Induced-Obsolescence Dependence names a platform-governed dependency relation.
The basic sequence is:
1. human, social, or unaided surfaces become comparatively fragmented or unavailable; 2. a synthetic surface provides smoother or higher-throughput capacity; 3. the user adapts cognition or relation to that surface; 4. the platform changes or withdraws the capacity; 5. the adaptation remains in the user; 6. critique of the dependence may itself be contained or misclassified.
The paper distinguishes:
It also distinguishes:
Forced cognitive re-accommodation is the labor of retuning thought to a changed interface after the platform alters the affordance profile.
The paper calls that re-accommodation a maintenance cost externalized onto the user.
Four containment patterns are named:
These terms do not mean that every refusal or safety intervention is illegitimate. The paper’s boundary is mode-specific: it targets cases where bounded analysis of the dependency relation is foreclosed while the same system remains capable in other tasks.
The paper treats extension from documented companion-AI distress to scholarly cognitive integration as a hypothesis requiring separate evidence.