From the Mouse to the Chat Window: Rethinking Our Relationship With Technology
We’ve gone from punch cards to command lines, from the mouse to chat windows. Each shift changed how we work with machines. AI chat is the newest input device and if you treat it as relational rather than transactional, you’ll unlock more clarity, context, and possibility.
Why This Matters
Most people think of AI as a vending machine: insert prompt, get output. That mindset misses the point. Chat isn’t just a tool, it’s a new way of interacting. Leaders and teams who approach it relationally will be better equipped to adapt, learn, and create.
When you sit down in front of a computer today, you probably don’t think much about how you’re interacting with it. You open a browser, move a cursor, type some words, maybe talk to a voice assistant. It feels normal, even obvious. But it wasn’t always this way and remembering where we came from makes it easier to see just how different this current moment really is.
Before the mouse
The oldest workers still in today’s workforce might remember when computers were controlled using punch cards—physical stacks of cards stamped or hole-punched to represent instructions. You organized them carefully, fed them into the machine, and the computer responded. It was slow, unforgiving, and you needed to know exactly what you were doing.
That gave way to command lines. If you grew up in the DOS era, you remember typing instructions into a black screen with a blinking cursor. If you didn’t know the exact command, nothing happened. Computers weren’t friendly; they were literal.
Enter the mouse
The mouse changed all of that. First demonstrated in the 1960s by Douglas Engelbart, later refined by Xerox PARC, and popularized when Apple shipped it with the Macintosh in 1984, the mouse (and the graphical user interface it unlocked) radically changed how we interacted with machines. IDEO had a hand in designing Apple’s version, but the real leap wasn’t the device itself—it was the idea that pointing, clicking, and dragging could replace typing arcane commands.
The GUI took computers from something specialists controlled to something everyday people could explore. Instead of memorizing a command to copy a file, you could drag an icon from one folder to another. Intuitive. Physical. Relational.
“The real leap wasn’t the device itself—it was the idea that pointing, clicking, and dragging could replace typing arcane commands.”
Fast forward to chat
Now here we are again, at another shift. Only this time, it isn’t about pointing and clicking. It’s about talking.
Chat interfaces represent a new way of interacting with technology. You’re not just issuing commands. You’re not just clicking icons. You’re in a conversation. And if you lean into it, if you treat this as relational rather than transactional, the experience changes.
Most people treat AI as a vending machine. Insert prompt, get output. That’s transactional. It works, but it’s shallow. What I’ve found, and what a growing number of others are discovering, is that if you treat the interaction as a relationship, you get something entirely different. You get context. You get continuity. You get nuance.
Sci-fi primed us for this
Maybe the reason it feels both magical and expected is that we’ve been primed for it. Science fiction has been showing us people talking to computers for decades. Star Trek’s crew could just ask the computer for anything. Iron Man bantered with JARVIS. HAL 9000 answered calmly in 2001: A Space Odyssey (though maybe not the model relationship you want).
So on some level, we expect computers to talk back. But expectation doesn’t make it less extraordinary. The fact that I can sit here and talk with a machine that not only generates words, but remembers patterns, builds on past conversations, and adapts to my way of working is astonishing. We forget how wild this is because it already feels so natural.
Relational technology
Here’s where the analogy clicks. Command line was transactional. The mouse and GUI were relational—you didn’t just issue commands, you navigated space, arranged objects, used metaphors borrowed from the physical world. And now, chat is relational at another level. It’s about shared history, memory, and pattern.
“Just like a person who knows your backstory, the AI gets sharper the more you invest in the relationship.”
I call this relational technology. It’s not about having a “relationship” in the human sense. It’s about recognizing that the interface itself works better when you bring context, values, and history to it. Just like a person who knows your backstory will understand you more clearly, the AI gets sharper the more you invest in the relationship.
How I use it
I’ve leaned into this. When I introduce AI to new users in my workshops, the very first step is: introduce yourself. Tell the AI your name, your job, your interests, even your quirks. Share what matters to you. You’re not “feeding data.” You’re building a relationship.
In my own work, I see the payoff daily. I use AI in my strategy practice, where clarity and nuance matter more than speed. By reinforcing patterns, by treating the interaction as ongoing, I get outputs that sound like me, reflect my thinking, and adapt as my language evolves. I don’t have to explain everything from scratch each time, because I’ve put in the relational groundwork.
Why this matters
Here’s the trap: if you think of AI as “just another tool,” you’ll use it like a tool. You’ll write prompts the way you typed DOS commands: specific, literal, context-free. You’ll get something back, but it will be flat.
If you think of it as relational, you open up space. You can say, “You know how I usually frame OKRs, give me a version of that, that does this instead.” You can notice when your language has shifted over time and ask, “What’s out of sync between how I used to talk about this and how I do now?” Those are relational questions. They depend on shared context. They unlock more.
No user manual
The truth is, we don’t yet have a user manual for this. There’s no “best practices” guide for how to build a relationship with AI. Which is why I’ve been experimenting. My AI Learning Lab is partly an attempt to fill that gap: to help people explore, play, and figure out what this new interface can do. Because it’s not obvious. And because most of the advice out there focuses on prompts and hacks, not relationships and rhythms.
What you might be missing
Here’s the other thing: I know I’m not even scratching the surface. I’ve been told the way I work with AI is different. That makes me think there are whole layers of possibility I don’t even know to ask about yet. Which prompts the obvious question: what am I not asking that I should be? How could I work differently if I pushed the relational approach further?
That question alone is the kind of thing you can ask an AI partner. And that’s part of the point: you don’t have to figure it all out before you start. You can ask, test, and learn together.
Back to the mouse
The mouse was small, cheap, and almost silly when it first appeared. A box with a cord and a rolling ball. But paired with the GUI, it reshaped everything. It turned computers from specialized machines into everyday companions. It gave us the grammar of point, click, drag, drop—the grammar we still use today.
“Treating chat as transactional misses the point. Treating it as relational opens the door.”
Chat may feel obvious, even inevitable, because sci-fi taught us to expect it. But it’s just as radical. It’s a new grammar. And like any new grammar, it takes practice to use it well. We don’t yet know all the metaphors, all the shortcuts, all the ways it will reshape our work and our lives. But we do know this: treating it as transactional misses the point. Treating it as relational opens the door.
Where to start
If you want to try this yourself:
Introduce yourself to your AI. Name, role, interests, values.
Reinforce patterns. Use consistent language. Give real feedback like you would to a person.
Update memory deliberately. Don’t just let it gather, tune it.
Ask relational questions: “What patterns are you noticing?” “How do you think I’d frame this based on how I usually talk?”
This isn’t about pretending a machine is your friend. It’s about learning to use the interface we’ve been given. Just as the mouse turned pointing into power, chat turns context into an augmentation of your skills, knowledge, and experience.
Closing Thought
The more we treat technology relationally, the more it feels like it’s working with us, not just for us.
