What Would Terrify Someone From 2010 About Technology In 2026?

We taught machines to think, and then immediately asked them to do our homework, our art, our emails, and our thinking about thinking. There's a particular kind of silence that happens when you explain modern technology to someone from 2010. It's not disbelief. It's not confusion. It's the slow dawning realization that the future did arrive… it just didn't fill out the proper paperwork. I tried it once — on a version of myself from 2010 I reconstructed in my head. A younger me who still thought smartphones were just 'phones that got a bit enthusiastic about email.' He listened carefully as I described 2026. And then he asked, very calmly 'Why does your search engine talk back to you like it's in charge?' I didn't have a clean answer. So I started from the beginning. In 2010, search engines were librarians.