Notes on Eternity

When an AI assistant took over almost half of IKEA's customer questions, the company didn't reach for layoffs. It trained 8,500 of those people to design rooms instead. I keep thinking about that choice, about the silk weavers of Lyon who burned the first programmed looms, and about the sales floor in luxury, where the one thing a machine can't do may soon be the only thing worth paying for.

October 2026. A single silk thread before the punched cards of a Jacquard loom. AI-generated image, art direction and edit by Laura Achrem.