The Human Trace

Two years ago, I vibe coded my first iOS app and shipped it to the App Store. I know nothing about Swift or iOS development.

That was the time building a software app was a big deal. I talked about it, told my friends and people reacted well too. But it didn’t solve a big problem for them so they didn't use it.

I have been a side project guy since college and I'm always building something on the side but most of these projects were actually solving the problems that I personally had. What seemed to me like a deep-cutting pain could be just a mild inconvenience to most people.

AI gave me a way to finally try out everything and be done with it.

Since I built that first app on the App Store, I’ve built countless things - web apps, Google Chrome extensions, Figma plugins, Mac apps, iOS apps. By nature, my needs are very specific especially in software. And whenever I felt I needed something my way, I would create it for me. Whenever I felt a software had too many features and I needed a simpler one, I created it. Whenever a commodity software existed but was paid, I created it.

I never shared them publicly for two reasons:

• They were never finished to my standards and to make them available for the public, I would have to do some more work, which I never did because for me it did the thing I needed it to do.
• I believed nobody would care because the problems they were solving were too narrow and maybe 15 people in the whole wide world would care - the apps themselves would never make any money.

But here's the thing - I wasn't the only monkey who got a hammer and thought everything needed pounding. I found there are countless people who are building such tools for every idea they come across. Building a software had never been cheaper and it changed something fundamentally in me. I stopped being too enthusiastic about my own app ideas and started treating them as something that you could make whenever you need.

I think, and I'm being intentionally bold here, that we're already living in the world of hyper-personalization. Software-creation alone is no longer the value. Creating automation is no longer the value. AI is increasingly enabling people to build their own software and their own automations. Your one-size-fits-all app or automation will not appeal to your customers soon. People want hyper-personalized solutions for them, every customer - individually. And why not, everyone has different needs.

Let me give you the example of yesterday. I wanted to compare a few websites side by side. So I used a Google Chrome extension to take full-page screenshots of those websites and tried to put them in Figma for side-by-side comparison. But I found out that Figma compresses large images so much that they get too blurry and I can't see the details.

I searched for Google Chrome extensions that allowed me to break the full-page screenshot into smaller parts but nothing existed as per my exact needs. So I created a Google Chrome extension in just two prompts.

And this happens at least once a week. I don't find something as per my needs, I create it.

In fact, I imagine a future where software apps are not even needed. The devices themselves would run on AI and all interface would be hyper-personalized and created on-demand. I wouldn't have to create a Google Chrome extension to take screenshots my way and then drop them into Figma to compare side by side. I would have just asked the device, it would create an interface in real-time in order for me to compare the webpages side by side, no Figma, no extension.

Now the biggest question it raises is: if software and automation become commoditized, then what stays relevant for people like me, for designers, artists, creators?

There could be hundreds of answers to this but I think what remains for us humans is the human identity.

Let me explain what I mean. We humans are basically souls living in primitive bodies that were built for very different environments. Our triggers, motivations, aspirations, and values are still driven by the same forces that created them during our evolution into Homo sapiens.

That's exactly what explains when people pay for being around people, when they pay for experiences, for connecting, making them feel good, or making them feel valued.

The need to connect with people, be part of a larger group, will always be there. When people use a sticker on their laptop, they are actually making themselves feel they belong to a community. People pay 10x for the same object from a brand, while they could get it cheaper from another maker. Same reason - they are making themselves feel they belong to a group of people with that taste. They are doing it for the people, not for the abstract brand.

If making something useful becomes almost free, usefulness itself becomes less scarce. And when usefulness is abundant, we start paying for things for reasons that have very little to do with utility.

Maybe what I’m describing is an imaginary scenario of a dystopian future but imagine a future when you don’t have to work for survival. You don’t have to pay for food, rent, information, connectivity, entertainment, medical expenses, etc. And you’re still getting a monthly income. What would you spend it on? I imagine spending it on the following:

Personalization, belonging, hobbies, inspiration, expression, taste, creation, and getting attention from other humans I call my people.

What it means for today’s artists, designers, and creators is that your identity or your signature is important. Even if you’re an extreme introvert who hides into their shell by just the sound of other people, you still want to belong somewhere. And that doesn’t have to be by loud presence. Your style of expression leaves a mark of you - your writing, art, any kind of creation. When people interact with that, you feel fulfilled.

And that’s true the other way round too. AI can and will generate perfect artworks. Maybe it will generate something as great as a symphony or the Mona Lisa but people will find more value in less perfect things created by humans because in a world of abundant AI artifacts, humans will value human work not for the work but for the human. Because humans have stories, they have a past, a present, and a future. You hate some things they did, you love other things about them. For a singer like Arijit - it’s not just his voice or the way he sings. It’s also his personality, the events that make up his life, his choices that I care about, and many other nuances that make me follow him.

AI creation can be better than human creation on the objective feature-by-feature comparison but if there’s no human life behind that, people will not find the connection.

So my conclusion so far is that in order to be timelessly relevant - create with your human identity, do not submit to making a commodity that has no trace of you.

I’m trying to do the same with InkJar. Hope you find yours soon if you haven’t found that already.