Lesson 1.61.6 The paradigm and the products

In everyday life. Streaming replaced video rental. That shift was real even while one service's app was buggy and another had not yet reached your country.

This book's thesis is that the move from message to task to role is lasting. The products are less stable. Features arrive at different times, depending on plan, region and rollout stage. Some are previews, and names change.

So keep two questions apart. Is this a real shift in how work is done? That question belongs to the paradigm, and this book argues that it is. Can I use it today, on my plan, in my market? That question belongs to the dated boxes in each chapter's section on both AI vendors.

Mixing them up causes two opposite errors. One is to dismiss the paradigm because a product is unfinished: "It's only a preview, so it doesn't matter." The other is to build on a product claim that is not yet true for you: "The launch post says it, so my client has it." Maria's Wednesday mistake was a cousin of the second error — she trusted what the screen implied and never asked where the spreadsheet was kept. You can avoid all of these.

Ask four questions about any announcement:

1. Which rung is it? Does it search, answer, complete a task, or hold a role — that is, does it have continuity?
2. Where does the work run, and where are results kept? Which environment, and can you name the place the results live? When the run ends, what survives — the machine, or the record?
3. Who is it acting as? Your own login, or an identity of its own?
4. What is its status? Generally available, beta or preview, and on which plans and markets?

The third question points to the rest of the book. A task that acts as you is fine for personal work. A worker that does a business process needs its own identity, its own limits and a named human owner. When such a worker does the work of one full-time role, this book calls it a Digital FTE — FTE is short for full-time equivalent, a role's worth of work. And whatever the AI vendor supplies, the book's ownership rule stays true: The platforms are rented. The knowledge and the controls are yours. That is why the second question matters so much: whatever lives only on a vendor's machine is rented too, and what you own is what you keep in records you control.