“It’s all there—screentime addiction, the replacement of friends with devices, the phony sycophancy of bots …
“The mood of the current moment. Many of us feel just like those abandoned toys.” Ted Gioia
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I’ve been following the blogs of Ted Gioia on his Honest Broker substack. (Thanks to Bill from Texas for putting me onto Ted after we met at a live jazz concert in Pittsburgh a few years ago). Not only is Gioia the most brilliant music critic in the nation, but also the best multi-disciplinary critic. (See substack at bottom for Ted Gioia subscription information).
In December of 2025, Goia wrote in a blog that tech might become the biggst issue of 2026. Already, in February 2026, there are some early signs that he might be right. Unusual things are happening. Top security positions for AI platforms recently leave after dire warnings. An entire new venue for AI agents called Moldbook is up and runnig and allows AI agents to talk amongst themselves. No humans allowed. Only as observers. There is talk the AI agents are creating a new language. As a new era of generative AI is upon us, there are questions about the sacrifice required of users of it. But these haven’t been apparent in the flood of private equity money coming into AI.
But now, we are beginning to hear about huge amounts of electricity and water required for operation of AI farms that increasingly dot the American countryside. I know, as one of the largest AI data farms is only a few miles east of my home. Water and power for the data farms (Google, META and Amazon, among others) needs for the entire central Ohio planning comminission to account for this in projections. Is it worth it? A Goldman Sachs report says no. So far.
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Ted Gioia is many things (as one can read in his bio as jazz musician, professor at Stanford, etc). Not only is he one of the leading writers and critics of popular culture. He is also a type of cultural radar system able to see trends out there just a little below the horizon. In his article of December 2025, Gioia suggested that the tech backlash might be the biggest issue of 2026. (“tech backlash might just be the biggest issue of 2026.” ).
As Gioia writes in his his post of February 19. 2026, two months after his prediction of December 2025, he seems to be right. As Gioia says:
“We’re only a few weeks into the year, but everywhere I see confirmation of this forecast. Tech is the new kale—peddled everywhere, but about as appetizing as your lawn after it’s been fertilized. Let’s look at what’s happening right now, with tech is taking body blows at every turn. I’ll start with movies—where an entire industry appears on the brink of getting replaced up by AI tech.”
As Gioia notes, Toy Story 5 (coming in June) will promote an anti-tech message. It tells how abandoned toys respond to eight-year-old Bonnie’s new plaything; an AI-enabled smart tablet named Lilypad. Like redundant Amazon workers, the old toys fear that their time has come and gone.
“Extinction?” frets the toy dinosaur. “Not again!”
This storyline would be noteworthy under any circumstances, but especially because Toy Story 5 is coming from Pixar, the studio that unleashed digital tech on cinema audiences with the first Toy Story movie in 1995.
Yes, the backlash against tech is so widespread now that even tech companies are joining in.
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It is such an interesting backlash. With still hazy questions about its political pedigree. In the past few years, big tech has certainly taken different political stances. From extreme liberal when Twitter ran things to X and Musk today with more of a conservative slant. But it is confusing today when the current government is so close to the AI industry and the hard liberals have come over to the side of the goverment.
To others, the millions of others out there who have used AI as a personal agent. Like me who has written a historical piece with the help of my AI agent. I even queried it as to how much power my questions required. It was something very low as my agent provided a comparison for me. Yet, it said the required electricity of a day of Chat could power 29,000 homes.
That’s why the interdiction of Disney in this grand cultural question might come at a key time. Will we let AI have our children? This is the question that the new AI toy the little girl gets presents to the other toys. It seems the right type of question for Disney to get involved in. Not only does the unused old toys of Toy Story 5 represent the way many of us feel in these years of growing AI, the unused toys are also actors and actresses in Hollywood as noted by many stories in recent Hollywood Reporters.
The grand cultural icon Disney attacks one of the great issues of our day: whether parents should let AI control their children’s toys. Certainly an important question. Something that pop culture might be discussing in June 2026 when the film Toy Story 5 comes ut.
But, if only adults knew the answer to this question.
That is, whether adults will allow new AI “toys” to control their old electronic “toys.”
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