Proof of Life

Proof of Life

Sounds like a hostage situation? Maybe because that’s how it feels right now. We are standing, almost paralyzed, trying to choose a way forward. There is an intense bifurcation of possibilities unfurling before us – two roads, simultaneously taken.

Co-pilot and cold plunges.

Glitchy glam and Google Gemini.

Agentic AI and angel numbers.

Tapping glass and touching grass.

Optimization and opting out.

Right now, we have the rapid escalation of technology awakening beneath us, like the Great Turtle myth of old: all of us riding on the back of some great cosmic beast - once just imagined - that is beginning to shift and move. As we are tossed about, trying to find our purchase, this very movement seems to prompt an ancient remembering of what it means to be human.

The actual feeling of being in a body, living in the world.

And that represents another path, a second choice. Which is where it gets really interesting.

Because maybe the beast was never technology at all. Maybe what feels like the ground shifting beneath us is actually us, stirring awake after a very long sleep.

Because never before, in the evolution of mankind, has ‘being human’ been a choice.

But it is now.

One we need to make, consciously and willfully, moment by moment.

And maybe what’s most incredible about this moment is that, despite the true ease of this new frictionless world, the effortless cascade of desires being met, work being outsourced, wishes being granted… we are asking for things to be hard.

We are demanding the full human experience we signed up for, skinned knees, callused feet, broken hearts, and all.

This shift didn’t happen to us overnight. This new activation I am bucketing as ‘Proof of Life,’ is a response to what pundits refer to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a term coined around 2015 to highlight the changes that robotics, biotech, and AI promised to bring about.

The pandemic hype looped this movement, swooping in to save us as we sat, like mute hostages, sheltering in place from some unseen enemy. Our food was delivered anonymously, our work happened remotely, and our learning was prerecorded.

Our phones exploded with custom-made micro-content, and our soft clothes kept us swaddled and safe.

It seemed that there was very little ‘human’ needed to keep life moving forward. We were living in the Brave New World. Offering everything the futurists had promised.

Except the flesh and bone experiences that only human beings can have.

In a world that offers up AI slop, deep fakes, auto voices, and photoshopped faces, we are now searching for the signals of real flesh and blood, bad decisions, and imperfections allowed to see the sun. We are making different and difficult human choices. Ones that sometimes hurt, but ones that make us feel alive.

Some clear signals?

• “Clean beauty,” a look that has ruled supreme for the last decade, is being replaced by a messy girl aesthetic – one with blurred edges, finger swipes of color, imperfections left uncovered. Dirt, grime, smudges - all point to a life lived full on.

• We are seeing a new Gen Zillennial faction (the Algorithmless) going anti-exposure: Instagram accounts being wiped clean, no profile pics, locked playlists, and encrypted group chats. Not anti-tech – anti-audience. Content that is for friendships, not performance.

• The quest for the original and the analog: letterpress studios, independent bookstores, shoegaze history – things that require real learning, with no benefit other than the joy of the experience.

• The return of skate culture, the rise of Hyrox (with luxury group LMVH eyeing an acquisition), the emergence of events like Everesting – things that hurt, places where we fall - It’s like touching a bruise to make sure we are alive.

• Fashion that calls to mind the s grunge era of the 90's, careless, layered, and deeply personal. Reflective of moods and moments.

It’s almost like a human immune response to synthetic perfection.

The mess is evidence – not an accident. We want things that prove a human is behind them.

Someone like us, wandering the world, bumping into walls, drinking a Diet Coke, and considering a cigarette. Tomorrow, maybe an Oura ring, tonight, In ‘N Out.

Technology has always promised us the return of time – the idea that with all of our tasks handed off to robots, we could trip the light fantastic, and live lives of uninterrupted leisure.

I think instead, it is turning a bright hot searchlight on the art of being human. Demanding that we remember it, treasure it, and take it back. Choose the unlit path, the unknown door.

Perhaps technology is offering us the time to rediscover the joy of wrong turns, dark alleys, and the magical places and spaces that exist outside of listicles. The dopamine hit of true discovery. The joy of getting lost on the road, or just in our own thoughts.

Look - technology is a beautiful thing. It does and it will make our lives easier, cleaner, swifter. We will continue to use it, to embrace it, to partner with it.

And like every shiny new skyscraper we build – it will demand that we long for trees – that we seek out shade, that we value what is green. The messy, sacred, sublime extraordinariness of this wild and precious life.

Technology is a given - that path is set.

Being Human?

That is the one we will actually have to choose.

And I believe we will.