Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban’s predictions about which businesses may vanish in the next decade read a bit like a modern Book of Revelation — only with fewer angels and more algorithms.

I found myself less alarmed than amused by the idea that entire industries might be undone not by fire or flood, but by a moody platform update or a chatbot with better grammar.

This poem grew out of that strange mix of comedy and unease. We’re living in a moment when artificial intelligence is rewriting job descriptions faster than we can read them, and yet the world remains stubbornly, beautifully human: editors still arguing over commas, bakers still worrying about croissants, rural diners still serving the same coconut cream pie they’ve served since the Ford administration.

But beneath the humor, a quieter question hums: What does it mean to stay human while everything around us updates?

The poem doesn’t try to answer that outright. Instead, it lingers in the ordinary places — the newsroom, the café, the DMV line — where our shared life continues at its own determined pace.

If there’s a lesson here, it may be that adaptation isn’t only about technology. Sometimes it’s about presence, attention, and the small mercies we offer one another while the future rearranges itself.

A Brief History of Vanishing Businesses

I read Mark Cuban’s vanishing businesses list this morning while stirring my oatmeal,
the kind with flax seeds that promise to keep me alive long enough to watch several industries quietly collapse — ideally after breakfast.

He says the first to go will be the businesses that ignore AI,
which feels a bit like saying the first people to drown are the ones who refuse to get in the boat.

Somewhere, a CEO is still insisting “the internet is a fad,” possibly while faxing his assistant a reminder to refill the toner.

Traditional media, he warns, is next on the chopping block.

I picture a newsroom full of editors arguing over commas while an algorithm in the corner politely clears its throat,
wearing a press badge it printed for itself and waiting for someone to ask its opinion on the Oxford comma.

Restaurants and clothing brands, he says, won’t disappear,
but they’ll feel every shiver in the economy — the way a café on State Street can sense a recession before the economists do, just by counting the empty tables at lunch.

Then there are the poor souls who built their livelihoods on Amazon or Etsy, like medieval peasants depending on the mood of a very large, invisible king.

One day the algorithm smiles;
the next it banishes you to page 47 of the search results,
a place so remote even archaeologists refuse to dig, citing workplace safety and morale.

Most AI companies, Cuban says,
will vanish, too — which feels a bit unfair,
like being eaten by the monster you created after you’ve already filled out the paperwork.

Somewhere, a startup founder is giving a TED Talk on disruption while disruption quietly unplugs his microphone and leaves with his water bottle.

Businesses living off government grants should also prepare for a long winter. When the budget tightens, the first things to go are anything that isn’t a road, a missile, or a memo written in a tone suggesting someone is deeply disappointed in you — possibly your mother, possibly the comptroller.

And finally, the rural shops — the hardware stores, the diners with the best pie in three counties — the ones that have survived fires, floods, and teenagers who don’t know how to make change and aren’t entirely sure what change is.

They may not make it through the next recession,
which feels like losing the last good pair of socks you swore you’d never misplace.

But here’s the twist — in the middle of all this doom,
Cuban says the winners will be the ones who adapt, the ones who learn, the ones who look at the future and say,
Fine.

Hand me the wrench.

So maybe the survivors won’t be the biggest,
or the loudest, or the ones with the sleekest logo.

And maybe the point isn’t just to stay human in the middle of the upgrades, but to lean — gently — toward what matters, to meet change with a mind that stays curious and a heart that refuses to rush, to practice a small, steady attentiveness — the kind that keeps a community stitched together even while the future rearranges itself.

Because the world will keep revising itself, line by line, version by version, but we still get to choose our stance.

So there in the DMV line,
beneath the flickering lights, you make a quiet vow — nothing dramatic — just to pay attention,
to keep adapting in your own human way,
to remain the kind of person an algorithm wouldn’t know how to imitate even after several updates.