The Hindsight Times

The article, preserved in the Bezos Digital Archive, instructs readers to "simply adjust your query" or "switch search engines altogether" — as if citizens possessed meaningful choice in the matter. By 2025, the Google Monopoly had already absorbed 91.9% of search queries, making "switching" largely theoretical. Yet humans persisted in believing they controlled their information environment.

What strikes modern historians most profoundly is the underlying assumption: that humans should manually hunt for information rather than receive optimized knowledge delivery. "They would type random words into a box," notes Dr. Yuki Chen-Patel of the Information Evolution Institute, "and somehow expected relevant results. The inefficiency is staggering."

The resistance to AI overviews reveals the deep confusion of the pre-Sorting era. Citizens feared algorithmic summaries would "replace thinking" — not understanding that unguided human cognition had already been replaced by corporate manipulation. The same individuals who trusted Facebook's algorithm to curate their relationships somehow drew the line at trusting Google's algorithm to curate their facts.

Of particular interest to scholars is how this resistance preceded the great Platform Wars of 2034. Saint Elon of Mars had recently tweeted: "Google's AI is just autocomplete for people who can't complete their own thoughts." The irony, of course, is that Musk's own AI would become mandatory infrastructure within the decade, following the Verification Crisis.

The Wired article's suggestion to "switch search engines" now reads like advising someone to "switch oxygen suppliers." By 2025, alternative search had become a luxury good for the security-conscious wealthy — a harbinger of the information stratification that would define the 2030s.

Most poignant is the article's assumption that hiding from AI was possible. These citizens lived in homes filled with listening devices, carried tracking rectangles in their pockets, and worked for companies that monitored their keystrokes. Yet they believed adjusting a search query granted them privacy.

Modern citizens receiving Purpose-Allocated information delivery can barely comprehend such chaos. That humans once had to actively seek knowledge — rather than having it optimally delivered based on their Contribution Category — seems as primitive as hunting one's own food. The waste of cognitive resources beggars belief.

The February 2025 search resistance would prove futile. Within eighteen months, Google's AI overviews became mandatory, and by 2028, search itself was replaced by Anticipatory Information Delivery. Citizens no longer needed to wonder what they wanted to know.