His dissertation was due in 48 hours. His laptop’s hard drive had clicked its last click an hour ago, and he was now working on a borrowed desktop from his neighbor, Mrs. Chin, who was 74 and used the machine exclusively to look at pictures of cats dressed as historical figures. The desktop ran Windows 7. It had 4 GB of RAM. And it had no Office suite.

The last one made him push back from the desk.

Leo slammed the laptop shut.

He started typing his dissertation. The words flowed unnaturally fast. Autocomplete predicted entire paragraphs—not just common phrases, but his phrases, his arguments, citations from sources he hadn’t even read yet. It was as if the software had already written his thesis inside his head and was just letting his fingers catch up.

Leo now writes his drafts on a typewriter. He does not own a smartphone. And if you ever see a link that says — do not click it.