TIRE May 2038

What are the cues we use to determine humanity? Have we been cutting actual humans too much slack in this department? This work explores notions of identity and AI, but is solely the work of humans. For what is the difference between a human seeking a scripted outcome and a script seeking a human outcome? Also, it's pretty funny.



John Ira Thomas takes his metafictional TIRE series into the future and looks back at the same weird beliefs that continue to propel us. It's 2038 and John Ira Thomas is nowhere to be found. A new, legally-mandated issue of TIRE magazine must be written.



Corley Tire Company decides to farm the project out to AntiJITBot, an AI programmed with all of Thomas' writings. The result is an entire issue of a New Age magazine, right down to the classified ads.



Once again, this was written by actual humans. No mystery digits or nightmare palettes. It's just some good old-fashioned human fun with technological concepts that we're going to have to resolve.