Agreed. I think of Wall-E often and think its vision of the future is more accurate, but Idiocracy makes for a more descriptive term to summarize it. And suddenly, I feel like I'm rehashing HS English class: "Does 1984 or Brave New World summarize society more accurately?" The premise being that in 1984, the government deliberately sought to shrink reality, whereas in "Brave New World," individuals opted-in.

My perspective is that oligarchical wannabes are essentially giving people what they think those people want, but they're clearly not following the ideas through to their logical conclusions. Like, AI in schools.... OK..... Why? Because thinking is too hard? Don't be silly -- that's what brains do reflexively. And like, when did hard stuff get such a bad rap? IMHO, so-called friction is good, probably fundamental. This notion that everything should be all upside all the time is probably not even possible, much less desirable.

2006: "Install our browser toolbar! It offers a marginally useful feature, and it definitely doesn't slow down your browser or send all your personal data to an evil corporate overlord! Promise!"

2026: "Install our browser AI addon! It offers a completely useless feature, and it absolutely slows down your browser and sends all your personal data to an evil corporate overlord! Promise!"

Oh, the horrors.

Bonzibuddy.

Remember when every piece of Window$ software back in the day tried to get you to add their browser bar to your web browser?

Oh god, the browser bars.

Years back, I was fixing my grandpa's laptop, and he had one of those browser bars in his Internet Explorer. Out of habit, I disabled and removed it (since they had a tendency of installing themselves). I finished up, hung out with him and talked for about half an hour and left, and when I got back home I found my mom on the phone with him. She immediately hands the phone over to me, and he sounded uncharacteristically livid. He tells me that I "broke" his email and he can't access it anymore. So I drive all the way back and it turns out he was using the deleted browser bar to access his email. Even after trying to explain to him that he can still access it by going to a bookmark or just typing in the URL, he insisted that I put the browser bar back on. So I do.

That was probably the last time I ever helped any family member (outside our house) with tech issues.