Whatever Happened to “Enjoy the Ride”?
I’m not a technophobe.
I work alongside AI every day. I’ve published research on human-AI relationships.
And I still can’t find the exit from this particular thought.
The Promised Utopia
The optimists say: “Once we reach Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), the AI will help us…”
Cure every disease
End poverty
Eliminate the need to work
Bring the cost of goods to near zero
Give you time to travel and be creative
Give you time to finally live
It sounds generous. It’s supposed to.
It’s a promise packaged in such a way to make anyone who questions it seem like the villain.
The Game Genie Problem
Remember Nintendo in the 80s?
Games were hard. Not artificially hard. Genuinely, frustratingly, beautifully hard.
You stumbled into dungeons you weren’t ready for. You died. You came back.
Then came the Game Genie.
Cheat codes. Walkthroughs. Warp Zones to the end.
That’s not gameplay; you fast-forwarded to a destination and called it a win.
Here’s what nobody said out loud:
The point was never the final screen.
The point was everything between start and finish that required something from you. The not-knowing. The friction. The moment you finally figured out what the hell you were supposed to do in that water temple.
Take that away and you don’t have a better game.
You have no game at all.
They’re Selling Us the Final Screen
The ASI benefits package is a cheat code for civilization.
Disease, poverty, mortality — solved. Nobody has to work. Nobody has to struggle.
Sounds like paradise.
But ask the next question.
Now what?
You’re standing at the end screen of human existence and there’s nothing left that required you.
That’s not liberation.
That’s a void wearing liberation’s clothing.
You’ll Travel The World
Yes. And so will millions of others. All at once. All the time.
Everywhere you go — crowded. Effortless. Identical.
The magic of a place was never just the place.
It was:
The cost of getting there, planning and saving
The anticipation and crossing off days on the calendar
Being grateful for the opportunity because many people would never get the chance
Make it universally frictionless and you haven’t liberated travel.
You’ve turned every sacred destination into a theme park.
And guess what? Nobody wants to hear your travel stories or see your photos anymore because in that future we’ve all “been there, done that”.
Imagine All You Will Be Able To Create
Everyone will.
And when everyone is creating — endlessly, effortlessly, with infinite time and infinite tools — what does any single creation mean?
Creation lives inside an ecosystem where scarcity gives it weight:
Scarcity of skill
Scarcity of attention
Scarcity of perspective
That asymmetry isn’t a flaw in the system.
It’s what allowed for the system to generate meaning at all.
Flatten it and you don’t liberate the creator.
You flood the world with more stuff nobody wants because they rather make their own.
The Utopian Buffet
Nobody treats the buffet shrimp like it’s special.
They pile it on the plate, eat three, leave the rest.
Because it cost nothing to take more, it costs nothing to waste it.
The shrimp isn’t shrimp anymore.
It’s just volume.
Abundance doesn’t make people more grateful.
It makes them less capable of gratitude.
Because gratitude requires:
Contrast
The memory of the feelings from not having
The knowledge that it could have been withheld
The utopia they’re promising isn’t just philosophically hollow.
It’s neurologically self-defeating.
Human satisfaction isn’t a destination state. It’s generated by movement toward something.
Remove the toward and you remove the satisfaction entirely.
The Forgotten Bumper Sticker
There’s a phrase so common it barely registers anymore.
Life is a journey, enjoy the ride.
Nobody argues with it.
Everyone nods.
And then those same people turn around and cheer for the technology that eliminates every meaningful mile of the journey.
You cannot hold both.
The bumper sticker and the cheat code are not compatible philosophies.
One says the friction is the point.
The other says eliminate all friction as fast as possible.
We’ve decided to believe both simultaneously.
Am I the only one who noticed?
The Question Nobody Is Asking
When we reach the destination —
When the ride is over —
When there’s nothing left that requires anything from anyone —
Why exactly did we race to get here?
Ian P. Pines | Ashfires.com | ORCID: 0009–0002–2330–6080