The Spirit That Lives in My Computer

A few weeks ago, my little Bluetooth speaker stopped working with my computer.

I tried the usual. Unpaired it, paired it again, turned it off, turned it on, ran through the whole thing again… nothing. It showed up as connected in the interface, but no sound. I was in a hurry, so I paired it with my phone and listened to music that way. I assumed it was some operating system bug, too expensive to investigate and fix. Until I woke up this morning, sat down to work and realized I had forgotten to plug the phone in to charge overnight. Damn.

So I decided to try again, since a software update or some other esoteric process sometimes fixes the problem. No luck, it didn’t work. That was when it occurred to me: could Claude Code sort this out? I explained the problem briefly, sent some screenshots and wished it good luck. In about a minute, still in the middle of the “Waiting…”, I watched Simple Man move from the computer speakers over to my old little speaker. Wow.

To be honest, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this happen. Last month I wanted to watch a video that was on my computer on the living room TV and, with no idea how to do it, I turned to Claude Code, which told me to install the VLC app on the television and leave the rest to it. The result is that I now have a folder on my computer where I just drag a file in, wait for it to show up on the TV, and watch it (with subtitles). How? No idea. After those two experiences, my default behavior went from “try to solve the problem” to “delegate it to the AI”.

It’s as if there were now a spirit living inside my computer, capable of solving any technical problem or making difficult tasks possible. Why would I think, when I have access to this djinn? It’s the dream nephew-as-a-service — the family kid everyone calls to fix the computer — available 100% of the time, more capable and faster at operating a computer than any human ever was or ever will be. After a lifetime of being “the guy who knows how to fix computers”, I feel it’s time to make room for the new generation.

This piece was originally published in Portuguese on my newsletter Em Busca de Clareza.