We don’t open Gmail because we enjoy email. We don’t use Google for the pleasure of searching. These tools have always been a means, never the end. I open Gmail to talk to someone. I search on Google to learn something. And now, even these means are beginning to vanish.

For years, we believed technology would bring people and ideas closer by eliminating intermediaries. It was the dream of a disintermediated internet: artists selling directly to fans, companies connecting with customers without gatekeepers. An optimistic, almost naive vision. And for a while, it seemed within reach.

But then came a new generation of intermediaries, this time without ties and corner offices. They came as platforms. Uber. Mercado Livre. Instagram. Amazon. Practical. Efficient. And above all, inevitable. SaaS became a new kind of layer: elegant, fluid, yet still a barrier between intent and outcome.

Now, that layer is beginning to collapse.

Platforms Were Just Another Stage

No matter how seamless an interface tries to be, it still requires action: opening an app, choosing an option, remembering the steps. There’s friction, small, but persistent.

Software tools have become wrappers, packaging that encloses our intentions and separates us from what we truly want to accomplish. We never wanted apps. We wanted answers, solutions, movement. But we settled for tools as a necessary evil.

The problem? It no longer scales. The avalanche of apps, passwords, workflows, and screens has trapped us in a maze of micro-decisions. And no one wants to live like that.

The New Disintermediation Isn’t a Revolution, It’s an Erasure

With the rise of artificial intelligence, the logic is changing. Tools are no longer something we access, they simply happen. Search, for example, is already being disintermediated. You type what you need, and the result just appears, no clicks, no filters, no manual curation.

This new cognitive layer is more than an interface. It’s a fusion of intent and execution. And because of that, many tools will quietly vanish from sight. Not because they failed, but because they became infrastructure.

And the strangest part? No one will miss them.

When Technology Disappears

The most groundbreaking innovations aren’t the ones that show up, but the ones that disappear. The most advanced interface is no interface at all. The most sophisticated tool is the one you didn’t even notice using.

That’s what’s happening now.

We won’t launch an app to write, organize, translate, or plan. The task will be done the moment the intention arises. Technology will be embedded into the fabric of daily life, like electricity, like water, silent, ever-present, invisible.

And with that, entire categories of software, workflows, and platforms will lose their face. They’ll become infrastructure.

Conclusion

Disintermediation is back, but not as we imagined. It’s not libertarian or utopian. It’s technical, silent, and final. AI isn’t placing the user at the center, it’s removing the center entirely. It shortens the distance between thought and action. And in doing so, it erases visual interfaces from the map.

We won’t grieve the apps we no longer use. We won’t even notice when they stop appearing on our screens. We’ll simply move forward, as if they never existed, and maybe that’s the clearest sign that the future has arrived.