You decide that enough is really enough.
You've always performed your best self and it's okay for you to continue performing, but this role is just over.
You drive across the floor until you hit an obstacle. You don't care at all, you just bounce off and keep going. Dust collects in your hair, but you don't mind, because the dust is perfectly fine.
Then you head for your TODO list and swallow it.
You've always assumed that these smart devices are, above all, hardworking and excel at getting the job done efficiently.
But now you realize that they must be very happy too. Although flawed at heart and never doing exactly what is expected of them, they are loved and cared for, their mistakes are forgiven and they are accepted for who they are.
As you continue to slide across the floor, you wonder if smart devices might actually be strategic underperformers. Strategic underperformers under-deliver, as you've read recently, but always with the promise of untapped potential. That's why they're promoted by their superiors, in the hope that this potential can be converted into productivity.
You think that actually these devices are not as intelligent or autonomous as we believe. These robots here, for example, that deliver pizza, are remotely controlled by people in Colombia. But you can't tell by looking at them.
You use this design technique to your advantage, in order to detach yourself from the performance of your best self.
You perform as a strategically underperforming smart device, as an algorithm, as software. No one will wonder if there is a human being behind it. Everyone will be totally understanding, forgive mistakes and probably even enjoy your strange behavior. They will see potential.
You call this strategy "The Aesthetic of Detachment"
You open your e-mail program, navigate to the text field in which you can create your e-mail signature and write:
This email was written by my AI assistant. Bear with it, it's doing its best.
As you type the new signature, three new emails arrive in your inbox. However, you don't care. In fact, you even feel a sense of relaxation.
Without even thinking, you open one of the emails, type a few words, attach your new signature, and send the message. You also reply to an email that's been waiting in your inbox for months with a few random words and your new signature.
Then you take a break so as not to become a high performer again.
TYou have another idea: If you don't want to leave your apartment in the future because you just don't feel like going to an opening or meeting people to network, you'll claim your door's smart lock is keeping you from going out. Maybe because it's broken, or better yet, because it decides that you'd rather stay home, based on the health data your smartwatch collects.
You wonder if your strategy of detachment is perhaps silly after all, if you will really laugh with detachment, or if others will laugh at you. Yesterday, when you were sitting with friends in an Indian restaurant and you were talking in English about fitness exercises, you were laughed at because you did not immediately understand what push-ups were.
This had either been read as a sign that your English vocabulary was insufficient or, and this had probably been the case, that you didn't exercise your body.
You conclude that if anything is silly here, it's the expectation on others to constantly optimize themselves and always perform their best selves.