The Dystopian Dream Team

May 23, 2025 • Louie Mantia

Well, it’s finally here, the dystopian dream team. Jony Ive and Sam Altman hitched their carts together to create god knows what. While some people are “excited” or “intrigued,” I am frankly “disgusted.” In an intro video with special thanks to the Coppola family and Café Zoetrope for the location, and Harry Gregson-Williams for letting them borrow The Martian score, the two gush about the city of San Francisco, a city not devoid of problems that people like these two men helped create.

Jony Ive may be a brilliant designer, and he may have assembled a brilliant team. They very well may be enjoying having every tool at their disposal to create anything they could ever dream of. I don’t doubt it. But Jony himself does not strike me as a person who ever really liked computers. He and his team are great at constructing a beautiful arrangement of parts, inside a pristine enclosure, with novel mechanics to open and close it. No doubt. But there’s never been any indication he even likes computers.

Sam Altman has built an entire business around theft. Taking everything he can find—but not pay for—he has constructed a monstrous machine that uses an unbelievable amount of energy and an unfathomable amount of water to keep cool. It is an ecological nightmare. In addition, ChatGPT doesn’t just itself fail to recognize the difference between fact and fiction, it presents these answers to people who are themselves unable to discern the difference. Sam Altman is a person who thinks today’s limitation of a laptop is waiting for ChatGPT to respond. He said this.

Both of these men are made for each other in the worst way imaginable. They both seemingly have a disdain for computers. None of what they spoke about in that ten-minute masturbatory video showed any ounce of wonder and amazement for what humans are able to do with computers. I don’t think these men are here to save us.

On that note, I don’t think we need to be saved. I don’t love my phone that much anymore. But I do appreciate its value as a communication device, a camera, and an iPod. The thing is, I actually really love my Mac. But there’s this unkillable idea in Silicon Valley right now that there will be another thing someday. The promise of a theoretical future device that does something worth having. Billionaires keep pretending like they’re doing research to find it, but I feel like we’re already living the dream. I can draw and write and create whatever I want, and publish it or send it to people around the world to see instantaneously. And I can access whatever everyone else shares instantly from my devices too. That’s the peak. We’re at the summit!

Computers and phones have stopped making the big leaps they once did. That’s fine! That’s okay. We did it! We largely accomplished the goals, maximizing what these objects should be. From here on out, big changes are no longer possible, nor are they necessary. These kinds of devices have reached the point where they have just joined refrigerators, washing machines, and microwaves. I understand that’s no longer glamorous, but the exciting part may just be over. We’re not going to have a new device that supersedes a computer is or what we consider a phone to be today.

For this general category of computing devices, I think we already figured it out. Right now, with all these new products created around AI features, we’re not witnessing another leap or a new product category that will overtake the devices we have today.

What we’re seeing right now is not innovation, we’re seeing people struggle to contend with the reality that it’s over. They’re coping with the fact that the innovation phase for computing devices has finished. They’re grasping for continued relevance.

Even Nintendo made more of a direct sequel to their hardware than they have before. While every previous console was just one weird thing after another, this one’s built on what they had that worked best. It incorporates all these weird ideas they’ve had over the years in a form factor that they simply already figured out.

Despite none of us really needing another new device with all new things to learn and adapt to for modest—if any—gain, the tech magnates just simply have more money than they know what to do with. And they have to prove to themselves over and over again that their past successes weren’t flukes. Surely, they think, they can repeat past successes with entirely new products. Surely those successes weren’t just the product of the period of time that kind of innovation needed to happen. Right?

I don’t think any new product (or new product category) that we’re seeing lately is done with the goal of improving our lives. Instead, it’s done out of sheer hubris. I cannot and will not be convinced that the guy who pushed for a $17,000 gold watch has absolutely any idea how to enrich my life.

A lot of people respect Jony Ive and admire him for the legacy he left behind at Apple, which is why a lot of Apple fans are falling for this in a way they initially fell for Humane—even if they won’t admit they did, I saw them do it. Jony lends that credibility to someone without any. It’s awful to see Sam Altman spend six and a half billion dollars to buy Jony’s credibility. It’s worse to see Jony sell his credibility.

Do not mistake these men as anything but a couple of rich dudes who are remarkably unrelatable. They are too far removed to understand what anyone else’s life is like. And that’s what makes them awful candidates to create anything for everyone else.

I’m not curious to see what they make. I’m not excited about the potential of it. There is no third primary device. There’s no reason to believe that it could exist. There is no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I’ve seen this all before. Too many times. And so have you.