Dear Consumer,
Technology has failed us.
Technology used to be a gateway. It was a way to connect and be curious. It gave us unlimited access to the world and made us optimistic for the future.
We had the power to decide when and how to interact with technology. The internet used to be a place you would “log on” to. It felt deliberate and intentional.
Then the iPhone gave us unlimited access to the world’s information whenever and wherever we wanted it. It gave us maps and mobile games and FaceTime and really really really good cameras.
The “iPhone moment” was special and it felt like we were stepping into the future. There was a general sense of what will we build next?
But... what nobody told us is that the rate of innovation would slow. That the difference from one generation of iPhone to the next would be invisible to most of us.
They did not tell us that our smart phones would become unreliable. That tech companies would force updates that would fill-up our storage and slow down our phones until the only choice was to get a new one.
Nobody knew that the internet would creep into every corner of our lives until “logging off” was no longer an option. The internet which once felt fun and freeing began to feel like it was meant to control, manipulate and monetize us.
The tech companies that once felt aspirational, the “do no evil”, started to feel like they did not have our best interests at heart.
Now that the internet was in our pockets 24/7 it was easy to find trillions of dollars worth of ways to make money.
Subscriptions. Ad revenue. Buy my course.
These tech companies stopped inspiring us by creating the future, and instead invested billions of dollars into finding more and more ways to monopolize our attention.
Push notifications. Redeem your points. Algorithms. The endless scroll.
It was all in the service of capital and at the expense of us.
One day we woke up with 100s (maybe 1000s?) of different usernames and passwords for everything from our grocery store to our dentist to our dog food supplier and home appliances.
Our technology is asking more and more of us every single day. The world is loud and there is nothing intentional or deliberate about our relationship with technology.
Some of us spend 12+ hours a day in front of a screen. We work all day with a computer and when it is time to relax we switch devices and look at another screen.
At any given moment our phones are yelling at us with notifications. Every time we download a new app or sign-up for a new service, apparently we agree to a life-time of push notifications, text messages and email campaigns.
These notifications are designed to manipulate us. They are expertly crafted by Ph.D psychologists that deploy para-casino type tactics to convince us to open their apps and keep us there for as long as possible.
We use terms like doom scrolling or brain rot casually in conversation to describe our relationship with our phones. Whenever we have a free moment or idle thought we look at them. They follow us everywhere we go and they are the first things we look at when we get up in the morning.
It feels like we are part of a mass psychological experiment and we all know how it ends.
We are more anxious, depressed and lonely than ever before. We struggle to maintain focus and we seek out distraction. We feel disconnected from our communities and our relationship with technology has made life feel unnatural and strange.
This letter is being published on February 17th, 2026 (the Year of the Horse).
As of publishing this, the internet is evolving into something much stranger. Internet traffic is predominately non-human and AI-generated content is on the cusp of becoming indistinguishable from reality.
Every other week a VC backed startup or one of the world’s biggest companies are announcing the release of smart glasses.
They are coming for our faces.
Our days are already consumed by screens. Our only reprieve are the brief moments we put our phones down and look up at the night sky or across the table at our friends.
But to tech companies those brief moments are periods of inefficiency that could be monetized.
If we wear a screen on our face then it is impossible to miss one of their notifications. Think about how easy it would be to scroll our feeds or click on an ad when we are walking our dog.
Just imagine all the personalized advertisements they will be able to show us if they can hear and see everything we are doing all the time.
The perfect time to send a Door Dash notification is when we are getting ready to make dinner. Maybe we are at a Little League game. Why not advertise DraftKings? The highest click-through rate for Better Help advertisements are right after they see us argue with our partner. Or maybe we just started a new book, here is a promo-code for Nord VPN.
This is not the future that we imagined or deserve.
Where do we go from here?
Some have chosen to go backwards. Dumb phones. Flip phones. Analog devices. Others have resorted to installing software to make their phones less addicting. Time-management apps. Custom operating systems. Turning on grey scale.
These approaches have worked for some people. But for most, they eventually switch back to their smart phones, they bypass the time management apps and turn off grey scale.
It is partially because, despite their immense harm, our phones provide value and convenience. Using older technology or installing software to make our phones worse ends up being a temporary solution to a much bigger problem.
Technology has failed us and we should be fearful that what is to come will be much more harmful. But instead of going backwards or waiting for a future we did not ask for, we should build the future ourselves.
The future of technology should respect our time and attention.
Instead of being optimized for consumption and monetization it should be built for utility and give us the power to define what that means.
Instead of spending more time in front of screens, the future of technology should allow us to spend less.
Interaction with this technology should be intentional and deliberate. It should work quietly in the background and require less of us instead of more.
This technology should help us connect and be curious. It should help us reclaim a sense of confidence and control.
The future of technology should be built for us, not them.
Best,
Hunter
hunter@pigeongroup.co
631-965-2344