Technology is dissolving the world that used to revolve around labor.
Robots work.
Humanoid service agents appear.
AI begins to make the decisions that once defined our roles.
So what happens when “being useful” is no longer required?
At first, people will celebrate the freedom.
Then the emptiness will open beneath them.
When roles disappear, direction disappears.
The brain is wired to maintain itself through a role.
Strip that away, and the core of the self begins to fade.
That’s why the future won’t be shaped by talent, credentials, or even productivity.
What will remain is the individual distortion—
the unevenness no one could sand down.
Biases, quirks, obsessions, compulsions.
The parts that never fit neatly into society’s smoothing process.
Even if efficiency flattens almost everything,
unevenness is resistant to erosion.
And that stubborn residue—
the human distortion that refuses to disappear—
may become the new form of survival.
