The Experience Singularity

I can’t tell you the exact moment it happened. But something flipped. It was just a taste. A glimpse. But it was real. And I want it back. I want it fully realized.

At some point in the last year, as I, like so many others, sat drinking from the AI firehose, it hit me. One day I was using it. The next day I wasn’t aware of using anything at all. There was just the work, moving faster than the work used to move. And there was me in the middle of it. And it was flowing. And I had lost sight of the seam. It just disappeared into the fabric. It was just a moment. A glimpse. But it was real. And it was one of the most exciting feelings I’d ever felt. It was also terrifying in a way I’d never experienced.

I started calling it the Experience Singularity. I don’t fall into those sort of ™ phrases often. But this one felt right. It felt exciting…like riding the unknown. It also felt menacing. And it should.

You probably already know the other one. The technological singularity. The runaway curve. The point of no return where intelligence accelerates past us until it stops needing us. It’s the horizon you can’t see over and you can’t come back from it. The machine becomes everything. We’ve been telling each other that story, half in warning and half in worship, for decades. It’s a living episode of ‘Black Mirror,’ where I can’t wait to see what’s next and then I wish I hadn’t seen it. But I still come back for more.

To be clear, I am absolutely talking about the same curve. Same curve. Same gravity. Same point of no return. But it’s pointed the other way.

The technological singularity is the machine waking up. It’s the machine becoming everything. The Experience Singularity is the machine getting out of the way. It’s the point where technology and experience become a single thing. It’s where the seam between the system and the feeling closes so completely you can’t find it. And maybe you don’t want to. When you move in this direction, the machine disappears, not because it got weaker but because it got good enough to actually disappear.

And on the far side of the Experience Singularity, the thing that becomes everything isn’t the machine. It’s the person.

Same singularity. Complete opposite ending.

It’s still very conceptual. But it’s coming. So let’s think for a minute about the before and after. This is the part that changes everything.

Before…

Technology is something you add to an experience. You can point at it. It has parts you can identify. The screen. The app. The kiosk. The thing you bolt on and hope nobody trips over it. And experience is authored: a team designs it once then ships it out to many. And the ceiling on how good it gets rests completely on how much a human hand can make…by hand.

After…

Technology is the medium from which the experience is made. You point at it the way you’d point at electricity in the middle of a conversation. You don’t. And experience isn’t authored. It’s generated. Live. Per person. In the moment. The ceiling that used to be limited by the human hand is just gone.

That’s not Omnichannel or Integrated or [holds nose…chokes it down] phygital. It’s not a new way to connect the dots. It’s a completely different way to interact.

Measurement flips. Before, we counted the technology. Impressions. Scans. Dwell time. After, there’s only one question. Could they find the seam? If they noticed the tech, you failed. The score was never what the system did. It’s whether the person ever knew a system was there.

As storytellers, our job flips. We stop making experiences and start building the engines that generate them. And the taste that governs what those engines are allowed to make is now what truly matters. When anyone can generate infinite experience for nothing, the ability to build it is worthless. Everyone will have the same ability. Endless, frictionless, forgettable mediocrity, on tap, forever. The low budget reality show ride you can never get off. But taste…defining what great experience is…that suddenly becomes infinitely valuable. The one thing that can’t be generated is the judgment about what’s worth generating. Sure. You can simulate it. You can probably give most people a good run for their money. But having an opinion. A real one. The kind you’d defend to the end of the earth? That suddenly stops being a nice-to-have and becomes the only thing that matters.

So what’s it going to be? A singularity is a horizon. You don’t get to see past it and you don’t fully control what’s waiting on the far side. And there are two versions sitting very far apart.

Focus on people and it’s the most human thing we’ve ever built. Connection at an intimacy and a scale no team could ever have authored by hand. The right moment finds the right person…always…because the machine becomes the invisible force letting two humans be human. That’s the flower coming up through the crack in the pavement. Nature finding a way. That’s the version I’m in this for.

Focus on extraction instead, on the conversion, the number, one more minute of their attention; and the exact same power becomes frictionless manipulation. Infinite mediocrity wearing personalization as a mask. Each experience is tuned so precisely to move you that you never once notice you were moved. The seam disappears there too. Same technology. Same disappearance. Opposite intent.

And I want to be clear about where that fork actually lives. It isn’t in the technology. It never is. The machine doesn’t choose. And it isn’t malice that decides it, either. It’s all about the incentive. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you chase one more view? One more click? One more engagement? Are you chasing behaviors that align with a business objective? Or are you enabling people to better understand their needs and solve problems? Are you helping people think bigger? Expect more? Drive change?

Does the machine become everything? Or does the machine disappear completely? That’s our question to answer. Our story to write. And while humans are resilient, the human version does not happen by default. It only happens if we build it on purpose.

If we allow it. If we demand it.