At an event for financial technology in small businesses the phrase came up again and again in connection with AI: “Get on the train or get left at the station”. It’s interesting. We are also being told the train is out of control, that it’s destination is quite possibly the collapse of everything we love. That there is no turning back once we are on board. Why would anyone choose to get on that train?

Speaker after speaker pitched the major concerns for small businesses at this moment in time: Too much regulation, too much ‘uncertainty’, cybersecurity. The solution? More AI, more integration across digital systems. More efficiency.

I felt like we were being asked to join an arms race. I wondered if anyone shared my sense that the fastest growing source of frustration for small businesses is not ‘regulation’ but the enshittification of tech platforms and the bewildering demands of authentication and 16 digit passwords. Regarding ‘uncertainty’ (Trump, natural disasters, wars, inflation …), surely the best insurance against this is not ‘more efficiency’ but community building?

I think that we are meeting a ‘crisis of hyperscale’. Agriculture, datacenters, money, the climate … it is all hyperscaling too fast. We need to stop.

I thought of a great book I read recently, Fear of a Dead White Planet, that called for a change in metaphors. It’s not the out of control ‘bummer train’ we should be jumping on. It’s a ‘Space Canoe’, paddling through a landscape that is part of us and that we build together.

I think most people instinctively know this. I think that inviting people in businesses to build communities, to create spaces outside of the demands of technology, would be met with relief and enthusiasm.

I also think the opportunity is here. Spaces are being vacated by shops and offices. People are finding time and a hunger for connection. Maybe these empty office blocks and windblown high streets will be the places that we can pull up our space canoes and gather around the campfires?