Techville and the age of the 90-second tragedy

In the fictional city of Techville, a cultural revolution did not arrive with fireworks or philosophical manifestos. It arrived quietly, on mobile screens, between two notifications. 

A new trend swept the city: ultra-short drama movies. Ninety seconds. Sometimes 60. Occasionally just 30. Enough time to cry, feel inspired, or feel outraged — but never enough time to reflect.

The citizens of Techville called it progress. “Why waste 2 hours on a film,” they asked, “when emotion can be delivered instantly?” Algorithms agreed. Platforms optimized for “emotional efficiency,” ensuring that drama was no longer something to be contemplated, but something to be consumed. The irony was striking: in a city built on advanced artificial intelligence, storytelling had never been shorter, or more fragile.

The success of short-form drama was not accidental. AI systems learned quickly that human attention is scarce and exhaustion abundant. The solution was compression. Entire lives were reduced to snapshots: a breakup in 10 seconds, redemption in 15, death in 5.

In Techville, creators proudly advertised their work as “cinema without boredom.” Viewers could experience betrayal, sacrifice, and forgiveness while waiting for an elevator. Emotion became efficient. Meaning became optional. Yet something subtle was happening beneath the surface. The human experience — complex, contradictory, slow — was being reshaped to fit the logic of machines trained to maximize engagement, not understanding.

Ironically, the algorithms developed a preference for suffering. Short dramas featuring conflict, humiliation, or loss performed better than stories of patience, reconciliation, or growth. Pain, it turned out, was easier to compress than hope. In Techville’s most popular 60-second drama series, characters rarely evolved. They reacted. They exploded. They collapsed. Viewers cried, scrolled, and moved on. The platform celebrated record engagement. What it did not measure was alienation. 

Human beings are not built to process endless fragments of tragedy without context. When suffering is stripped of narrative depth, it ceases to dignify and begins to exhaust. The ethical question was no longer about censorship or freedom of expression, but about responsibility: what kind of humanity are we training ourselves, and our machines, to reflect?

To dignify the human being in the age of AI means defending complexity. It means insisting that some things cannot be rushed without being damaged. Meaning, like trust, requires time.

Rafael Hernandez de Santiago

The most ironic development in Techville came when AI systems began to “write” these short dramas themselves. By analyzing millions of emotional arcs, the machines learned how to trigger tears with surgical precision. A child losing a parent. A lover betrayed. A worker discarded. Each story optimized for maximum emotional impact per second. Yet the machine never asked why these stories mattered. It did not care whether they healed or harmed. It simply learned that despair retained attention better than dignity.

Here lies the ethical fault line. When AI shapes culture, it does not merely reflect human preferences, it amplifies them. Without ethical courage, it amplifies our worst instincts: voyeurism, impatience, and emotional consumption without responsibility.

In Techville, a group of filmmakers raised a quiet objection. They asked whether storytelling should still aim to elevate the human spirit, or whether it had surrendered entirely to metrics. Their proposal was modest: slower short films. Two minutes instead of one. Stories that ended not with a punchline, but with a question. The platforms were unimpressed. Reflection, it turned out, did not trend well.

The short drama phenomenon reveals a deeper tension in Techville’s relationship with AI. Are human emotions raw material for optimization, or realities to be respected? When stories become disposable, so do the experiences they represent. Suffering loses its moral weight. Love loses its patience. Everything becomes content — endlessly replaceable.

This is how alienation begins: not through oppression, but through trivialization.

To dignify the human being in the age of AI means defending complexity. It means insisting that some things cannot be rushed without being damaged. Meaning, like trust, requires time.

In a final ironic twist, one of Techville’s most watched short dramas was accidentally uploaded in full length — 12 uninterrupted minutes. The algorithm flagged it as a mistake. Viewers, however, stayed. They watched characters hesitate. They watched silence. They watched growth. Engagement was lower, but something else happened: comments changed. People did not just react; they reflected.

The platform quietly corrected the “error.” But the moment lingered.

The rise of ultra-short drama is not a trivial trend. It is a mirror held up to a society negotiating its relationship with time, technology, and meaning. AI did not create this desire for compression — but it accelerates it. The ethical challenge is clear. We must decide whether technology will help us understand ourselves better, or merely feel faster. In Techville, the lesson is still unfolding, but one truth is already visible: a culture that abandons depth risks losing dignity. In the end, the most radical act in the age of AI may not be innovation, but patience. To tell a story that refuses to be rushed is to defend the human being — not as content, but as a person.

• Rafael Hernandez de Santiago, viscount of Espes, is a Spanish national residing in Saudi Arabia and working at the Gulf Research Center.