Phillip Kemp The Human Paper Manifesto · Ten principles The Human Paper
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The manifesto · Ten principles

We are still human.

A public position on technology and human life, in ten principles.

Ten principles · 10 min read · Updated 31 October 2026

In this edition

The position

We believe we are standing at a turning point in human history.

For decades, technology has demanded more of us. More attention. More screen time. More engagement. More data. More passwords, platforms, notifications and subscriptions.

We built an economy around capturing human attention and turning it into a commodity.

Our time became inventory. Our behaviour became data. Our personal lives became business models.

We became increasingly connected, yet increasingly distracted. We built tools to save time and somehow ended up spending more of it managing them.

We believe that can change.

Artificial intelligence, distributed systems and the technologies emerging around them give us an extraordinary opportunity to rethink the relationship between people and machines.

For the first time, we have the potential to build technology that takes more from the world's complexity and demands less from the people living in it.

We believe this is the beginning of a different era.

An era where technology moves into the background, where intelligence works quietly and where humanity gets to move forward.

This is why We Are Still Human exists.

The ten principles

The argument, in ten articles.

01 #

The human must remain sovereign

We believe technology should extend human capability, never diminish human agency.

Your identity belongs to you. Your decisions belong to you. Your personal information, relationships, beliefs and right to determine the direction of your life should remain yours.

We do not believe that technological intelligence creates a right to authority.

A machine may calculate faster, process more information or perform increasingly complex tasks. That does not make it the owner of the decisions it influences or the lives it affects.

We want systems that can act, adapt, learn and operate independently within boundaries established by people.

Autonomy is a capability. Authority is a responsibility.

We want increasingly capable machines without surrendering human sovereignty.

02 #

Technology should disappear

We believe in the vision of Mark Weiser, whose work on ubiquitous computing described a future where technology becomes so integrated into everyday life that it recedes from our attention.

The most profound technologies are those that disappear.

We believe that principle should guide the next generation of computing.

Technology should not demand our constant attention. We should not have to navigate endless interfaces, manage complicated systems or supervise every process to receive the benefits of intelligence.

A farmer should be able to concentrate on farming.

A doctor should be able to concentrate on patients.

A business owner should be able to build a business.

A parent should be able to be present with their children.

The technology should handle the complexity.

We want voice, intelligence, automation and computing to become natural extensions of everyday life. Interfaces should become less intrusive. Systems should work together. The experience should feel increasingly effortless.

The ultimate measure of technological progress should not be how much technology people use.

It should be how much more they can do without thinking about it.

03 #

The return of human time

We believe this generation has an opportunity to end the era of attention extraction.

For years, some of the world's most successful technology businesses have depended on keeping people engaged for as long as possible.

Every notification, feed, recommendation and interaction competes for a finite resource: human attention.

We question an economic model that profits from consuming the very time technology was supposed to save.

We believe your attention belongs to you.

Your evenings should belong to your family. Your weekends should belong to the people you love. Your curiosity should have room to wander. Your mind should have space to think without being constantly interrupted.

We want more time outdoors. More conversations around tables. More time creating, exploring, building and learning. More time with friends, children and partners. More room for faith, values, purpose and the things that give life meaning.

We want people to have the freedom to be present.

Artificial intelligence gives us an opportunity to remove enormous amounts of administrative, repetitive and unnecessary work.

Let machines manage complexity. Let systems coordinate. Let intelligence handle the heavy lifting.

Let people live.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of artificial intelligence will not be making machines more human.

Perhaps it will be giving humans more opportunity to be human.

04 #

Safe AI, not unquestioned intelligence

We are not anti-AI.

We believe artificial intelligence could become one of humanity's most important inventions.

But capability without security, accountability and control is not progress worth celebrating.

We want AI that is safe, secure, private, dependable and affordable.

We want systems that can operate autonomously, complete tasks, coordinate with other systems and improve over time without requiring people to constantly babysit them.

We want AI that can be trusted with meaningful responsibility because it has been built with appropriate boundaries, transparency and accountability.

We believe trust must be earned through engineering.

Security must exist by design. Privacy must be respected by default. Human oversight must be meaningful. Decisions with serious consequences must remain accountable to people.

We do not want a future where people become servants to increasingly complicated intelligent systems.

We want systems that serve people.

Autonomous in operation. Subordinate in authority.

This is what we mean by Safe AI.

Not intelligence without limits, but intelligence developed and deployed in ways that protect the people it is meant to empower.

05 #

Open technology creates opportunity

We believe the future should not belong exclusively to the institutions that can afford to build it.

For too long, technological capability has been concentrated in organisations with enormous resources, infrastructure and control over proprietary systems.

Artificial intelligence presents an opportunity to redistribute that capability.

Open source is central to this belief.

We support open technologies, accessible infrastructure, interoperability, transparent development and the freedom to inspect, modify and build upon the tools that shape our world.

We believe decentralisation has an important role to play.

Distributed infrastructure, cryptographic verification, blockchain and new forms of digital ownership may help create systems where trust does not depend entirely on a central institution.

We want people to have meaningful ownership and control over their digital lives.

We want independent builders, small businesses, communities and individuals to have access to capabilities once reserved for the largest organisations.

We will not worship a particular technology or architecture. Open source, blockchain, distributed computing and whatever emerges next are means to an end.

The principle is bigger:

Power should be distributed. Opportunity should be accessible. People should have choices.

An adult's ringed hand is held by a small child's hand in bright sunlight.
Photograph — Rene Terp / Pexels
06 #

Privacy is freedom

We believe privacy is fundamental to human independence.

A person's life should not become an open resource simply because technology makes it possible to collect, analyse and store information.

Your conversations are not automatically somebody else's asset.

Your memories are not a commodity.

Your identity should not be a profile owned by a platform.

Your personal information should not be exchanged without meaningful understanding and consent.

We believe people should know what information systems collect, how it is used, where it goes and who has access to it.

We support local-first computing, user-owned data, secure infrastructure and systems that minimise unnecessary collection.

We believe people should be able to use intelligent technology without having to surrender their privacy as the admission fee.

Trust cannot be demanded. It must be deserved.

07 #

Reality and identity must remain human

We are entering a period where digital representations of people, events and experiences can be generated, modified and manipulated at extraordinary scale.

Voices can be replicated. Faces can be simulated. Conversations can be fabricated. Digital personalities can be constructed.

The distinction between authentic and artificial will become increasingly difficult to navigate.

We believe identity deserves protection.

We believe authenticity matters.

We believe truth requires discipline, evidence and a willingness to question what we see.

We will examine the technologies and incentives shaping how people understand reality.

We will challenge manipulation without becoming conspiratorial. We will question institutions without abandoning evidence. We will defend the ability of people to think independently.

The more convincing artificial representations become, the more important human trust becomes.

Technology should help us understand the world, not make the world impossible to trust.

08 #

Work should become more human

We believe the next technological revolution should fundamentally change how people work.

Artificial intelligence can give individuals and small organisations access to extraordinary capabilities.

A single person can increasingly do work that once required entire departments.

A small business can operate with capabilities previously reserved for corporations.

An independent creator can reach audiences and produce work that once required significant infrastructure.

We see enormous opportunity in this.

But productivity should not simply become an excuse to demand more output from people.

If technology makes us more efficient, we should ask what that efficiency gives back.

More time. More independence. More creative freedom. More opportunity. Better work and a better life.

We will challenge systems that treat human beings as disposable components in an efficiency equation.

We will also embrace the transformation of outdated work and business models.

We are not interested in preserving unnecessary friction simply because it has existed for decades.

We want people to spend less time doing what machines can do and more time doing what people do best.

09 #

Progress must remain accessible

We believe technological progress should not be reserved for wealthy countries, large corporations or technically sophisticated individuals.

Intelligence should become more affordable.

Infrastructure should become more accessible.

Tools should become easier to use.

Knowledge should become easier to reach.

A person should not need a massive budget, an engineering department or a sophisticated understanding of technology to benefit from the opportunities ahead.

We believe in lowering barriers.

We want to see independent builders creating meaningful things. Communities solving their own problems. Entrepreneurs building businesses with fewer resources. People gaining access to knowledge and capability that previously sat beyond their reach.

The next generation of technology should expand participation in the world, not create new divisions between those who control it and those who depend on it.

10 #

We are builders, not spectators

We will not sit on the sidelines commenting on the future.

We believe in building.

We will experiment with emerging technologies, challenge established thinking, investigate new possibilities and create alternatives where existing systems fail people.

We will celebrate innovation while questioning its consequences.

We will examine businesses, governments, platforms and technologies wherever their decisions affect human independence.

We will not become an anti-AI movement.

We will not turn technological uncertainty into conspiracy.

We will not confuse blockchain with the entirety of decentralisation, nor open source with an automatic guarantee of security.

We will not become commentators who mistake criticism for contribution.

We are interested in what can be built, what can be improved and what should exist but does not yet exist.

We will remain curious, sceptical, practical and willing to change our minds when the evidence demands it.

Our allegiance is not to a company, a platform, a particular model or a technological movement.

Our allegiance is to the human being.

THE FUTURE WE BELIEVE IN

Imagine a world where your technology knows when to get out of the way.

Where your business operates without consuming your entire life.

Where your information remains yours.

Where intelligent systems handle the work that once occupied your days.

Where you can trust the technology around you without having to understand every mechanism beneath it.

Where innovation is accessible to the individual, not just the institution.

Where children grow up with extraordinary technology but understand that life happens beyond a screen.

Where people have more time to spend with the people they love.

Where progress is measured by the opportunities it creates, the burdens it removes and the freedom it returns.

A world where technology becomes increasingly capable while becoming increasingly invisible.

This is not a rejection of the future.

It is a different vision of it.

We believe humanity is entering a period where we can finally begin to move beyond the limitations of the tools we have built.

We should use this opportunity wisely.

We should build systems worthy of trust. We should distribute capability. We should protect privacy. We should defend individual agency. We should create technology that serves life rather than competes with it.

And we should never lose sight of why we started building any of this in the first place.

Because the point was never to spend our lives interacting with machines.

The point was to make more room for life itself.

We Are Still Human.

Technology should disappear. Humanity should flourish.