I spent yesterday afternoon sitting in a small, aromatic coffee shop downtown, watching people interact with their phones. It is a hobby of mine, observing the digital tether in the wild. A woman at the table next to me wanted a specific type of ergonomic desk lamp. She opened her browser, typed a few words, … Read more
I remember sitting in a boardroom back in 2021 when the idea of a Customer Digital Twin was still considered a fever dream of the over-caffeinated Silicon Valley elite. Back then, we were obsessed with basic retargeting. If you looked at a pair of leather boots, those boots followed you around the internet like a … Read more
The morning fog at the Port of Rotterdam used to smell like heavy fuel oil and old iron. Now, as we move through early 2026, the air is thinner, sharper, and carries the faint hum of electric motors from the automated guided vehicles scurrying across the quay. There was a time, not so long ago, … Read more
The era of the digital generalist is quietly coming to an end. Not long ago, we were all mesmerized by the parlor tricks of large language models that could write poetry and code in the same breath. It felt like magic, but as 2026 unfolds, the novelty has worn thin for those who actually have … Read more
The light from the triple-monitor setup in my home office used to represent a certain kind of freedom, but lately, it feels more like a cockpit in a plane I do not actually own. I was looking at my monthly credit card statement last Tuesday, a ritual that has become increasingly depressing, and I realized … Read more
The era of the $300,000-a-year marketing executive who spends half their day in status meetings is quietly reaching its expiration date. I spent the better part of last week watching a boutique investment firm in Zurich dismantle its entire internal creative department in favor of a singular, autonomous system that costs less than a decent … Read more
The era of the “safe” tech salary is dying a slow, quiet death in the backrooms of Palo Alto and the glass towers of New York. I remember sitting in a dimly lit coffee shop in 2022, listening to a founder brag about raising a Series A at a valuation that made zero sense, primarily … Read more
The architecture of our attention is changing. If the last few years were an chaotic experiment in where we work, 2026 is becoming the year we finally address how we work. We have moved past the novelty of the home office and the performative nature of the open floor plan. Today, the conversation has shifted … Read more
I spent the better part of Tuesday staring at a heat map of my team’s cognitive load, wondering when exactly we stopped being a group of analysts and started being a collection of biological signals. It is 2026, and the old ways of checking in—those clunky “how are you” Zoom calls that everyone dreaded—have been … Read more
The old logic of the industrial age was simple, brutal, and effective for a century. You take a raw material, you make something people want, and you sell it until it breaks or goes out of fashion. Then, you start over. But as we move deeper into 2026, that straight line has started to feel … Read more
