'The Dreamer'

Do you remember how Apple commercials were great at Christmas? One of my favorites is ‘Misunderstood’, released in 2013. In this ad, a teenager sits at the family table with his headphones on, thumb busy on his phone, while some members of his family think he would rather be somewhere else. Nobody says it out loud, but we, as spectators, think it too: he is bored of his family, and we begin to think something is wrong with that kid. Only at the end does the ad show what he has been doing all afternoon. His film plays on the television, and the whole family watches their own day, filmed by the boy they (and ‘we’) were judging. He was preparing a gift for all of them, and it lands as an emotional climax. The machine is in his hand from the first frame to the last, and you never once look at it. That was the promise: technology disappears behind what people do with it. Since the release of ChatGPT, the commercials have argued about the device instead, even at Apple. It was very common to…

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