I used to have a Palm Pilot, and there was a feature called Graffiti - a handwriting recognition system that only worked if you formed characters in a very specific way.
I used it constantly, and after a while I noticed something unsettling: my actual handwriting had started changing to match what the software could read.
I didn't want to have different handwriting, but the tool demanded a certain input, and I had adapted to it without even realizing it was happening.
I was physically reshaping my behavior to accommodate the constraints of a tool.
And when I think about it now, I realize that's exactly what we've been doing with enterprise technology for decades.
Every time a system couldn't support a workflow, we changed the workflow.
Every time a platform hit a wall, we built our process around that wall and called it a workaround.
We have been writing our businesses in Palm Pilot Graffiti for years and calling it digital transformation.
What's different now - and I mean actually different, not the standard conference-talk version of different - is that the tech constraints are largely gone.
AI doesn't ask you to contort yourself into a predetermined architecture. You don't have to choose from five predefined paths and call it customization.
The question isn't "what does the system allow?" anymore. It's "what experience do we want to create?"
Those are completely different starting points, and the products you build from each of them look nothing alike.
First posted on LinkedIn, April 30, 2026.