If you’re here, you’ve probably noticed something already:
as technology takes on more tasks, humans are doing less of the deciding — or at least, less of it visibly.
That shift tends to get framed as progress. Efficiency. Optimisation. Relief.
But it also raises a quieter question we don’t ask often enough: what are we choosing not to do anymore — and what happens when we stop noticing?
Human Still Required exists because I don’t think judgement, responsibility, and sense-making are things we should be casually handing over. Not because technology is “bad”, but because those human roles matter — and once they fade into the background, they’re hard to recover.
I’ve spent close to 30 years working around technology in different forms. Long enough to see how often tools promise to remove effort, and how often that effort simply reappears somewhere else — usually in ways that are harder to see and harder to question.
This publication is where I think about that out loud.
I write about how people and technology actually live together: where human judgement still does the real work, where it gets sidelined, and why it’s worth staying involved rather than stepping back. Not with alarm bells or certainty, but with attention.
You won’t find hot takes here, or arguments that everything should be automated or everything should be resisted. You will find a steady case for staying human in the loop — deliberately, visibly, and responsibly.
If you’re interested in thinking about technology without giving up your role in it, you’re very welcome here.
— Shelly