In The End … There Will Only Be 1 App
I am aware that this sounds like a technological prophecy, but it touches on something deeper, namely, how consciousness encounters reality.
Ever since we learned to think, we have been simplifying interfaces. Language itself was the first “super app.” A single system that could represent hunger, love, mathematics, lies, and gods. Before language, every experience required its own sounds, its own gestures. Every tool we have created since then has been an attempt to achieve this unification. Money consolidated the infinite exchange rates of barter into a universal medium of exchange. Writing consolidated the need for memory into symbols. The internet consolidated distances.
If we imagine a final app, it would be the culmination of this ancient project: a single interface between intention and manifestation. Between thought and action. No friction, no translation, no gap between what you want and what you have. But here, I think, lies the philosophical trap: the “one app” would no longer be a tool. It would be an extension of consciousness itself. And at that point, the distinction between self and interface dissolves. You wouldn’t use the app; you would ultimately be the app. The medium and the message would merge completely.
Perhaps the most profound question is not whether we will arrive at a single app, but whether we will recognize the moment when we stop using tools and become them ourselves. When the last interface disappears, not because it has been perfected, but because there is no longer an “us” that is separate from it and uses it.
The end of all apps could be the beginning of something for which we don’t yet have words.
- Ray Kurzweil would surely call it “The Singularity of the Interface.”
This might be of interest:
You can read an excerpt from the book “Critical Thinking is Your Superpower” here:
