A children’s story about balance with screens, imagination, and agency.
Author: Bert Laker · Publish date: 01/10/2025
This book follows Jermaine and Mirén on their adventure through Scrollrijk — a magical land where screens tempt, algorithms whisper, and choices matter. Along the way they discover the power of imagination, balance, and self-agency.
Kids today grow up with infinite feeds and instant entertainment. Scrollrijk isn’t about rejecting screens, but about building a healthy relationship with them. The story helps kids see themselves in Jermaine and Mirén and sparks family discussions about balance, creativity, and choices.
It began at the kitchen table. My kids, Jermaine and Mirén, asked questions about screens and games, which inspired bedtime story experiments. Over months, their feedback shaped the narrative into a real book.
Behind every song, book, or product is a careful process — not just a single AI query.
When people see AI in action, it can look effortless: type a line into ChatGPT or a music model, and something comes out. But real creation — whether a song, a book, or a product — is never just that.
The thing about creation and creativity is that the value lies in the process of getting there — regardless of what tools you use. That’s something most people looking only at AI outputs won’t understand.
I wanted to find a way to explain the influence of social media and screen time to my kids. At the same time, I’d been dreaming for years of writing a book. I had already started on my own, but quickly realized it takes time — it’s not something you just “do.” Soon I’ll begin sharing blog posts about my approach and how I use AI in this process.
Creation is ideally a collaboration — between tools, people, and the audience you’re making it for.
It requires:
Writing — structuring, rewriting, refining.
Design — cover art, layout, illustrations.
Publishing — formatting, ISBNs, uploading to Amazon KDP or Apple Books.
Marketing — positioning, blurbs, reviews, building an audience.
Each step requires skills, tools, and collaborators. AI can accelerate parts of the journey, but it doesn’t replace the careful choices, the strategy, or the understanding of the market you’re entering.
I’ve always moved between worlds - technology, creativity, and storytelling. I don’t separate them; I prototype ideas until they make sense. That’s how The Adventure of Jermaine and Mirén in Scrollrijk started. Not as a plan, but as an experiment around the kitchen table with my children.
My kids would ask endless questions about screens, games, and why adults are always “checking something.” We turned those conversations into stories before bedtime. Over time, those prototypes became a narrative about balance - between play and pause, focus and distraction, imagination and algorithms.
By day I lead the AI Digital Workgroup at Talpa Network, where creativity and technology meet. By night I write and make music with the same curiosity: testing how stories can help us design for better human connection. This book is part of that experiment — a co-creation with my kids about learning to navigate a world that never stops scrolling.
