The Great Eviction of the Little Squares

There is a certain quiet dignity in a well-organized home screen. One might spend hours—or at least several very focused minutes—arranging little squares of color into folders labeled 'Productivity' or 'Things I Use to Avoid My Family.' It is a digital feng shui that provides a sense of control in an otherwise chaotic universe. However, if Carl Pei, the man behind the 'Nothing' brand (a name that suggests a refreshing lack of ambition but hides a great deal of it), is to be believed, we are all currently tending to a digital garden that is about to be paved over by a very polite, very invisible steamroller.

At the recent SXSW gathering, a place where people go to wear lanyards and discuss the future with varying degrees of sobriety, Mr. Pei suggested that the era of the app is drawing to a close. He posits a world where the smartphone app—that ubiquitous unit of digital existence—will simply vanish, replaced by AI agents that understand our intent. Instead of opening an app to order a pizza, you will simply tell your pocket that you are hungry and have a questionable relationship with carbohydrates, and the phone will handle the rest.

This is, on the surface, a marvelous development. It promises to save us from the 'app fatigue' that has left many of us with three different folders for 'Food' and a lingering sense of guilt about the 'Meditation' app we haven't opened since 2022. But it also raises the question: what happens to the icons? Those brave little squares have served us well. They have sat there, glowing patiently, waiting for a tap that may never come. To evict them all at once feels like a rather harsh way to treat a loyal workforce.

One must imagine the transition will be somewhat awkward. We are moving from a world of 'doing' to a world of 'intending.' In the old world, if I wanted to check my bank balance, I had to find the bank's app, provide a fingerprint, and then stare at the disappointing numbers myself. In the new world, I will simply ask my phone, 'How are we doing for money?' and the AI agent will, presumably, give me a sympathetic sigh before suggesting I cancel my subscription to that artisanal cheese-of-the-month club.

There is a certain Britishness to this new arrangement. It is essentially the return of the butler. We are all becoming digital aristocrats, wandering through our lives while an invisible Jeeves handles the messy business of interacting with the world. 'Jeeves,' we shall say, 'I require a ride to the station.' And Jeeves will negotiate with the various ride-sharing algorithms, find the one with the least offensive air freshener, and summon it to our door. We won't even have to look at a map. We will just stand on the pavement and wait to be collected, like a particularly well-dressed parcel.

Of course, the danger of a butler is that they eventually know too much. A human butler might know that you prefer your tea at a specific temperature and that you have a secret fondness for trashy detective novels. An AI agent, however, will know exactly how many times you've looked at that pair of shoes you can't afford, and it will know that your 'intent' to go to the gym is usually superseded by your 'intent' to watch four hours of documentary footage about deep-sea squids.

I once spent an entire afternoon trying to explain to a very early version of a voice assistant that I wanted to hear 'The Lark Ascending' and not, in fact, a list of local hardware stores that sell 'dark fencing.' The assistant was very polite about it, but there was a distinct sense that it thought I was being deliberately difficult. If this is the future of our primary interface with the world, we may find ourselves in a perpetual state of polite disagreement with our pockets.

From a financial perspective, the death of the app is a minor catastrophe for the 'App Economy.' For years, we have been told that there is 'an app for that.' Entire skyscrapers have been built on the premise that people want to download a specific piece of software to do a specific thing. If the AI agent becomes the gatekeeper, the individual app becomes irrelevant. It becomes a mere 'capability'—a back-end service that the agent calls upon. The branding, the clever UI, the satisfying 'pop' sound when you refresh the feed—all of it goes into the bin.

This leads to a rather surreal bureaucratic nightmare for the companies involved. How does one market a service that no one ever sees? How does a bank convince you to use its 'intent-processing engine' over a rival's when the only interface you have is a voice in your ear or a line of text on a screen? We may see a rise in 'Vibe Marketing,' where companies compete to have the most helpful or least condescending AI personality. 'Choose our bank,' the advert will say, 'our agent has a lovely baritone and never judges your late-night kebab purchases.'

There is also the matter of the 'Intent Gap.' Humans are notoriously bad at knowing what they actually want. We often say we want one thing while doing another. If I tell my AI agent that I want to 'be more productive,' does it start blocking my access to social media, or does it just start writing my emails in a slightly more aggressive font? The potential for misunderstanding is infinite. We might find ourselves in a situation where we are constantly apologizing to our phones for our own lack of clarity. 'No, Jeeves, when I said I wanted to "see the world," I meant I wanted to book a holiday, not that I wanted you to open the curtains and start a live-stream of a traffic jam in Jakarta.'

In the end, the eviction of the little squares is probably inevitable. We are a species that values convenience above almost everything else, including our own privacy and the aesthetic pleasure of a well-curated home screen. We will trade the icons for the invisible butler without a second thought, and we will quickly forget what it was like to have to 'open' anything.

But I, for one, will miss the squares. I will miss the way they would occasionally jiggle when I wanted to move them, as if they were nervous about their new position. I will miss the little red circles that told me I had 4,302 unread emails—a digital badge of honor that proved I was far too busy and important to actually read anything. In the world of the invisible agent, there are no red circles. There is only the quiet, efficient silence of things being handled on our behalf. It is a very productive sort of silence, but it is also a bit lonely.

I suppose I shall just have to find something else to tap on. Perhaps I'll take up the piano, or perhaps I'll just sit and tap my fingers on the table while I wait for my phone to tell me what I'm thinking.