Uncaptured — an interactive picture of what people are for when machines can do everything: out of the chores, into free time, and into the new reasons a civilisation acts on

UncapturedWhen machines can do everything, what are people for?

Each light is one person’s attention.

What this is

A picture of one hopeful idea about a world where machines can do almost anything.

Machines take the chores. People get free time. Free time is up for grabs: feeds and ads grab it today, and smarter machines could grab all of it. If it is left alone, people wander and poke at things. Most of it leads nowhere. Now and then someone comes back caring about something new. That is a new reason to do things, and the machines then build toward it. A smart enough machine would guard that free time, because nobody knows which small curiosity becomes the next big reason.

It is a picture, not a forecast. Nothing in it is measured; the numbers in the corner count what happens in the picture. In the story, one discovery is staged so you can see it. In free play it is chance: an encounter in the ground left alone comes to something about one time in five, elsewhere about one in seventeen. The person you follow is a little luckier, so their story fits in a minute. Tap any light to follow it.

Nothing is stored about you. What remains are counters: how many people came, how many reached the end or followed someone, how many shared it. They are public on the story page.

This is an experiment. It might be gone next month.

An experiment by Project Nothing — what this cost, and what happened