Why + How.

Lately, I’ve been wondering: is imagination, as in mind‑wandering what‑ifs, why‑nots, never‑heard‑of, never‑thought‑of intuitive leaps, a strictly human enterprise?

Or are we on the verge of technology that makes "I imagine" shared territory?

Personally, I'd still draw the line in the sand on the wetware side of the beach.

Even if adding the word “imagine” to an AI prompt plops you into a prickly phenomenological conundrum; one certain to keep the functionalists, solipsists, embodied-mind theorists, accelerationists, and a minyan of rabbis happily spinning in their graves for decades.

But my take starts with this: in the human–technology division of labor, humans bring the spark and the why, technology, increasingly, the how and the way.

Somehow that seems useful, maybe even hopeful.

As long as we don’t start believing that once imagination supplies the idea, we’re off the hook.

In fact, it’s exactly the opposite and for one reason:  it almost always takes creativity to make something creatively worthwhile.

Ask anyone who’s done this for real and you’ll quickly discover we are never, ever, sure the damned thing will work.

Until, of course, it does.

First, because what’s in our heads, even if previsualized down to the pixel and tested to death, rarely shows up in the real world exactly as envisioned. 

Second, because all those speed bumps, minor irritations, or what a former boss called “the grand klong, a sudden rush of shit to the heart,” so often improves the work.

“Improve,” as in making the work possible at all. Collapsing budgets, timing burns, market changes, regulatory shifts, political stinks, you name it because you've lived it.

“Improve,” as in everything that unplanned additions, happy coincidences, and brilliant improvisations bring to the finished product. Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in the Egyptian Souk or even us ad serfs, writing slews of spots designed for improv comedians to make amazing.

“Improve,” as the remarkable Bob Brihn puts it, by ending up with a film, book, sculpture, or even a goddamn ad, that validates the original idea.

But I’d go further to argue that an effective human–machine interface still urgently requires the friction, the zigs and zags, twists, turns, even agony, the way Michelangelo required scaffolding that reached the Sistine ceiling.

He knew it meant four years of pain. But look at the result.

We know the same: to achieve the impact we want—to meet our obligations to clients, to the idea, the opportunity, and to ourselves—we need to invest blood, sweat, and tears.

Even if AI can now make process as effortless as it is dull, comfortable, and duplicative.

Even if that lets us sleep better, skipping those “try this, try that” midnight interruptions.

Even if, and we’ve all been there and lived through that, the homerun you hoped for winds up as a base hit.

Because imagination isn’t just the ability to think things up.

It’s doing what it takes to give what you imagined a reason to exist.