When machines complete our actions, they start to shape our thinking. Recommendations become decisions, predictions become intentions. What we gain in convenience, we give up in agency.
The project explores the gap between comfort and control. While the promise of increased automation lies in greater convenience, the price we pay is a gradual loss of active control. As convenience grows, we steadily hand over our own agency to algorithms, blurring the line between simple assistance and digital paternalism.
We modified an electronic typewriter to make this tension tangible by equipping it with an invasive AI-powered autocomplete system. Every hesitation is treated as inefficiency. The moment the writer pauses, the algorithm takes over and the sentence is completed without the writer’s consent.
Without a delete key, every unwanted word is permanently pressed onto the paper, leaving behind a physical record of the moment control shifted from human to machine.
The typewriter was modified by intercepting the keyboard signals with a custom electronic circuit connected to a Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi analyzes and alters these signals before forwarding them to the typewriter’s CPU, allowing it to take control of the writing process. Autocomplete suggestions are generated by either a local large language model or, optionally, a server-hosted model.
Credits
Project realized tin collaboration with Janina Maulhardt (https://www.instagram.com/jan.iina) Thanks to guidance by Oliver Kartak, Jian Haake and Christian Schlager
