I Stopped Sitting at a Computer. Here’s What I Do Instead.

For three decades, “using a computer” meant arranging my body in front of one. Now the computer is a process I start with a sentence and check with a tap, from wherever I happen to be standing. The desk didn’t go away. The work left it.

The Thin Surface

There’s a physical change underneath the cognitive one. I no longer sit in front of a computer to work. I set the frame from a phone, on the move, and the execution happens somewhere I’m not.

The agent is becoming the computer. The old definition was a box you sat at — an app, on an operating system, on a chip, operated through a screen. The new definition: an agent is a brain (the model) plus a body (the harness) plus a runtime — wherever the work actually runs. The runtime is the part that matters, because by definition it isn’t your desk.

Two Acts Remain

What remains for the human collapses to two acts, and both are light enough for any device:

Neither needs a workstation. A phone does it now. The next surface won’t even be a phone — it’ll be some AI-native object closer to an always-on personal assistant than a PC. The screen shrinks because the work it used to hold moved off it.

The Bottom Line

I didn’t leave the desk on purpose. The work left, and I followed it. For three decades, “using a computer” meant sitting in front of one. Now it means setting a frame and clearing a gate — from wherever I happen to be standing. The strange part is how natural it feels.

Source: Business Engineer — My Life in the Harness