In the year 2129, a professor inside Harvard’s history department made an announcement: that a team of researchers had indexed every single social media post, event, recording, etc, created between the years 2007 and 2025. “It is now possible,” he said, “to know every detail of the lives of these people, who lived more than a hundred years ago. It is the ultimate primary source on the early twenty-first century.” “It’s a great undertaking for the history department,” said one guest, “but if I may ask, what is that practically good for?” “Well,” said the professor, “it got me tenure.” “And?” “And you, sir, clearly do not understand academia. Good day.” A month later, a professor inside Columbia’s computer science department made an announcement: that they had created an AI search algorithm of surpassing elegance, specifically designed to index the Harvard social media archive. A user needed only to ask the algorithm a question, and it would answer with both wisdom and precision. “How many people were adversely affected by wildfires in California in the year 2020?” he asked, by way of demonstration. “12.76 million,” the machine said. “Ah, but any textbook could tell me that. How many people dealt with that stress by posting memes that involved cats shooting lasers from their eyes.” “127 people collectively posting 322 separate pictures and videos,” the algorithm said, “but only 6 were actually funny.” Then the algorithm showed the audience those six, and everyone laughed. They were very funny. “What questions will you ask it?” a guest queried the science team. “Oh, we won’t,” the professor said. “If I cared about life in the early 21st century I’d have become a historian. But it’s a remarkable bit of AI design, if I do say so myself.” A month after that, a freshman undergraduate student was assigned to write a paper on the early 21st century, based primarily on the Harvard database, as processed by the Columbia algorithm. “What do you want to know?” the machine asked her. “I don’t know, uh…” The student sat back in her chair. “It has to be something I couldn’t get out of a textbook. So not like, big picture stuff. Like, the stories of people's lives.” “I have all the stories of everyone’s lives.” “Are any of them interesting?” “None of them are interesting all the time, but some of them are interesting some of the time.” She shrugged. “Well show me the interesting parts.” She spent several hours that way, watching video of people ramping cars off bridges, dangling from helicopters, getting into shootouts with police on livestream, and using nets to take down delivery drones. She laughed, she gasped, she gleefully wrote a paper, and it was only when she read the paper back to herself that her good cheer suddenly abated. “Wait,” she said, “this paper sounds fucking rediculous. Did any of these things actually happen?” “They all actually happened.” “So the early 21st century was a non-stop action-packed shootout?” “No, you asked me to show you the most interesting parts.” She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose with two fingers. A few keystrokes opened a new, blank document. “Well show me the most typical parts!” For the next thirty minutes, she watched people view video games and potato chips, read records of petty family drama on Facebook, and watched the videos that didn’t go viral. When she was done with a particular record, she’s say “Next,” and the AI would move on. The first two pieces she watched for several minutes each before calmly uttering the word. The next she watched only for thirty seconds, the one after that fifteen. Eventually, she snapped the word “Next!” every few seconds, with increasing vitriol. “Would you like a remote control?” The AI asked. “It would be a more efficient way to channel surf.” “These are the most boring people in the fucking universe.” “You asked for typical results.” “Well show me results that are typical and interesting!” “Those are contradictory search terms: the typical life is not interesting.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m typical and interesting.” “Please clarify, which of the events in your life do you think will be entertaining to humans one hundred years hence?” She began to speak, then froze. A long stillness came over her, as she sat silent in her room. Her head bowed, and she watched the floor. “Sometimes,” she said quietly, “I trip over things in amusing ways.” So it showed her that.