Minimum Viable Human

Have you noticed it? That underlying drudgery of expecting something to get done.

Something that perhaps has always been done within an expected amount of time, but now it's always late.

Now it takes longer than you expect, and in some cases it doesn't happen at all. Maybe I sound like a whiney first worlder who should just trek through Nepal to find myself, or maybe we're entering a period of minimum viable effort.

This week I booked a parcel to be shipped from Australia to the US. No need to mention the company, but the brand is well known within the global freight and logistics landscape. This week was the first time in 4 years I've used their service. The last time, BC. Before COVID. The user experience at every touch point of the brand was abysmal. Because I hadn't used my account since last decade I had to reset the password, which is to be expected. Email address is the same, so I just hit up the 'reset your password' button. Nothing. Try incognito. Nothing. Then I call them.

Hello sir. Do you have an account with us?

Yes..

Ok, but I can see it hasn't been used in a while. You'll need to register again, and then we can link your existing account number, to your new account.

Umm, ok. That sounds straight forward.

Yes. However it will take 24 to 48 hours for us to approve your account and for it to become active.

... But you're in the "we deliver your package overseas, tomorrow" business ... (I was thinking, while listening) ...

I'll leave it there, but I will share that I spent 3 hours total on the phone over two days. A day later a nice bloke showed up to my door and he knew what I had been through as I greeted him. Shaking my head at him, as a sign of disbelief.

My experience with this brand highlighted the extraordinary length that I had to go to in order to complete what use to be a simple transaction. Being disappointed is expected, but my disappointment became shock and awe. There was minimum viable effort with every click and call. This is just one experience - exacerbated - but one that quantifies an observation of our society post pandemic.

There's a slowdown. A self-induced malaise. A fogginess blanketing society. A COVID hangover where some of us invest the least amount of effort. It can wait, and if it doesn't happen at all how bad can it be? It might be three weeks late, when it use to be on-time. It's no longer available in that color. We only have green and orange. The wait time for white is 9 months. There's no option if you want to stay less than 3 nights, even though its just a weekend get away. We could meet next month, but my team probably won't come to the office. We don’t care.

Perhaps this is the moment in human history where we become self aware, and begin de-escalating ourselves from our twenty first century lives. Now that remote work is the norm, and generative AI is arriving at jet speed, is this the prototype before the production run? A time when systems we use to run humanity are disrupted and retired. An economy regenerated into one that AI runs with surgical precision. If machine intelligence does automate out the minimum human effort, replacing it with maximum product output, then maybe AI already has a title for us; Minimum Viable Human.