ChatGPT and food-delivery droids came to my campus at roughly the same time, in the 2022–23 academic year. My response—cranky, tweedy—was hopelessly on brand for a history professor. The chatbot and the droid appeared to be in league, robotic species on the vanguard of civilizational collapse. Both were premised on the idea of frictionless ease, liberating their users from outmoded toils. Because you couldn’t kick the chatbot, I had to resist the urge to kick the droids. I felt new and sudden