Using AI to Live More Analog

Draft for Van's review before publish.

I've been using Apple computers for 44 years. And for 44 years, every generation has taken something away from my hands and given it to a screen.

Buttons became menus. Menus became gestures. Gestures became invisible interfaces that require you to remember what to touch and where. The machines got thinner. The glass got bigger. And the human got more dependent. Not on the tool, but on the interface that stands between you and the tool.

I'm a filmmaker. I build things. I fix things. I work with my hands every single day. And what I've watched happen over four decades is that the tools I depend on have slowly turned into hostage situations. You can't change the battery. You can't replace the port. You can't choose which cable to use. The company decides, and you comply.

AI changes the equation. Not the way most people talk about it. Not chatbots and generated images and automated content. I mean something more specific: AI is the first technology powerful enough to let you design your way out of the interface.

Here's what I mean. I used ChatGPT to design a multicam video switcher cart. I told it what I needed: four cameras, live switching, recording, monitoring. But no software menus. Every function had to have a physical button, a knob, or a cable. The AI figured out the signal routing. It specified the hardware. It told me what to plug into what. And when I built the cart in my workshop, the whole production system ran without a single menu. No touchscreen. No mouse. Physical switches, physical cables, physical buttons.

The computer disappeared. And the work got better.

That's the argument. AI doesn't have to mean more screen time. It doesn't have to mean generated content replacing human work. It can mean the opposite: using the most powerful thinking tool ever built to design systems that put your hands back on physical controls. Tools that serve the hand instead of capturing the eye.

Using AI to live more analog.

This is the thesis of The Spirited Man. Every month, I make a 30-minute film about one theme inside this argument. I build things, fix things, rank things, and love things, and the common thread is that same question: how do you use the most advanced technology in history to get your hands on something real?

I don't know the full answer yet. I don't think anyone does. But I know this much: the iPod Nano did one thing, and it did it with a wheel under your thumb. The Franklin Language Master does one thing, and it does it with a keyboard and a screen the size of a fortune cookie. The ATEM Mini Pro does one thing, and it does it with buttons. The best computers I've ever used are the ones that respect my hands.

AI can make more of those. That's the future I'm building toward. One object at a time.

Watch Episode 1 to see where this argument starts. Browse all episodes. Read the full case for analog living in an AI world.