not saying you must choose the human checker every time, but I’m saying the choice itself deserves examination. These small moments, the ones where we choose between convenience and connection, accumulate over time and they shape what kind of world we’re building together, and whether that world has room for the slow, inefficient, unpredictable beauty of human encounter and genuine human engagement.

And in those moments when you reject the self-checkout option and choose the human checker, think of it as a moment of tiny rebellion against the larger forces trying to drive a wedge between us all even deeper.

-|- Three things worth your time -|-

· Next grocery trip: Notice whether human checkers are available or if self-checkout is positioned as the default. How does the store design your choice?

· That moment of eye contact: The next time you interact with a service worker, pay attention to whether you make eye contact and how that brief exchange feels

· Your own labor: Track how many unpaid tasks you perform as a customer (self-checkout, online ordering, app-based service). What used to be someone’s job that’s now yours? How does that make you feel?

-|- Keep Evolving -|-

When did convenience stop being a luxury and start being an expectation you feel guilty for not maximizing? (And let’s not even start a conversation about tipping!)

Tomorrow morning at 10am Pacific, I’ll be releasing the video version of this essay on YouTube along with the companion podcast episode. If you prefer watching or listening to reading, you’ll find both on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts. Same ideas, different format — pick what works for you. If it were me, I’d pick all three.

[ * _ * ]

Ever since, it’s felt like we’re living in beta.

Field Notes:

Beta software is unfinished by design. You release it to testers knowing it’s buggy, incomplete, unstable and their job is to use it, break it, find the flaws, and report back their experience. The promise is that eventually, after enough testing and patching, you’ll get a stable version, something complete and something finished and ready for prime time.

Except we’re now living in beta and we never get to the stable version. We just get Beta 2.0, then 3.0, then an endless scroll of updates, each promising stability while introducing new instabilities.

That’s where we are with technology and culture right now. Constant updates and constant pressure to adapt, with no time to master one interface before it changes. No time to establish norms around AI before the next model drops. No time to understand what social media did to teenagers before we’re debating whether toddlers should have iPads or AI nannies.

We’re all beta testers for a life that never reaches version 1.0.

And here’s what makes it particularly exhausting: nobody asked us if we wanted to sign up for this. We didn’t opt in to a constant technological upheaval: it’s been imposed on us like it dropped from the sky and buried us under its weight.

Every new platform, every new device, every new “seamless integration” arrives with the implicit demand that we adapt to it, learn it, and incorporate it into our work, our relationships, and our parenting. Keep up(!) or get left behind. The result is this grinding sense of incompleteness where you’re never finished trying to adapt and learn, never finished adjusting, never finished retrofitting your life around the latest update to systems you didn’t design and don’t fully control. And, in many cases really, really don’t like!

I hate it. I genuinely hate living this way, and I suspect you do too.

So that’s why this newsletter exists. If we’re all beta testers for modern life, maybe we can at least test it together. We can compare notes and figure out which bugs are worth reporting and which glitches we just have to live with. Maybe even push back on the assumption that we have to accept every update as inevitable and maybe feel some kind of agency in a world that is constantly trying to rob us of it all the time.

I’m Eric Anctil and I’m a professor of media and technology. But more than that, I study what technology is doing to the human side of the equation. For thirty years I’ve been watching how machines reshape the way we work, love, parent, and exist, and this newsletter is where I share what I’m seeing, not as a guru or evangelist, but as a guide trying to navigate the same chaos as you.

I’m not here to predict the future or sell you solutions; I’m here to ask better questions and create space to think about what we’re actually doing to ourselves.

Some weeks that will mean talking about why self-checkout makes me irrationally angry, and other weeks we’ll dig into surveillance, how AI is sneaking into everything we use, why I think you should delete Life360 from your kid’s phone, or why someone you know will probably marry their smartphone or a robot someday (I’ll explain in the future, I promise).

This is not a lecture, it’s a conversation. I learn as much from my students as I teach them, and I expect the same here. If something I write sparks a thought or angers you or makes you want to push back, good. Hit reply and tell me what you’re thinking.

We evolved as a species by staying together, looking out for each other, and figuring things out communally. Surviving beta life won’t be any different. Let’s keep evolving together and let’s stay human in the process. Our future depends on it.

Three things worth your time today:

• Your own 2016 moment — what moment made you feel like the world went off its axis? It might not be the same as mine, but I suspect you have something similar

• The next time you’re forced to adapt to something — pay attention to how that adaptation makes you feel; that feeling is data worth paying attention to and storing in your longterm memory

• One technology you use daily — ask yourself if it’s actually making your life better or if you’ve just gotten used to it

Keep Evolving:

What’s one piece of technology you’ve adapted to that you genuinely wish you could unlearn or forget entirely? Is there anything you can do today to slowly retreat from it?

This afternoon at 3pm Pacific, I’ll be releasing the video version of this essay on YouTube along with the companion podcast episode. If you prefer watching or listening to reading, you’ll find both on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts. Same ideas, different format — pick what works for you. If it were me, I’d pick all three.

[ * _ * ]