Well, look.
An apple fell on Newton’s head and he came up with a theory that still explains why you don’t shoot off into space. Even when night falls and the Earth turns over.
Asking. Questioning. Contradicting himself.
I mean, sure, he was under that apple tree taking a nap. But he’d brought a lot more into that shade than those twenty minutes.
In the shade of that tree. Not at rest.
Shaking it.
Now we’ve got apples dropping into our laps every few seconds. Prompt and done.
More trees, more fruit, more theories, more insights, more productive naps. Quite literally, now that you can play four-handed.
The thing is, the AI picks the apple at its peak, the overripe one, the one with the worm, the one that’s too sour. Slaps a label on it and says:
—It’s ready. Take it home.
Best part is, sometimes the AI can’t tell an apple tree from a pear tree. A soursop tree from an orange tree.
Fruit. Fresh fruit. Get your fresh fruit here.
Theory ready to develop.
Yesterday I was talking to a colleague. His name’s Fernando. Though if you know him, you know that’s not the name he answers to.
Fernando’s been at this for thirty years. Thirty years working with foundations, banks, media, small brands, independent brands, niche ones, and all the ones that eventually ended up in a drawer.
Anyway, he’s afraid of how the board is being set up with this whole AI thing.
He also told me about one of the best pieces of advice he was ever given.
“It’s incredible. It’s too much.”
Well, what he actually said was:
“Too many pulls.”
He’d pitched an idea and there was too much in it. Too much subtext. Too many threads to pull. Too many meanings, too many open doors.
Twenty years old, all the drive in the world, and a pitch in London that changed his life. Not because they took him. Because of what they told him.
That advice made him understand something it takes years to learn how to do well:
select, categorize, prioritize, reduce, discard.
Fernando told me something else too.
Sometimes he has an idea. He stops. Develops it. Stretches it. Pulls twenty different versions out of it.
Some are garbage. Others, fresh cream.
And sometimes he goes back to the first one.
Aha.
Not because it was the first. He’s been through the other nineteen.
He’s looked at them. Stretched them. Pulled those threads. Seen how far they went.
And then he does something a lot less impressive.
He lets it cool.
Time.
To come back tomorrow. To find out that what looked like fresh cream last night tastes like expired yogurt in the morning.
Time to take a nap under the apple tree.
Because what we’ve got in front of us now is a tool that’s brilliant at doing the exact opposite.
More trees. More fruit. More associations. More paths. More possibilities.
You can develop the good one.
The bad one too.
And the one that occurred to you seven seconds ago and that, with the right prompt, can have a name, an argument, and a theory before you’ve decided whether it actually interests you.
Everything looks ripe when ripening costs nothing.
And maybe that’s part of the mess.
More trees. More fruit. More associations. More paths. More possibilities.
Get your fresh fruit here.
And Newton?
I don’t know.
I suppose he’s still stuck on that one apple.
One.
That one.
The one worth asking why it fell and didn’t shoot back up.
The one that tasted like a question.
The one that wasn’t fresh fruit for sale.
To one of my dearest friends, Fernando, and to all the Fernandos I’ve met and I’ll meet.
Maybe you’re not here to produce anymore. Maybe you’re here to show the machine, and people like me, how to stay.
Lines Aja
Brand Strategist & Verbal Identity Consultant — Las Musas
cultooruido.com