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LovableNotion

After automation: Offline devices will be like going to the gym for your brain

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People are going to clamor for quiet spaces. They're going to hunt down digital spaces with no automation, no AI, like a parched desert wanderer sniffing out an oasis miles away. Having an offline piece of software (or entire device) will become the precondition for honing an individual voice. Using these devices will be like going to the gym for your brain.

In the same way that simply placing your phone on the table drains your cognitive capacity, so, too, will the presence of AI in an application. Knowing you can pull a lever to fix a sentence, rewrite an idea, or come up with 10 iterations on a thought will cut your thinking short. It's the supercharged version of the same reward loop your phone runs today.

Hell, I'm already doing this, and have been doing this for 15 years. No internet allowed in the morning: just physical books and a MacBook Neo with no internet access. If I get bored I smoke a cigarette and look out at the sky. The pull for this kind of morning is only going to grow stronger the more things are automated.

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Thesis 2027

On November 5, 2026, 400 people will gather at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn to debate the ideas in this collection—live, unscripted, and face to face.

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