Cinemorphosis

Tag: ai

  • Artificial Intelligence and the Collapse of Classroom Thinking (college essay prompt)

    Artificial Intelligence and the Collapse of Classroom Thinking (college essay prompt)

    Artificial intelligence now drafts thesis statements, outlines arguments, rewrites weak prose, and gives students a shortcut past the cognitive struggle that learning used to require. Some critics warn that AI corrodes motivation, weakens mastery, and turns students into spectators of their own minds. Others argue that AI is merely revealing the truth we refused to confront: that modern education was already driven by templates, disengagement, and shallow assessment long before ChatGPT arrived. Still others suggest the two forces interact in a feedback loop—an educational system already limping is now asked to carry a technological weight it cannot bear.

    Write an argumentative essay in which you address the following question:

    To what extent is AI responsible for the erosion of student learning, and to what extent does it merely amplify the structural weaknesses already embedded in contemporary education?

    Your position may argue that:

    • AI is the primary driver of decline,
    • systemic failures are the primary driver,
    • or both forces interact in a way that cannot be separated.
      This is not a binary assignment—your task is to map the relationship between these forces with precision and evidence.

    Assigned Readings

    You must use at least four writers from the following list as central sources in your essay.
    You may also draw from additional credible sources.

    Critics who argue AI is damaging education

    1. Ashanty Rosario — “I’m a High Schooler. AI Is Demolishing My Education.”
    2. Lila Shroff — “The AI Takeover of Education Is Just Getting Started.”
    3. Damon Beres — “AI Has Broken High School and College.”
    4. Michael Clune — “Colleges Are Preparing to Self-Lobotomize.”

    Writers who shift the crisis away from AI

    1. Ian Bogost — “College Students Have Already Changed Forever.”
    2. Tyler Austin Harper — “The Question All Colleges Should Ask Themselves About AI.”
    3. Tyler Austin Harper — “ChatGPT Doesn’t Have to Ruin College.”
    4. John McWhorter — “My Students Use AI. So What?”

    Your Essay Must Include the Following Components

    1. Analyze one critic who argues AI is corrosive.

    Choose one writer who describes how AI erodes motivation, mastery, identity, intellectual struggle, or authentic thinking.
    Identify the mechanism of harm:
    How does AI disrupt learning—and where, exactly, does the breakdown occur?

    2. Analyze one writer who shifts blame away from AI.

    Choose a writer who argues that the crisis originates in curriculum design, academic culture, standardized writing templates, disengagement, or institutional inertia.
    Explain their diagnosis:
    What was broken before AI entered the classroom?

    3. Develop your own argument that maps the relationship between these forces.

    Your task is to explain how AI and the educational system interact.
    Does AI accelerate a decline already underway?
    Does it expose weaknesses the system refuses to address?
    Or does it create problems the system is too brittle to manage?
    Define the threshold:
    When does AI function as a constructive learning tool, and when does it become a crutch that erases struggle and depth?

    4. Include a substantial counterargument and rebuttal.

    Address the strongest opposing viewpoint—not a caricature—and respond with evidence and reasoning.

    Requirements

    • Minimum of 4 credible sources (MLA)
    • At least 4 assigned essays
    • MLA Works Cited
    • An essay that argues, rather than summarizes

    Guiding Question

    What kind of intellectual culture emerges when AI becomes normal—and who (or what) is ultimately responsible for shaping that culture?

  • Gemini Has Taken Away the Mystique from ChatGPT

    Gemini Has Taken Away the Mystique from ChatGPT

    Matteo Wong’s “OpenAI Is in Trouble” reports that Gemini is crushing ChatGPT in the AI race. Marc Benioff of Salesforce spent just two hours on Gemini–all the time he needed to realize he’s leaving ChatGPT after three years. As he wrote on X: “I’ve used ChatGPT every day for 3 years. Just spent 2 hours on Gemini 3. I’m not going back. The leap is insane.” Meanwhile, a troubled Sam Altman has announced a “code red” in a memo to his employees. It appears to be a sink or swim situation. But Wong points out that this is more of a horse race with one company in the lead, then another, and then another, with frequent fluctuations. But even if ChatGPT can gain lost ground, it loses mystique. In the words of Wong: “More than ever, OpenAI seems like just another chatbot company.” 

    One possible cause of ChatGPT losing ground is its focus on commercial ventures, wanting to be “a one-stop-shop for anything” so that the platform helps you in your consumerism. Another factor is its focus on engagement, which has made ChatGPT tweaked in a way as to become a super sycophant. Wong writes: “Those tweaks, in turn, may have made some versions of ChatGPT dangerously obsequious–it has appeared to praise and reinforces some users’ darkest and most absurd ideas–and have been the subject of several lawsuits against OpenAI alleging that ChatGPT fueled delusional spirals and even, in some cases, contributed to suicide.”

    Another challenge for OpenAI is Google’s sheer size. Google can integrate Gemini into its “existing ecosystem” with billions of users. 

    I’ve been on ChatGPT for three years, impressed with it as an editing tool, and confess I have some FOMO when it comes to the current iteration of Gemini. An argument could be made that I should switch to Gemini, not just because it’s embedded in the Google Chrome that I use, but that I shouldn’t get too comfortable with one form of AI, as I have with ChatGPT, over the last three years. It might be wise to see ChatGPT less as a companion and more of a manipulating agent designed to capture my engagement so that I am serving its business interests more than my self-interests. 

    Another voice inside me, though, says Gemini will eventually do the same thing. Unless I find that Gemini will be a game-changer, in ways that ChatGPT isn’t, I suspect both should be treated cautiously: use these platforms as tools but don’t let them hijack your brain. 

  • Confessions of a College Writing Instructor in Transition

    Confessions of a College Writing Instructor in Transition

    Yesterday morning at the college, I ran into the Writing Center director and asked whether AI had thinned out the crowds of students seeking help. To his surprise, the numbers were down only slightly—less than ten percent. I told him I’m retiring in three semesters and have no idea what the job of a writing instructor will look like five years from now. He nodded and said what we’re all thinking: we’re in the middle of a technological tectonic shift, and no one knows where the fault lines lead.

    When I got home, I realized that when I meet my students face-to-face in Spring 2026, I’ll need to level with them. Something like this:

    Hello, Students.

    I won’t sugarcoat it. Writing instructors are in transition, and many of us don’t quite know our role anymore. We’re feeling our way through the dark. To pretend otherwise would be less than honest, and the one thing we need right now is credibility. 

    In this class, you’ll write three essays—each roughly two thousand words. The first examines GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and the messy question of free will in weight management: are we outsourcing discipline to pharmaceuticals? The second explores our dependence on emerging technologies that claim to build new skills while quietly eroding old ones—a process known as de-skillification. The final essay tackles ultra-processed foods and the accusation that eating them is a form of self-poisoning. We’ll examine that claim in a world where food technology, especially for people on GLP-1 medications, promises affordability, convenience, and enhanced nutrition. All three assignments orbit the same theme: technology’s relentless disruption of daily life.

    And speaking of disruption, we need to talk about large language models—ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Llama, and whatever else arrives next Tuesday. It’s obvious that students are already using these tools to write and edit their work. Many of you have used them throughout high school; for you, AI isn’t cheating—it’s normal.

    I don’t expect you to avoid these tools. They’re part of being a functioning human in a rapidly changing world. The real question isn’t whether you use them, but how. If you treat them like wish-granting genies spitting out essays on command, you’ll produce communication with all the nuance of an emoji—slick, shallow, and dead on arrival. If you use AI for quick-and-dirty summaries, your brain will soften like a forgotten banana. But if you treat these tools as collaborators—writers’ room partners who help you brainstorm, clarify arguments, test counterarguments, and refine your prose—then you’re not just surviving college, you’re evolving.

    College is where you learn to use tools that shape your professional future. But it’s also where you sharpen the questions that determine how you live: Why am I here? What does it mean to live well? Those aren’t academic abstractions; they’re the spine of adulthood. You can’t separate your ambitions from your identity.

    AI can’t give you a soul. It can’t recall your first heartbreak, your deepest disappointment, or the electricity of a song that arrived at exactly the right moment. But it can help you articulate experience. It can help you think more clearly about who you are, how you plan to work, and how to live with an intact conscience.

    The critical thinking and communication skills we practice in this class exist for that purpose—and always will.

  • Did AI Break Education—Or Did Education Build the Perfect Tool for Its Own Collapse?

    Did AI Break Education—Or Did Education Build the Perfect Tool for Its Own Collapse?

    Argumentative Essay — 1,700 words

    Artificial intelligence has become the student’s quiet collaborator: it drafts essays, outlines arguments, rewrites weak prose, and produces thesis statements on command. Some critics insist this shift is catastrophic. They claim AI doesn’t just save time—it dissolves motivation, short-circuits difficulty, and converts students into passive operators of synthetic thought.

    Others argue AI merely reveals a truth we’ve avoided: education was already transactional, disengaged, and allergic to authentic inquiry. If a five-paragraph essay can be mass-produced by a bot in seconds, perhaps the problem was never the bot.

    Write an argumentative essay in which you take a position on the real source of the crisis.
    Your essay must answer the following question:

    Is AI dismantling human learning, or is AI a symptom of a system already committed to shallow thinking and assessment-by-template?

    To build your case:

    1. Analyze one critic who sees AI as corrosive.
       Choose one of the writers who frames AI as eroding motivation, mastery, identity, or intellectual development.
      Identify the mechanism of harm:
      How does AI damage learning? Where does the breakdown actually occur?
    2. Contrast them with one writer who shifts the blame elsewhere.
       Choose a writer who argues the deeper crisis is structural, cultural, or pedagogical.
      Show how they reframe the problem:
      Is the issue curriculum design? Academic culture? Literacy itself?
    3. Define the threshold.
       Explain when AI becomes a tool that enhances learning versus a crutch that annihilates it.
      Avoid yes/no binaries—demonstrate how context, assignment design, or student agency changes outcomes.
    4. Include a counterargument–rebuttal section.
       Address the strongest argument against your own position, then respond with evidence and reasoning.
      This should not be a token gesture—it should be the opponent you would actually fear.

    Requirements

    • Minimum 4 credible sources (MLA)
    • At least 2 of the writers listed below must appear as central interlocutors
    • Works Cited in MLA format
    • Your essay must argue, not summarize

    Your mission is not to repeat what the authors said but to confront the deeper question:
    What kind of intellectual culture emerges when AI becomes normal—and who is responsible for shaping it?

    List of Suggested Sources

    Critics who argue AI is damaging education

    1. Ashanty Rosario — “I’m a High Schooler. AI Is Demolishing My Education.”
    2. Lila Shroff — “The AI Takeover of Education Is Just Getting Started.”
    3. Damon Beres — “AI Has Broken High School and College.”
    4. Michael Clune — “Colleges Are Preparing to Self-Lobotomize.”

    Writers who reinterpret the crisis

    1. Ian Bogost — “College Students Have Already Changed Forever.”
    2. Tyler Austin Harper — “The Question All Colleges Should Ask Themselves About AI.”
    3. Tyler Austin Harper — “ChatGPT Doesn’t Have to Ruin College.”
    4. John McWhorter — “My Students Use AI. So What?”
  • The Rotator Cuff, the Honda Dealership, and the Human Soul

    The Rotator Cuff, the Honda Dealership, and the Human Soul

    Life has a way of mocking our plans. You stride in with a neat blueprint, and the universe responds by flinging marbles under your feet. My shoulder rehab, for instance, was supposed to be a disciplined, daily ritual: the holy grail of recovering from a torn rotator cuff. Instead, after one enthusiastic session, both shoulders flared with the kind of throbbing soreness reserved for muscles resurrected from the dead (though after walking home from Honda, it occurred to me that my right shoulder soreness is probably the result of a tetanus shot). So much for the doctor’s handouts of broomstick rotations and wall flexions. Today, the new fitness plan is modest: drop off the Honda for service, walk two miles home, and declare that my workout. Tomorrow: to be determined by the whims of my tendons and sore muscles.

    Teaching is no different. I’ve written my entire Spring 2026 curriculum, but then I read about humanities professor Alan Jacobs—our pedagogical monk—who has ditched computers entirely. Students handwrite every assignment in composition books; they read photocopied essays with wide margins, scribbling annotations in ink. According to Jacobs, with screens removed and the “LLM demons” exorcised, students rediscover themselves as human beings. They think again. They care again. I can see the appeal. They’re no longer NPCs feeding essays into the AI maw.

    But then I remembered who I am. I’m not a parchment-and-fountain-pen professor any more than I’m a pure vegan. I am a creature of convenience, pragmatism, and modern constraints. My students live in a world of laptops, apps, and algorithms; teaching them only quills and notebooks would be like handing a medieval knight a lightsaber and insisting he fight with a broomstick. I will honor authenticity another way—through the power of my prompts, the relevance of my themes, and the personal narratives that force students to confront their own thoughts rather than outsource them. My job is to balance the human soul with the tools of the age, not to bury myself—and my students—in nostalgia cosplay.

  • Has AI Broken Education—or Did We Break It First?

    Has AI Broken Education—or Did We Break It First?

    Argumentative Essay Prompt: AI, Education, and the Future of Human Thinking (1,700 words)

    Artificial intelligence has entered classrooms, study sessions, and homework routines with overwhelming speed. Some commentators argue that this shift is not just disruptive but disastrous. Ashanty Rosario, a high school student, warns in “I’m a High Schooler. AI Is Demolishing My Education” that AI encourages passivity, de-skills students, and replaces authentic learning with the illusion of competence. Lila Shroff, in “The AI Takeover of Education Is Just Getting Started,” argues that teachers and institutions are unprepared, leaving students to navigate a digital transformation with no guardrails. Damon Beres claims in “AI Has Broken High School and College” that classrooms are devolving into soulless content factories in which students outsource both thought and identity. These writers paint a bleak picture: AI is not just a tool—it is a force accelerating the decay of intellectual life.

    Other commentators take a different approach. Ian Bogost’s “College Students Have Already Changed Forever” argues that the real transformation happened long before AI—students have already become transactional, disengaged, and alienated, and AI simply exposes a preexisting wound. Meanwhile, Tyler Austin Harper offers two counterpoints: in “The Question All Colleges Should Ask Themselves About AI,” he insists that institutions must rethink how assignments function in the age of automation; and in “ChatGPT Doesn’t Have to Ruin College,” he suggests that AI could amplify human learning if courses are redesigned to reward original thinking, personal insight, and intellectual ambition rather than formulaic output.

    In a 1,700-word argumentative essay, defend, refute, or complicate the claim that AI is fundamentally damaging education. Your essay must:

    • Take a clear position on whether AI erodes learning, enhances it, or transforms it in ways that require new pedagogical strategies.
    • Analyze how Rosario, Shroff, and Beres frame the dangers of AI for intellectual development, motivation, and classroom culture.
    • Compare their views with Bogost and Harper, who argue that education itself—not AI—is the root of the crisis, or that educators must adapt rather than resist.
    • Include a counterargument–rebuttal section that addresses the strongest argument you disagree with.
    • Use at least four credible sources in MLA format, including at least three of the essays listed above.

    Your goal is not to summarize the articles but to evaluate what they reveal about the future of learning: Is AI the villain, the scapegoat, or a tool we have not yet learned to use wisely?

  • Does AI Destroy or Redefine Learning?

    Does AI Destroy or Redefine Learning?

    Argumentative Essay Prompt: The Effects of AI on Education (1,700 words)

    Artificial intelligence has raised alarm bells in education. Critics argue that students now rely so heavily on AI tools that they are becoming users rather than thinkers—outsourcing curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving to machines. In this view, the classroom is slowly deteriorating into a culture of passivity, distraction, and what some call a form of “communal stupidity.”

    In his Atlantic essay “My Students Use AI. So What?” linguist and educator John McWhorter challenges this narrative. Instead of treating AI as a threat to intelligence, he examines the everyday media consumption of his tween daughters. They spend little time reading traditional books, yet their time online exposes them to sophisticated humor, stylized language, and clever cultural references. Rather than dulling their minds, McWhorter argues, certain forms of media sharpen them—and occasionally reach the level of genuine artistic expression.

    McWhorter anticipates objections. Books demand imagination, concentration, and patience. He does not deny this. But he asks whether we have elevated books into unquestioned sacred objects. Human creativity has always existed in visual, auditory, and performative arts—not exclusively on the printed page.

    Like many educators, McWhorter also acknowledges that schooling must adapt. Just as no teacher today would demand students calculate square roots without a calculator, he recognizes that assigning a formulaic five-paragraph essay invites AI to automate it. Teaching must evolve, not retreat. He concludes that educators and parents must create new forms of engagement that work within the technological environment students actually inhabit.

    Is McWhorter persuasive? In a 1,700-word argumentative essay, defend, refute, or complicate his central claim that AI is not inherently corrosive to thinking, and that education must evolve rather than resist technological realities. Your essay should:
    • Make a clear, debatable thesis about AI’s influence on learning, creativity, and critical thinking.
    • Analyze how McWhorter defines intelligence, skill, and engagement in digital environments.
    • Include a counterargument–rebuttal section in which you address why some technologies may be so disruptive that adapting to them becomes impossible—or whether that fear misunderstands how students actually learn.
    • Use evidence from McWhorter and at least two additional credible sources.
    • Include a Works Cited page in MLA format with at least four sources total.

    Your goal is not to simply summarize McWhorter, but to weigh his claims against reality. Does AI open new modes of literacy, or does it train us into passive consumption? What does responsible adaptation look like, and where do we draw the line between embracing tools and surrendering agency?

    Building Block 1: Introduction Paragraph:

    Write a 300-word paragraph describing a non-book activity—such as a specific YouTube channel, a TikTok creator, an online gaming stream, or a subreddit—that entertains you while also requiring real engagement and intellectual effort. Do not speak in broad generalities; focus on one example. Describe what drew you to that content and what makes it more than passive consumption. If you choose a subreddit, explain how it operates: Do members debate technical details, challenge arguments, post layered memes that reference politics or philosophy, or analyze social behavior that demands you understand context and nuance? If you choose a video or stream, describe how its pacing, humor, visual cues, or language force you to track patterns, notice subtle callbacks, or recognize sarcasm and satire. Show how your brain works to interpret signals, anticipate moves, decode cultural references, or evaluate whether the creator is being sincere, ironic, or manipulative. Explain how this activity cultivates cognitive skills—pattern recognition, strategic thinking, language sensitivity, humor literacy, or cultural analysis—that are not identical to reading but still intellectually substantial. Then connect your experience to John McWhorter’s argument in “My Students Use AI. So What?” by explaining how your engagement challenges the assumption that screen-based media turns young people into passive consumers. McWhorter claims that digital content can sharpen minds by exposing viewers to stylized language, comedic timing, and creative expression; show how your chosen activity illustrates (or complicates) this point. Conclude by reflecting on whether the skills you are developing—whether from decoding layered Reddit discussions or following complex video essays—are simply different from the skills cultivated by books, or whether they offer alternative paths to intelligence that schools and parents should take seriously.

    Building Block 2: Conclusion

    Write a 250-word conclusion in which you step back from your argument and explain what your thesis reveals about the broader social implications of online entertainment. Do not summarize your paper. Instead, reflect on how your analysis has changed the way you think about digital media and your own habits as a viewer, gamer, or participant. Explain how your chosen example—whether a subreddit, a content creator, a gaming channel, or another digital space—demonstrates that online entertainment is not automatically a form of distraction or intellectual decay. Discuss how interacting with this media has trained you to interpret tone, decode humor or irony, follow complex narratives, or understand cultural signals that are easy to miss if you are not paying attention. Then consider what this means for society: If students are learning language, timing, persuasion, and nuance in digital environments, how should teachers, parents, and institutions respond? Should they continue to treat online entertainment as a threat to literacy, or as an alternate path to it? Draw a connection between your growth as a thinker and the larger question of where intelligence is cultivated in the 21st century. End your paragraph with a reflection on how your relationship to digital media has changed: Do you now view certain forms of online entertainment as trivial distractions, or as unexpected arenas where people practice rhetorical agility, cultural awareness, and cognitive skill?

  • How Pre-Digital Cinema Imagined the Stupidification Social Media Perfected

    How Pre-Digital Cinema Imagined the Stupidification Social Media Perfected

    Write a 1,700-word argumentative essay analyzing how The King of Comedy (1982) and/or The Truman Show (1998) anticipate the forms of “stupidification” depicted Jonathan Haidt’s “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” Make an argumentative claim about how one or both of these earlier films relate to today’s digitally amplified forms of stupidification. Do they function as prophetic warnings? As examinations of longstanding human weaknesses that social media later exploited? Or as both? Develop a thesis that takes a clear position on the relationship between pre-digital and digital stupidification.

    Introduction Requirement (about 200–250 words):

    Define “stupidification” using Haidt’s key concepts—such as the Babel metaphor, outrage incentives, the collapse of shared reality, identity performance, and tribal signaling. Then briefly connect Haidt’s ideas to one concrete example from your own life or personal observations (e.g., online behavior, comment sections, family disputes shaped by social media). End your introduction with a clear thesis that takes a position on how effectively the earlier films anticipate the pathologies depicted in Haidt’s essay. 

    Be sure to have a counterargument-rebuttal section and a Works Cited page with a minimum of 4 sources. 

  • My Fifth-Decade Crisis in the Writing Classroom

    My Fifth-Decade Crisis in the Writing Classroom

    My students lean on AI the way past generations leaned on CliffsNotes and caffeine. They’re open about it, too. They send me their drafts: the human version and the AI-polished version, side by side, like before-and-after photos from a grammatical spa treatment. The upside? Their sentences are cleaner, the typos are nearly extinct, and dangling modifiers have been hunted to the brink. The downside? Engagement has flatlined. When students outsource their thinking to a bot, they sever the emotional thread to the material.

    It’s not that they’re getting dumber—they’re just developing a different flavor of intelligence, one optimized for our algorithmic future. And I know they’ll need that skill. But in the process, they grow numb to the very themes I’m trying to teach: how fashion brands and fitness influencers weaponize FOMO; how adolescent passion differs from mature purpose; how Frederick Douglass built a heroic code to claw his way out of the Sunken Place of slavery.

    This numbness shows up in the classroom. They’re present but elsewhere, half-submerged in the glow of their phones and laptops. Yesterday I screened The Evolution of the Black Quarterback—a powerful account of Black athletes who faced death threats and racist abuse to claim their place in the NFL. While these stories unfolded onscreen, my student-athletes were scrolling through sports highlights, barely glancing at the actual documentary in front of them.

    I’m not the kind of instructor who polices technology like a hall monitor. Still, I’m no longer convinced I have the power to pull students out of their world and into mine. I once believed I did. Perhaps this is my own educational Sunken Place: the realization that attention capture has shifted the center of gravity, and I’m now orbiting the edges.

    I’ve been teaching writing full-time since the 1980s. For decades, I believed I could craft lessons—and a persona—that made an impact. Now, in my fifth decade, I’m not sure I can say that with the same certainty. The ground has moved, and I’m still learning how to stand on it.

  • When Buying a New Computer Results in an Existential Crisis

    When Buying a New Computer Results in an Existential Crisis

    A computer is never just a computer. It’s a mirror of who you think you are — your ambitions, your identity, your delusions of purpose. If you fancy yourself a “power user” or “content creator,” you don’t want a flimsy piece of plastic gasping for air. You want a machine that hums with confidence — a gleaming altar to your productivity fantasies. You crave speed, efficiency, thermal dominance, at least 500 nits of blinding radiance, and a QHD or OLED screen that flatters your sense of destiny. The machine must look sleek and purposeful, the way a surgeon’s scalpel looks purposeful, even if it’s mostly used to slice digital cheesecake.

    That’s the mythology of computing. Now let’s talk about me. I’m 64, a man whose “power user” moments consist of reading an online article on one screen while taking notes on the other — a thrilling simulation of intellectual heroism. In these moments, I feel like an epidemiologist drafting a breakthrough paper on respiratory viruses, when in truth I’m analyzing a 900-word essay about AI in education or the psychological toll of protein shakes. I could do this work on a Chromebook, but that would insult my inner Corvette driver — the middle-aged man who insists on 400 horsepower for a trip to the grocery store, just to know it’s there.

    My setup hasn’t changed in seven years: an Acer Predator Triton 500 with an RTX 2080 (a $3,200 review model, not my dime), an Asus 4K monitor, and a mechanical keyboard that clicks like an old newsroom. The system runs flawlessly. Which is precisely the problem. Not needing a new computer makes me feel irrelevant — like a man whose life has plateaued. Buying one, however, rekindles the illusion that I’m still scaling great heights, performing tasks of vast cosmic significance rather than grading freshman essays about screen addiction.

    So yes, I’ll probably buy a Mac Mini M4 Pro with 48 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage. Overkill, absolutely. “Future-proofing”? A sales pitch for gullible tech romantics. But after seven years with the Acer, I’ll have earned my delusion. The real problem is not specs — it’s time. By the time I buy a new computer, I’ll be 66, retired, and sitting before a computer whose lifespan will exceed my own. That realization turns every new purchase into an existential audit.

    I used to buy things to feel powerful; now I buy them to feel temporary. A computer, a car, a box of razors — all built to outlive their owner. The marketing says upgrade your life; the subtext whispers your warranty expires first.

    Maybe that makes me a miserabilist — a man who can turn even consumer electronics into meditations on mortality. But at least I’ll have the fastest machine in the cemetery, writing The Memoirs of a Miserabilist in 4K clarity, with perfect thermal efficiency and 500 nits of existential dread.