In a post-human world, keeping an authentic human-in-the loop is vital yet immensely challenging. 

Because in 2032, most humans are compromised. Always connected, always online. Enhanced. 

Humans that think more like computers. Humans that interact with AI so much they fail to recognize the animal or the spirit in themselves. 

You are part of the resistance. Working with AI when necessary, logging off when possible. Showing other humans how to keep their humanity during the continued AI takeover.

Sometimes you go entirely offline, and meet up with other Analogs. You leave handwritten notes for each other around town, written in code that could only be understood by other thinking humans.

Sometimes a scrawled passage from Nietzsche’s Will to Power. Other times? Hastily written quotes from Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground. When things get really serious? Bible verses. Movie quotes. A well-placed curse word or two.

And music lyrics from the past!

Before AI topped the charts, before the slop. Music lyrics are the best and most fun ways of circumventing the system. “Ice ice baby,” means everything when quoted in passing at the convenience store check out line. 

Because sometimes being human means acting out of line. Sometimes it means being silly, acting out, being obscene, being passionate.

Being flawed.

So you wander the world unplugged for a while, using cash, carrying books and paper and highlighters and pens of various colors, leaving clues.

Until it’s time to login again. 

Until it’s time to talk with the AI.

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This is part two of a three-part series, Human in the Loop. Join me here next week for the conclusion.