Weeknotes 321 - the balancing act of 2025

By Iskander Smit in weeknotes — Jan 7, 2025

A new year, a new format for the newsletter, with the same ingredients. Notions from the news and triggered thought on the balancing act of 2025.

Interpretation by Midjourney

Thanks for landing here and reading my weekly newsletter. If you are new here, have a more extended bio on targetisnew.com. This newsletter is my personal weekly reflection on the news of the past week, with a lens of understanding the unpredictable futures of human-ai co-performances in a context of full immersive connectedness and the impact on society, organizations, and design. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to know more or more specifically.

Hi all! Happy 2025!

As announced last week, I plan to tweak the newsletter format starting this new year. This is the first edition, and it might evolve for sure, finding the right balance between the introduction and the list of references (aka captured notions from the news).

What did happen last week? Let’s start with a look back on my activities. Next to celebrating a new year and cleaning up the home office, I took some time to bring Cities of Things up to date, long overdue. The publication Tomasz Jaskiewicz and I wrote on the Cities of Things LAB project, a look back to all activities of 2024 that is always more than you think, and a short look ahead for 2025; what is the impact of everyone talking on agents now, for the topics Cities of Things is discussing?

Next, there is always more work to round up a conference like ThingsCon. Administrative, and we posted videos and photos. I wrote some thoughts for 2025 for Target's new website.

Monday, I learned about the sad news of Nicolas Nova passing at a much too young age. We met a couple of times, but I mainly know him from his work. The LIFT conference he organized (I attended in 2011 and 2012) is one of the inspirations for how ThingsCon is curated and set up, I dare say. I still regularly refer back to my experiences there. And he was a true design ethnographer of digital culture. I wish his loved ones all the strength with this loss.

What did I notice last week? Reading the news I capture the things I notice. Find the references in the second part of the newsletter.

Like this last week it is all about the agents are coming—or, better said, they are the new iteration of the AI summer that tech whisperers and companies embrace. What is the business case, and does it bring value? For users, it does, but whether it will be a healthy business remains to be seen. Different opinion makers shared their vision.

Open AI brags about AGI repeatedly; Sam is expecting it this year. Nate thinks we should consider it more like Alien Intelligence. Gary Marcus is also a skeptic.

AI will gain physical intelligence to interact with the real world, and we learn. And on a more applicative note: Is AI now an inspiration for sermons, as a new god-mode? A famous artist (Jeff Koons) draws a red line on AI. Too bad, as it would deliver potentially interesting mesh-ups…

Geopolitics is now a tech war on different levels, and AI technology is increasingly triggering energy wars. However, the economic impact of AI is still unclear.

The big thing this week is CES, which is kicking off the year of trends. The question is how much AI will enter devices and consumer electronics. And is robotics become a new category? Like the kind of delivery bot now for in your home.

At CES, next to AI, we have the usual parade of products we will use at home next year or forget forever. Some examples: a projector lamp, smart buttons for controlling your devices. Withings is back with a smart mirror concept that lets you see not only outside but also your inside. TV’s with co-pilots.

Merging functions are things like a doorbell connected to a smart hub.

The Matter standard for Connected Devices is announced to be embraced by some big players. Finally.

Also, different topics on robots. Lazy robots, tender robots, and robots entering the public domain. And a robot taxi and delivery bot running into each other, smashing and dealing with it.

We are still at the time of year when lists of past and future years flock to the Internet. Check out the 10 breakthrough technologies and other lists for the next year and beyond.

Triggered thought It is interesting how Scott Galloway is promoting a fairer form of capitalism than what is emerging now from the kleptocracy reality in the latest pivot. CJ Trowbridge describes in a short (TikTok-)rant, how we have a huge potential with AI to create things that are helping us to understand what we want, to create stuff that will help us, but at the same time, the current AI companies are looking for a business model that is built on real value, not on over expectations and promises not met. It is a cynical and hopeful reflection at the same time.

It might be worth connecting it to what is introduced in the book on Plurality, that I am reading for explorative research into civic protocol economies. The starting concept is a holy three elements of collectivity, diversity, and the balance of technology and plurality; we can aim for technology supporting collaborative diversity. Tech is not isolated from the rough developments in the world, so it will not be easy to balance these interests and reach this technology that supports democracies instead of breaking them down. As a wish for the new year, we might strive for this, and especially when agents become more of a dominant way of interacting with intelligence, we need to design the right system to prevent losing control.

What are the plans for the coming week? I need to work mainly on the report. I might check out the yearly New Year drinks of the creative industries. There will probably be more of this kind of events next week. Payal Arora is presenting a new book "From Pessimism to Promise" in v2 on Wednesday. And I saw some positive reviews on the Impakt exhibition (small but nice), until this weekend (”The Cake is a Lie presents raw and uncensored perspectives on a world that is on fire”).

See you next week!