Software does more work than ever, yet we still spend much of our lives checking dashboards, reviewing exceptions, approving routine actions, and making sure automated systems did what they were supposed to do.
That is because automation and absorption are not the same thing.
Automation transfers execution. Absorption transfers attention.
An automated system performs the work but leaves us responsible for supervising it. An absorbed system handles the predictable parts of the world beneath ordinary consciousness and returns our attention only when something genuinely surprising requires human judgment.
Absorption: What Comes After Automation explores this distinction through smartphones, e-commerce, dashboards, the human subconscious, and artificial intelligence. It asks a more important question than what AI can automate:
What can human beings finally stop carrying?
The complete book is available as a free PDF below. It is formatted for comfortable screen reading and easy printing on ordinary home printers.
