The Incarnation

The date is January 9, 2007. The location is the Moscone Centre in San Francisco. The air inside the auditorium is thick with the humidity generated by four thousand nerds hyperventilating simultaneously.

On stage, a figure emerges from the shadows. He is dressed in the uniform of the non-corporate ascetic: New Balance trainers, blue jeans, and a black mock turtleneck. At the time, this was just an outfit. Today, we recognise it as the liturgical vestment of the Tech Emperor.

The man wearing it is Steve Jobs.

To the uninitiated, he looks like a divorced architect on a casual Friday. To the faithful assembled, he is the Messiah returning from the wilderness. Decades earlier, he had been exiled by John Sculley, the “Sugar Man” from Pepsi—a man who looked at a computer and saw a bottle of soda. Jobs had recruited Sculley by asking, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or come with me and change the world?”

Sculley chose sugar water. He fired Jobs and proceeded to run Apple with the soulless efficiency of a warehouse manager liquidating inventory.

But now, the Sugar Man has been swept into history’s dustbin. Jobs is back. And he is holding something.

He paces the stage like a predator circling prey, letting tension build until the room hums with anticipation.

“Today, I’m introducing three revolutionary products. A widescreen iPod with touch controls. A revolutionary mobile phone. And a breakthrough internet communicator.”

He pauses. The crowd applauds politely, confused. Three devices. Three separate announcements.

Jobs smiles the smile of a magician who has just sawed a woman in half and knows exactly where both pieces are.

“An iPod… a phone… and an internet communicator.” He repeats it, slower. “Are you getting it?”

Some people start to understand. You can hear the intake of breath.

“These are not three separate devices,” Jobs says, grinning now. “This is one device.”

The screen behind him explodes with the name: iPhone.

The room erupts. Grown men weep. Somewhere in the back, an engineer faints.

History will record this as the moment the future arrived. But if you are paying attention—and you should be—this is also the moment something else died. Something we did not even know we would miss until it was gone.

*****

Let us step back and understand not the technology—the trajectory.

In 1979, Sony released the Walkman. Market research said it would fail. Who wants to walk around with music? The Walkman sold 200 million units. For the first time in human history, you could take the soundtrack of your life with you. Technology became portable.

Then came the iPod in 2001. “A thousand songs in your pocket.” Hardware left the desktop. It left the home. It went everywhere with humans.

But the iPod had limits. It played music. If you wanted to make a call, you needed a phone. If you wanted to browse the internet, you needed a computer. You were still fragmented, still carrying multiple devices.

Until January 9, 2007.

The iPhone was not the next iPod. It was the next you. Music, communication, internet, camera, calendar, maps, email, and a thousand other things that used to require a thousand other objects. And it fit in your pocket.

Hardware did not just leave the desktop. It fused with your body. It became a prosthetic limb you did not know you needed until you could not imagine life without it.

*****

Whilst the room in San Francisco erupts, a different scene plays out three thousand miles away in Waterloo, Canada.

The executives at Research In Motion—makers of the BlackBerry—are watching the livestream. The BlackBerry is the dominant species. A clunky plastic brick covered in tiny buttons, operated by men in cheap suits who look like they are performing microsurgery with their thumbs whilst walking into traffic.

Mike Lazaridis, co-founder of RIM, stares at his screen showing Jobs scrolling through songs with his finger. He watches the list move with physics, bouncing slightly when it hits the bottom like a physical object obeying gravity.

He turns to his co-CEO, Jim Balsillie. According to reports, the response was dismissive. It is a toy. No keyboard. How are you supposed to type emails? The battery will last twelve minutes. The carriers will never allow a full web browser. Dead on arrival.

They are watching the future destroy them in real-time, and they think it is a joke.

It is the technological equivalent of Roman senators watching Julius Caesar cross the Rubicon and saying, “He’s just taking his army for a walk. Nothing to worry about.”

Jobs was not introducing a product. He was staging a coup. And the incumbents did not even know they were being overthrown until they were bleeding out in the Forum.

*****

Back in San Francisco, Jobs is twisting the knife.

He brings up a slide showing the competition: a BlackBerry, a Moto Q, a Palm Treo. They look like calculators that gained sentience and developed anxiety disorders.

“They all have these keyboards that are there whether you need them or not,” Jobs says, voice dripping with contempt. “And they all have these little plastic styluses. Who wants a stylus?”

He pauses.

“You have to get ’em, put ’em away, you lose ’em. Yuck.”

With that one syllable—yuck—he killed an entire industry.

He displays the iPhone’s screen. Black. Glass. Empty. And then, he touches it.

He does not use a plastic stick. He does not press a button. He uses his finger. His actual human finger. He scrolls through photos with a flick. He pinches to zoom. He taps to select.

The interface responds to his flesh like it is alive.

The audience gasps. In 2007, watching a digital object obey the laws of physics, watching it respond to human touch without any intermediary tool, was magic.

But here is what nobody in that room understood, what perhaps even Jobs himself did not fully grasp: by removing the stylus, by demanding that we touch the glass with our own flesh, he was not just improving the interface.

He was removing the last barrier between human and machine.

Until that moment, there was always a tool between you and the digital world. A keyboard. A mouse. A stylus. There was separation. The computer was “over there,” and you were “over here.” You could walk away. You could put it down. There was distance.

By demanding direct touch, Jobs initiated what we must honestly call the Incarnation.

The internet—which had been a place we visited, a separate realm we logged into—ceased to be external. It became a layer of reality we touched. It became flesh. It grafted onto our bodies.

We did not just buy a phone that day. We volunteered for surgery.

We accepted a prosthetic limb. And we have been phantom-limbing ever since.

*****

To understand why this moment was an ontological rupture, we need to explain 2006 to anyone born after 2000.

Listen closely, younger readers. How many phone numbers do you remember? Actually try. Do not check your phone. Just from memory. Your parents’ numbers? Your best friend’s? The person you are dating?

How many? Two? One? None?

In 2006, before the iPhone, you had a dozen numbers memorised. Your home number. Your parents’ work numbers. Your best friend’s landline. Your grandmother’s number. If you did not memorise it, you could not call it unless you were home with your address book.

In 2015, Kaspersky Lab did a study. Most people could remember the phone number of the house they lived in when they were ten—numbers stored in childhood, before smartphones. But nearly half could not remember their current partner’s mobile number. Seventy per cent did not know their children’s numbers.

We remember our toxic ex from 2009, but not our spouse’s number.

This is called Digital Amnesia. We have externalised our memory to the cloud.

We have become like Otto.

You do not know who Otto is, do you? Let me ask this instead: what happens when your phone battery dies? Really think about it. You are in an unfamiliar place. Your phone dies. Can you navigate? Can you contact anyone? Can you remember where you were supposed to be?

No. Because you are not you anymore. You are you-plus-phone. The phone is not a tool you use. It is part of your cognitive architecture. It is an external organ.

Philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers described this in 1998—before the iPhone even existed—with a thought experiment about a man named Otto. Otto has Alzheimer’s. He writes everything in a notebook: where he is going, what he needs to remember, how to get there. One day, Otto wants to visit a museum. He consults his notebook for the address. He navigates using his notes.

Clark and Chalmers asked: is the notebook part of Otto’s mind?

Their answer: yes. If a biological brain stores information and retrieves it when needed, and a notebook stores information and you retrieve it when needed, functionally they are the same. The notebook is Otto’s external memory. It is part of his extended mind.

Now ask yourself: are you Otto?

Of course you are. We all are. Your phone stores your contacts, your calendar, your photos, your directions. If you lose your phone, you have not just lost a device. You have been cognitively lobotomised.

But here is the difference: Otto’s notebook was passive. It did not beep at him. It did not sell his grocery list to an insurance company. It did not track everywhere he went and sell that data to advertisers.

Our notebook is hungry.

*****

The greatest casualty of the iPhone was not privacy, not democracy, not attention spans.

It was the sanctity of the toilet.

Before 2007, the bathroom was a place of solitude. A ceramic sanctuary where a human being could be alone with their thoughts, or perhaps a bottle of shampoo. We read the back of bottles. “Aqua, Sodium Laureth Sulphate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine.” We did not know what those chemicals were, but by God, we memorised them. We stared at the grout. We counted tiles. We had ideas.

Archimedes shouted “Eureka!” in the bath because he had nothing else to do except think about water displacement. If Archimedes were alive today, he would have dropped his iPhone in the water whilst watching TikToks.

Now, be honest: when was the last time you went to the toilet without your phone?

We have optimised boredom out of bowel movements. And in doing so, we have lost the last refuge of the unmonitored mind.

*****

THERAPY SESSION: CAROLINE & DR. SECRETAN

A private consulting room. DR. GUY SECRETAN, 42, sits behind desk, expensive suit, excessive confidence. CAROLINE TODD, 34, sits opposite, fidgeting, phone on lap.

GUY: Right, Caroline. You’re here because…?

CAROLINE: My friend said I should talk to someone about my phone. She said I have a problem. But I don’t have a problem. I can stop anytime. I just… choose not to. Obviously.

GUY: Obviously. And how many times per day do you check your phone?

CAROLINE: I don’t know. Normal amount? Maybe… fifty?

GUY: Studies suggest the average is 150-200 times daily.

CAROLINE: (Relieved) Oh good, I’m below average! So I’m fine then.

GUY: Being below the catastrophically addicted average does not mean you’re fine. When did you last go an entire day without your phone?

CAROLINE: (Long pause) 2006.

GUY: And if you lose your phone?

CAROLINE: (Visibly anxious) I… I don’t like thinking about that. My heart rate’s going up just considering it. Everything’s in there. My calendar. My photos. My messages. My banking. My… everything. If I lost it, I wouldn’t know who I was.

GUY: That’s a problem, Caroline.

CAROLINE: Is it though? Everyone’s like this now. This is just… being alive in 2026.

GUY: Can you remember your mother’s phone number?

CAROLINE: It’s in my phone.

GUY: Without checking.

CAROLINE: (Panicking slightly) Why would I need to remember it? It’s stored! That’s what phones are for!

GUY: What if your phone dies?

CAROLINE: Then I… I would charge it. Obviously.

GUY: And if you can’t? If the battery’s dead and you’re somewhere without a charger?

CAROLINE: (Breathing heavily) That won’t happen. I carry a backup battery. And a charging cable. And I never let it drop below 40%.

GUY: Because you’re anxious it might die.

CAROLINE: Because I’m prepared! That’s not anxiety, that’s planning!

GUY: Let’s try an exercise. Please place your phone in this drawer.

CAROLINE: What? No. Absolutely not.

GUY: Just for thirty minutes.

CAROLINE: What if someone needs to reach me?

GUY: Then they’ll wait thirty minutes, as humans did for millennia.

CAROLINE: What if there’s an emergency?

GUY: How many genuine emergencies requiring immediate mobile response have you experienced in your life?

CAROLINE: That’s not the point! The point is there could be one!

GUY: Caroline, you’re rationalising to avoid separation anxiety.

CAROLINE: (Reluctantly placing phone in drawer, immediately uncomfortable) Fine. This is fine. I’m fine.

GUY: Your leg’s shaking.

CAROLINE: It does that.

GUY: Can you tell me your own phone number?

CAROLINE: (Long pause) …it’s in my phone’s settings.

GUY: You don’t know your own number.

CAROLINE: Why would I? I never call myself!

GUY: Caroline, if you lost your phone permanently, who could you contact?

CAROLINE: I would… I would use someone else’s phone to… (Trails off) I don’t know anyone’s number. Oh God. I don’t know anyone’s number. If I lost my phone, I would be completely alone. I couldn’t contact my family, my friends, anyone. I would just… exist in silence, unable to reach out, unable to—

(Her phone vibrates in the drawer. Caroline’s head snaps towards it.)

CAROLINE: That’s a notification. Someone needs me.

GUY: It’s been four minutes. Let it wait.

CAROLINE: (Agitated) It could be important.

GUY: Statistically, it’s promotional email or someone liking a photo from 2019.

CAROLINE: (Standing) I need my phone.

GUY: Caroline, sit down. This is addiction.

CAROLINE: It’s not addiction! I just need to check! I need to know who messaged me! What if it’s urgent? What if someone’s hurt? What if—

GUY: What if you sat with the discomfort for five more minutes?

CAROLINE: (Near tears) I can’t. I physically can’t. Give me my phone. Please.

GUY: (Opening drawer, handing it back) You made it four minutes.

CAROLINE: (Immediately checking) Promotional email. App update. Someone liked my photo from 2017. (Quietly) You were right.

GUY: Were any of those urgent?

CAROLINE: No.

GUY: But you couldn’t wait to find out.

CAROLINE: (Whispering) I’m frightened of it. But I can’t imagine life without it.

GUY: That’s honest. What are you going to do about it?

CAROLINE: (Scrolling already) I don’t know. Maybe there’s an app that helps with phone addiction?

GUY: Caroline—

CAROLINE: (Looking up) That was a joke. Sort of. Mostly. Can I ask you something?

GUY: Of course.

CAROLINE: Do you have your phone with you?

GUY: (Pause) Yes.

CAROLINE: Have you checked it during our session?

GUY: (Longer pause) Twice.

CAROLINE: So we’re all trapped, then.

GUY: Sadly, yes indeed.

*****

By April 2011, two security researchers named Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden are poking around inside iPhone backup files. They find a file named consolidated.db. It sounds boring. Administrative.

They open it.

What they see is a map. Thousands of dots. Each dot is a specific location with latitude, longitude, and timestamp. A comprehensive record of everywhere the phone—and therefore the person carrying it—has been for months.

It shows where they sleep. Where they work. Where they go on Friday nights. Where they went that Tuesday afternoon when they told their spouse they were “running errands” but actually drove to a bar.

The phone is watching. Always. Even when Location Services is toggled to “Off,” the phone itself is taking notes.

Allan and Warden publish their findings. The story breaks. It is briefly called “Locationgate.” Apple shrugs. A bug. They issue a patch.

But the file revealed something that cannot be unlearned: the device is a tracking anklet. It is surveillance infrastructure disguised as communication tool.

And we kept using it. Because by 2011, we could not function without it.

*****

The real genius of Apple—the move that would make them the most valuable company in human history—was not the iPhone itself.

It was what they built on top of it: the App Store.

In July 2008, Apple opened the App Store with 500 apps. Today, there are over 2 million. And every single transaction—every app purchase, every in-app payment, every subscription—Apple takes 30 per cent.

Thirty per cent.

When the App Store launched, we were so dazzled by the technology that we did not notice the terms. Apple was not just providing a marketplace. They were establishing a feudal system.

You want to sell software on iPhone? You go through Apple’s gate. You play by Apple’s rules. You pay Apple’s tax. And if you try to tell users they can buy directly from your website—Apple bans your app.

This is not a competitive fee for payment processing. Payment processors charge 2-3 per cent. Apple charges 30 per cent for being the only shop allowed to exist on the device you already bought and own.

Imagine if Ford said you could only buy petrol from Ford-approved stations, and Ford took 30 per cent of every gallon sold. You would call that insane. You would call that extortion.

But because it happened digitally, because it emerged during a time when we were distracted by novelty, Apple established this tax and we barely noticed.

Developers noticed. They paid the tax because they had no choice. And then they passed the cost on to you.

That £9.99-per-month subscription? It could be £6.99 if Apple were not taking 30 per cent. You are paying Apple’s tax on everything, and you do not even see it itemised.

It is the perfect crime. Rob someone, convince them the victim robbed them, and charge 30 per cent for the service.

*****

And speaking of ownership: you own your iPhone, right? You paid for it. It is yours.

Except you cannot repair it. Not really.

Drop your iPhone and crack the screen? You cannot just replace the glass yourself. Apple uses proprietary screws—special screws requiring special screwdrivers that Apple does not sell to the public. They use adhesives designed to make disassembly nearly impossible. They serialise components so that even if you buy genuine Apple parts, the phone rejects them as “unauthorised” and disables features.

Why? Because Apple does not want you repairing your phone. They want you buying a new one.

This is planned obsolescence dressed up as “design excellence.”

The environmental cost is staggering. E-waste is the fastest-growing waste stream globally. We throw away 50 million tonnes of electronics annually. Much of it ends up in developing countries where children dismantle devices with their bare hands, extracting gold and copper whilst being poisoned by lead and mercury.

But you cannot repair your phone. That would hurt quarterly earnings.

A movement called “Right to Repair” has been fighting this for years. We used to own things. Now we rent them from manufacturers who retain ultimate control even after we have paid.

The iPhone you bought is not really yours. It is Apple’s device that you are borrowing under terms they can change at any time.

*****

In 2008, Google launched Android. Finally, competition! An alternative to Apple’s walled garden! Android was open-source, flexible, available on dozens of devices. It felt like freedom.

Except it was not freedom. It was a different cage with prettier bars.

Google gave Android away for free to phone manufacturers. Generous! Except Google did not make money from Android. Google made money from you using Google services. The operating system was free; your data was the payment.

We thought we were choosing between companies. We were actually choosing which emperor got to track us.

By 2026, Android runs on 70 per cent of smartphones globally. Google has maps of human behaviour across 5 billion devices.

*****

IPAD PARENT SUPPORT GROUP

A church hall. Folding chairs in a circle. JEAN, 58, facilitator, clipboard. BREN, 45, working mother, tired. DOLLY, 68, grandmother, defensive. Six other parents sit silently, all looking guilty.

JEAN: Welcome, everyone, to Parents Who Give Their Children iPads To Get Five Minutes of Peace. Let’s start by going round. Bren, would you like to begin?

BREN: (Sighing) Yeah. Alright. I’m Bren, mum of two, and I… I give my four-year-old the iPad when I need to make dinner. Or answer work emails. Or just sit down for one bloody minute without someone screaming about juice.

ALL: (Murmuring) We understand. Same here.

DOLLY: I’m Dolly, grandmother. I babysit my grandson twice a week. His mum said no screens, very strict about it. But after twenty minutes of him running round smashing things, I gave him the iPad. He went silent. It was beautiful. I felt guilty for about five seconds, then I made myself a cup of tea.

JEAN: And how long does he use it for?

DOLLY: Two hours. Sometimes three.

JEAN: And his mother?

DOLLY: Doesn’t need to know everything, does she?

BREN: My daughter tried to swipe a book last week. An actual paper book. She was confused when the page didn’t move. I nearly cried.

PARENT 1: Mine can’t make eye contact during conversations. Just stares at screens.

PARENT 2: Mine has tantrums when I take the iPad away. Not normal tantrums. Withdrawal tantrums.

JEAN: Right. So we all know this is harmful. We’ve all read the studies. The American Academy of Paediatrics recommends no screen time under 18 months, limited time after that. We all know this damages attention spans, social development, dopamine regulation. So why do we keep doing it?

BREN: (Quietly) Because I’m exhausted. Because I work full-time. Because my phone buzzes constantly with work messages. Because I’m trying to be present but I’m also trying to pay the mortgage. And the iPad buys me thirty minutes where nobody’s screaming.

DOLLY: Because parenting used to be a community thing. Now it’s just you, alone, trying to do everything whilst also working and managing a household and pretending you’re fine. The iPad’s a digital babysitter. It’s wrong, but it’s the only babysitter I can afford.

PARENT 3: I tell myself it’s educational. There are alphabet apps! Counting games! It’s learning!

JEAN: Is it learning, though? Or is it just bright colours and sounds that trigger dopamine release, training them to need constant stimulation?

PARENT 3: (Quietly) It’s the second thing.

BREN: Can I ask something? Steve Jobs didn’t let his own kids use iPads. Tim Cook says his nephew can’t have social media. The people building these devices protect their children from them. Why do they sell them to ours?

JEAN: Because there’s money in our exhaustion. Because every parent who hands over an iPad to get five minutes of peace is participating in the largest unregulated psychology experiment in human history. And by the time we realise what we’ve done, it’ll be too late. Our children will be adults who can’t focus, can’t self-soothe, can’t be bored, can’t function without screens.

DOLLY: So what do we do?

JEAN: That’s your choice. But I should tell you: I run this support group, I give these talks, I warn parents about screen addiction. And last Tuesday, my grandson visited, and after fifteen minutes of him asking questions I didn’t know how to answer, I gave him my iPad and scrolled my own phone for an hour.

BREN: So we’re all hypocrites.

JEAN: No. We’re all trapped. There’s a difference. Hypocrisy is knowing better and choosing wrong. This is knowing better and having no realistic alternative because the system is designed to exhaust us into surrender.

BREN: That doesn’t make me feel less guilty.

JEAN: It shouldn’t. Use the guilt. Let it motivate you to set boundaries, even imperfect ones. No screens during dinner. No screens in bedrooms. Scheduled iPad time, not all-day iPad sedation. It won’t be perfect. You’ll fail sometimes. But trying imperfectly is better than not trying at all.

DOLLY: What if they tantrum?

JEAN: Let them. Tantrums are how children learn emotional regulation. Every time you hand over a screen to stop a tantrum, you teach them that discomfort is solved by devices. They’ll be 30 years old, anxious, scrolling their phones at 2 AM because they never learned to sit with uncomfortable feelings.

PARENT 2: I don’t want that for my child.

JEAN: Then start now. It’ll be hard. They’ll scream. You’ll want to give in. But the alternative is raising a generation who can’t function without screens.

BREN: Same time next week?

JEAN: Same time next week. And everyone: put your phones away during the meeting. If we can’t model screen-free time for each other, how can we expect our children to learn it?

(Everyone reluctantly puts phones in basket at centre of circle. Multiple people visibly uncomfortable. One person’s hand twitches towards the basket three times in the next five minutes.)

*****

In 2010, a journalist asked Steve Jobs whether his children loved the iPad.

Jobs said, “They haven’t used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

In 2014, another journalist asked about his family’s use of Apple devices. Jobs explained they had strict rules: no screens during dinner, no devices in bedrooms, limited usage on weekends.

Other tech CEOs followed similar patterns. Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired, banned screens from his children’s bedrooms. Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, gave his children only physical books. Tim Cook said his nephew was not allowed on social networks.

The people building these devices know something we do not. They know these tools were designed—intentionally, methodically, scientifically—to be addictive. And if you understand the behavioural psychology underlying every swipe, every notification, every infinite scroll, you protect your children from them.

The drug dealer does not use his own supply.

The tobacco executive does not smoke.

And the Tech Emperor does not give his children the devices he sells to yours.

Jobs stood on a stage in 2007 and gave us a miracle. He gave us omniscience, telepathy, the sum of human knowledge in our pockets. He gave us the power of gods.

And he made sure his own children never touched it.

That should tell you everything.

*****

The Incarnation is complete.

The device is no longer external. It is grafted onto our bodies, embedded in our minds, woven into our identities. We do not use the internet; we inhabit it. We do not check our phones; we merge with them.

Steve Jobs called the computer “a bicycle for the mind.” A bicycle amplifies your ability. You ride it, you go fast, and then—crucially—you get off it and park it.

But the iPhone is not a bicycle. It is a pacemaker. It is installed. It runs in the background. It monitors your vitals. If you turn it off, you feel like you are dying.

We walked into Apple Stores in 2007 thinking we were buying phones. We were actually volunteering for surgery. We accepted a prosthetic limb, a cognitive implant, a tracking anklet disguised as a convenience.

And we thank them for it. We queue outside shops at midnight for new models. We pay £1,000 every two years. We click “Agree” on terms we do not read. We hand the devices to our children. We carry them into our bedrooms, our bathrooms, our most intimate moments.

The barrier is gone. The glass is touched. The flesh meets the digital and they have become indistinguishable.

Somewhere in Cupertino, in a glass cathedral built with the profits of our devotion, engineers are already designing the next phase. Watches that monitor our heartbeats. Glasses that overlay the digital onto the real. Chips that will eventually be implanted directly into our brains.

Each iteration removes another layer of separation. Each update makes opting out more difficult. Each new device makes the previous one feel primitive, slow, insufficient.

And we will buy them all.

Because we are not customers anymore. We are not users. We are infrastructure. We are the substrate on which the network runs. We are biological nodes in a digital system that has learned it can extract more value from us if we never log off, never look up, never put the device down.

The Emperor’s new suit is woven from glass and silicon. It claims to give us the powers of gods: omniscience, telepathy, teleportation. But in reality, it leaves us naked. Our data exposed. Our attention harvested. Our memories outsourced. Our children rewired.

And somewhere—perhaps in whatever afterlife hosts the ghosts of Tech Emperors—Steve Jobs is smiling.

He wanted nothing between us and the machine.

He succeeded.

There is nothing left.

The Incarnation is complete.

And now, having fused humans to devices, having trained us to scroll endlessly, having built the infrastructure of permanent connection and permanent surveillance, the stage is set for what comes next.

Because the Apostles built the platforms. Jobs built the device that grafted us to them. But what arrives next does not need platforms or devices.

It just needs the data we have been generating every moment of every day for twenty years.

It just needs us to keep staring at the glass whilst it learns to think for itself.

The next emperor is not human.

And it is already here.