The man who knows who needs what

There is a man near the edge of the Tunis medina who has run the same small sandwich counter for decades. Stand there long enough and you see what he actually does. He makes sandwiches, yes. But mostly he connects.

The student needs a room, and he knows the widow whose son moved away. The plumber has a quiet week, and he knows whose ceiling has been dripping. The old man upstairs needs someone to read his letters, and a schoolboy at the counter wants pocket money. He remembers yesterday, he knows who can be trusted, and he passes it on with a nod.

When the internet arrived, most people thought it was about reading things on a screen. The parts that lasted turned out to be about people finding each other: buyers and sellers, old friends, strangers with the same odd interest.

The new generation of software is mostly being used to produce things. Essays, pictures, summaries. Impressive, and a little lonely. I wonder whether it will follow the same path, and whether its lasting use will be less about making content and more about doing what the man at the counter does: remembering, noticing who needs help, and quietly making the introduction.

That would be powerful, and frightening. He is trusted because he is one man, on one street, with a reputation he cannot afford to lose. A system that knew as much about everyone, and answered to whoever profits from it, could just as easily sell the introductions to the highest bidder and slowly turn worse once we depended on it.

So the question is worth asking early, before the habits set. If a machine is ever going to know who needs what, it should behave like him. Patient, discreet, and on our side.