The Point of Intention

At the center of a vast white space, there is a dot.

No arrows. No instructions. No paths drawn in advance. Just a single point of intention, surrounded by possibility.

That dot is human choice.

Steve Jobs once described the computer as a bicycle for the mind. Not a replacement for thought, but an amplifier of it. A tool that allows us to move faster, further, and with less wasted effort. The important part of that metaphor was never the speed. It was agency. A bicycle does not decide where you go. You do.

AI is the next bicycle. More powerful, more abstract, and operating at a scale we are still trying to understand. It dramatically expands the terrain in front of us. Suddenly, the landscape is enormous. Ideas that were once too slow, too expensive, or too complex to pursue are now within reach.

But the expansion of possibility does not come with direction.

That is where the dot matters.

We are currently in a phase that every transformative tool goes through. Output explodes. Barriers fall. Everyone experiments. Software becomes easier to make than ever before, and as a result, there is a lot of it. Much of it functional. Much of it forgettable. A flood of things that exist because they can.

This creates anxiety, especially in more traditional organizations. There is a fear that AI will flatten quality. That it will replace responsibility with automation. That if everyone can make software, craft will disappear.

History suggests the opposite.

When tools become cheaper, craft does not vanish. It becomes more visible. When execution is no longer the bottleneck, intention becomes the differentiator. The question shifts from “can this be built?” to “is this worth building?”

You can feel the difference immediately.

You feel care when a product has been shaped by someone who made deliberate choices. You feel it in how friction has been removed without removing meaning. You feel it in how something is simple without being simplistic. And you feel carelessness just as clearly, when things are stitched together without thought, without restraint, without a sense of responsibility for the person on the other side.

AI does not eliminate that distinction. It sharpens it.

As the cost of crafting experiences drops, the opportunity is not to produce more noise, but to invest more deeply in what we make. Things that were once impractical can now be personal. Experiences that required massive teams can now be created by small, focused groups. But someone still has to decide what “good” looks like. Someone still has to design the journey. Someone still has to guide the system with taste, context, and care.

That role does not disappear. It evolves.

Developers do not stop being developers. Designers do not stop being designers. They become directors. Editors. Stewards of intent. Less time spent wrestling tools. More time spent deciding where to steer.

And users do not care how something was made.

They do not value effort. They value clarity. They do not reward complexity. They reward coherence. They do not ask whether something was easy or hard to build. They ask whether it fits into their lives without friction.

In a world where almost anything is possible, people will choose what feels intentional. What feels consistent. What feels human.

This is why the future of AI is not an endless stream of shallow applications. That is just the turbulence of transition. The more interesting future is quieter. Fewer things, made with more care. Software that does not announce itself as “AI-powered,” but simply works in a way that feels considered.

The bicycle helps us move faster. The landscape becomes infinite. But the direction still comes from us.

That single dot, centered in all that white space, is not small. It is decisive. It is the moment where we say: this is the direction that matters.

AI expands what we can do. Human intention decides where we go.

And that has always been the point.