A FRAMEWORK FOR RESEARCHERS AND LEADERS
October 20, 2026 | Josh LaMarThe Cracked Mirror
What AI reflects about us, and what it can’t.
holding a mirror
up to humanity
We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. The web, mobile and social media revolutions each taught us a lesson about people and technology… yet, we didn’t learn.
Now we’re looking back at ourselves through a new AI-mirror: AI reflects back to us our data, our words, our assumptions… but it’s cracked.
The Cracked Mirror puts these two mirrors side by side. Each lesson from the past, and the crack that repeats it, becomes a path for reflection: one for the technology we build, and one for ourselves and the role we play.
When we finally start learning from the past, we can stop repeating it. This how we get there.
“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”
three lesons we didn't learn
Lesson 1: SCALE
The Web (1995-2001)
Understand the human before you scale.
In the dot-com boom, companies raised millions to build for everyone before they understood anyone. Boo.com spent about $135 million in 18 months on a fashion site so heavy that dial-up visitors waited minutes to load a single page.
When the bubble burst, the survivors were the companies that were solving a real human problem. AI tempts us to skip the same step.
The question: What’s the human problem we’re solving?
Lesson 2: MESSAGE
Mobile (2007-2014)
The message matters more than the medium.
When the iPhone arrived, every company needed an app. Many shrank their website onto a phone and called it strategy.
About a quarter of the apps people downloaded in 2010 were only used once.
The winners of the App rebuilt it around what people needed while on-the-go.
Today, “AI-powered” is the new “There’s an app for that.”
The question: Would this still matter without “AI” in the pitch?
Lesson 3: SIGNAL
Social Media (2004-2010s)
Don’t mistake the noise for the signal.
The warnings about social media came early, and they came from inside. In 2013, Tristan Harris, then a product manager at Google, circulated a deck about respecting users’ attention.
A decade later, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on social media and youth mental health. Growth metrics were the noise. The warnings were the signal.
The question: What feedback are we choosing to dismiss?
Download the
One-Page Framework
asdf
Read the
Full Article
asdf
About Josh
Josh LaMar is CEO of Amplinate, where he advises on product growth and AI decision strategy. Over 20 years, he has spent 40,000+ hours listening to customers across 19 countries on five continents. He lives in Paris, France.
More Frameworks
Subscribe on Substack
Follow Josh on LinkedIn
