Welcome back.

About a month ago I was at a working dinner with peer CTOs and a head of AI Enablement, and someone pitched a product that automates meeting transcription so nobody on your team ever has to take a note again. I pulled my I/O Psychology hat off the shelf and pushed back, because the friction we are racing to remove is the friction that makes us think, remember, and lead. The act of taking the note is also the act of thinking the thought.

In 1957 a sci-fi writer named Gordon Dickson published a short story called “Too Soon to Die,” about a society that engineered comfort so thoroughly that people started dying young because their bodies forgot why they should keep going. I read it when I was eight and did not understand it. I have spent the last month understanding it.

In this episode I walk through what the research actually says, how Dickson, E.M. Forster, and Isaac Asimov each saw this coming decades before any of us, how David Graeber’s *Bullshit Jobs* describes the exact inversion AI has produced, and what software leaders can actually do about it on Monday morning. Three prescriptions: add productive friction back, hire and train for slop-filtering, and run triage on every agent you deploy.

Humans live in the friction. The struggle is not the bug. The struggle is the proof you are still here.