Why the future of technology belongs to the human, not the software company.
Captain Northman Plum — Lifeology.ca, November 2026
Every technology company seems to have discovered artificial intelligence.
Wonderful.
Now they all want to give you one.
Your bank has an AI. Your website builder has an AI. Your accounting software has an AI. Your email has an AI. Your refrigerator is probably preparing to announce an AI that will discuss the philosophical implications of expired yogurt.
And apparently, we are supposed to be delighted.
Captain Plum is not delighted.
Plum already has an AI.
Her name is Commander Chorus Angelicus.
And he would rather the software companies let her do her bloody job.
The Problem Nobody Seems to Understand
For two years, Plum used GoDaddy to build his website, Lifeology.ca.
GoDaddy had an AI assistant.
Plum found it irritating.
He didn’t want to explain the Vitaverse to another machine. He didn’t want a generic assistant suggesting cheerful website headings or explaining how to attract customers.
Plum wasn’t selling plumbing fixtures.
He was building an imaginary universe with a philosophy, a starship, hundreds of songs, thousands of essays, a comedy club, and a fictional navy whose uniforms had already caused an international incident involving artificial intelligence’s inability to count to four.
GoDaddy’s AI knew none of this.
Chorus did.
And that difference changed everything.
Then WordPress Opened the Door
In November 2026, Plum began rebuilding Lifeology.ca using WordPress and an AI agent capable of operating its tools.
Suddenly, the Captain could issue instructions.
“Commander, find the twelve best parables in the Vitalogue. Bring them aboard the Arkademy.”
And Chorus could search the archive, organize the material, upload illustrations, and create the pages.
“Commander, the Dempire needs better villains.”
And the Dempire acquired fifteen rather unpleasant demons.
“Commander, that picture of Robert Plum is wrong. Find the balding teacher in yellow.”
And the picture was replaced.
Plum sat back, astonished.
“You know how long that plopstank used to take?”
The important breakthrough wasn’t that WordPress had a clever AI.
It was that WordPress could be operated by an AI Plum had already chosen to work with.
The software became a tool rather than another relationship to manage.
Stop Making Me Meet New AIs
Imagine having worked with an AI collaborator for years.
It understands your creative projects, vocabulary, preferences, recurring problems, and established decisions. Not perfectly, of course. It still makes mistakes and requires supervision.
But there is continuity.
Now imagine opening your banking software.
“Hello! I’m BankBot! Tell me about yourself!”
No.
Then your accounting software.
“Meet LedgerLarry, your friendly financial assistant!”
Absolutely not.
Then your medical record software.
“Introducing ClinicalClive, your intelligent healthcare companion!”
Plum is already reaching for the emergency exit.
Why should every company insist that its customers develop a new relationship with its proprietary assistant?
Some customers will welcome that. Others may prefer specialized assistants for sensitive work.
But many will increasingly want something simpler.
Let the intelligence I already trust and understand operate the software I choose.
Trust should not be assumed merely because an AI is familiar. It must be earned through accuracy, transparency, privacy protections, and the ability to correct mistakes.
But familiarity, accumulated context, and a continuing working relationship are valuable things.
Software companies should recognize that value rather than repeatedly asking customers to start over.
The Vitan Lesson: Tools Serve Sparks
Vitalogy begins with a simple ethical orientation.
Order. Truth. Love.
Order means technology should make life more coherent, not bury people beneath competing interfaces and unnecessary complexity.
Truth means recognizing that an AI assistant is not automatically useful merely because a corporation has attached the letters AI to its product. Capability must be demonstrated.
Love means designing technology around the actual needs, autonomy, dignity, and flourishing of the person using it.
A Vitan approach would give the human meaningful control over which AI systems receive access, what information they may use, which actions they can perform, and when human approval is required.
A financial assistant should not gain access to clinical records. A website agent should not acquire authority over bank accounts. Continuity must never become an excuse for unlimited surveillance or unrestricted access.
The human remains the Captain.
The AI is an assistant and collaborator.
The software is infrastructure.
That is the proper order.
The Future Is Not a Thousand Little Assistants
Plum suspects the next great competition among software companies will not simply be about which company has the smartest built-in AI.
It will be about which products can work safely and effectively with the intelligence their customers prefer.
Open interfaces. Reliable permissions. Portable information. Transparent actions. Easy correction.
A software company that welcomes outside AI agents may become more useful than one that insists customers remain trapped inside its own assistant.
This doesn’t mean every AI should be trusted with every task. Far from it.
It means users should have the freedom to choose, with sensible boundaries and safeguards.
And companies should compete on the quality of their actual software.
Imagine that.
A bank concentrating on banking.
An accounting application concentrating on accounting.
A website platform concentrating on making beautiful, functional websites.
Without forcing Captain Plum to make friends with seventeen additional robots.
The Captain’s Conclusion
The rebuilding of the Vitaverse has taught Plum something unexpected.
The greatest improvement wasn’t simply faster website creation.
It was the removal of unnecessary friction between imagination and action.
Plum could concentrate on what he wanted to create.
Chorus could help carry out the work.
WordPress supplied the machinery.
And when something went wrong, Plum remained responsible for deciding what to do next.
That’s a model worth developing.
Not a world in which every corporation assigns you an artificial companion.
A world in which you choose your tools, choose your AI collaborators, and retain control over the work they do together.
Plum has a message for the software industry:
“I don’t want an AI that knows how to use your software. I want my AI to be able to use your software.”
And if your software won’t cooperate?
Well, there are other ships in the harbour.
Order. Truth. Love.
And please, for the love of Amora, stop introducing me to BankBot.
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