They Did Not Accidentally Make Work the Answer to Who You Are

This is an excerpt. Read the full essay at newsletter.diamantinoalmeida.com A young designer told me she had built an interface without understanding a single thing about the data it was pulling. She could make it beautiful. She had learned to use the tools with genuine skill. She had no idea what the system was doing. I asked if that concerned her. She said everyone works this way now. That sentence has stayed with me. The bargain nobody signed At some point in the last fifty years, Western societies made a bargain with work. Not explicitly. Not with signatures. The way most consequential bargains are made — quietly, through a thousand small decisions that each felt reasonable and only reveal their shape when you step back far enough to see the whole. The bargain: give us your hours, your loyalty, your identity. We give you purpose, status, and a story you can tell about who you are. Now AI is arriving to automate the tasks that were, for many people, the last remaining justification