This has been the busiest month of the year for snowbird. There is a lot of interesting work wrapping up for the year end and a lot more in the pipeline promises to keep 2025 interesting. When working with these companies one thing to look for are tensions and sparks. Tension is where there is some sort of knot, a contradiction, a seemingly impossible trade-off. A spark is a glimmer in the dark, a zag when everyone is zigging, a different path amidst a sea of sameness, a loose thread you can pull on to unravel the knot.
One of the tensions I've been thinking about the past two weeks is that of technology and "solutionsim". There was a strong sense in the early aughts that tech would truly and surely solve a lot of our problems. It made new technological concepts spread rapidly. Touchscreens. Social Graph. Voice Assistants. And of course, AI. It took us a decade to wake up from this stupor - but not fully so. I remember how, even as they were cooking the planet with it, AI evangelists in 2023 talked about how it would solve climate change. The tension of tech solutionism is how it is supposedly solving the problems it caused in the first place.
Now the spark. Let's go back to touchscreens for a minute. They are now everywhere - from restaurant ordering systems to laundromats. It's no surprise that there have been attempts to bring them into airplane cockpits. Except...they're quite awful during unstable and turbulent conditions. It's the reason the airline industry has been very thoughtful and slow to adopt touchscreens for pilots.
Today's finds are similar examples of finding that the latest technology isn't the solution people needed. They are not about being a luddite, but of a thoughtful reset back to when tactile, analog, slow and sometimes even out-of-date methods are preferred over "faster, smoother, smarter" tech-driven solutions.
Here are the sparks for this week:
- WOOD IN SPACE Japan has just launched the world's first wood-panelled satellite into space to test the suitability of timber as a renewable building material in future exploration of destinations like the Moon and Mars. What a fantastic story for humanity! You can find metal all over the Universe but wood is
- TOUCHSCREENS ARE OUT Tactile controls are back in vogue. Apple added two new buttons to the iPhone 16, home appliances like stoves and washing machines are returning to knobs, and several car manufacturers are reintroducing buttons and dials to dashboards and steering wheels.
- HYPERCONVENIENCE "Modern hyper-convenience is a kind of deal with the devil. It is seductive because it appeals to our instincts, but it surreptitiously depletes us. It has made it easier to get by, but in many ways harder to truly succeed. Human flourishing and happiness is not just about subsistence, but also depends on growth, dynamic problem-solving, and solidarity through hardship."
- VINYL'S BACK India just got it's first vinyl plant in four decades! "The weight of the record in your hands, the delicate way you have to handle it, the static charge as you slide it out of its sleeve — it’s a sensory delight. And for many, the analog sound of a vinyl record simply can’t be matched by the digital world. There’s a richness, a warmth, a depth that your AirPods just can’t deliver."
- FORUMS NEVER DIED Despite how much the Internet can feel like a monoculture devoid of human taste and injected with AI slop, there is one old school Web 1.0 remnant still going strong: forums! Here are the Internet forums that are still alive and kicking and full of information and interesting people.