The runner in color
Apple’s 1984 ad is one of the most famous commercials ever made. Rows of gray, hypnotized people stare at a face on a giant screen. Then a lone runner in color sprints in, hurls a hammer at the screen and smashes it.
I thought about that ad while writing a new kind of contrast, and how some people will break out and explore new ways to define identity alongside AI.
To me, the gray rows are people locked behind capability barriers. They have taste and ideas, but not the skills to act on them. They know what they want, but getting there would take years of know-how they never had the time to build. That barrier is the screen, and AI is the hammer.
Omarchy, the Linux distribution DHH calls “the malleable OS”, may be one of the first signs of this. Shaping a Linux desktop to your liking used to mean a lot of tinkering with config files. Now you describe what you want, and an AI agent shapes the system into your own opinionated version of Linux. Your own design.
Of course, the hammer is built by a handful of big companies, and I’ve written before about the risk of handing them your reward system. In hindsight, the ad also reads as a warning about Apple itself. The company went on to build one of the most locked-down ecosystems there is, and essentially became the villain it depicted. AI could go the same way: today’s hammer could be the villain of tomorrow. All the more reason to stay independent and keep caring for your inner cathedral.
It’s time to take back control of our environments and build the ones we always wished for.