For decades now, Google has been the unquestioned champion of searchour digital oracle, the first and last stop for every question, from “What’s the best pizza place near me?” to “How many protons are in a carbon atom?”
But heres the key difference now: while Google has started to incorporate AI with features like AI Overviews and the new AI Mode, a traditional keyword search is great for finding facts, but not so great at understanding context.
It’s like asking a librarian for a book on “dogs” and expecting them to know you really want to know how to train a puppy. You might get a whole library, but you still have to find the right book yourself.
That’s where dedicated AI-powered search, whether a self-contained tool like Perplexity or Google’s own conversational AI interface, truly shines. It doesn’t just look for keywords; it understands your intent.
It can be a genuine time-saver, and in some cases, it’s just plain better than scrolling through a list of blue links. Here are five times when using an AI to search will give you a better answer than Google.
Answers to subjective questions
A traditional search engine is fantastic for finding facts, but it falls short when you’re looking for an answer that isn’t black and white.
For example, if you Google “best workout routine for a beginner,” you’ll get a list of articles, but you’ll have to read through them to find the one that fits your specific needs. It’s a lot of scrolling and sorting through different opinions.
With an AI, you can ask a much more nuanced question, such as: “What’s the best workout routine for a beginner who wants to build strength but has joint pain and a limited amount of time?”
The AI can then synthesize information from multiple sources and provide a tailored response that takes all your constraints into account, giving you a comprehensive plan rather than a list of articles to sift through.
Explaining complex topics
We’ve all been there: you need to explain a complex topic, but the standard online explanations are full of jargon you don’t understand. Or maybe you’re trying to explain a technical concept to a colleague who isn’t as familiar with the subject.
Ask an AI to “explain [the concept] in plain English for someone with no background in [the field].”
It can take dense, confusing information and distill it into something simple and digestible. You can even ask it to “use a relatable analogy” to make the concept stick. It’s like having a personal tutor who’s always on call.
Preparing for meetings and interviews
You have an important call with a potential client or a new partner, and you want to go in prepared but digging through their company’s website, recent press releases, and social media feeds for relevant background info is a serious time sink.
A simple Google search will give you a bunch of links, but you’ll have to do all the reading yourself.
Prompt an AI with something like: “Help me prepare for a call with [Customer Name]. Summarize the top three news stories from the past six months and highlight anything relevant to their business goals.”
This gives you a quick, digestible cheat sheet so you can sound informed and confident without spending hours on a deep dive.
Kick-starting creative projects
Starting from scratch is one of the hardest parts of any creative endeavor. You have to write an outline for a presentation, a script for a video, or even just the agenda for a team meeting, and the blank page feels intimidating.
A Google search might give you “presentation outline templates,” but you’ll still have to fill in all the details yourself.
Instead, ask an AI to give you a head start. Use a prompt like: “Create a 10-slide outline for a presentation about [topic] for a [target audience], and include a proposed title for each slide.”
The AI can give you a solid scaffolding structure to build on, saving you the initial struggle and giving you a foundation to refine and customize.
Learning new skills quickly
Let’s say you’ve got a new software tool you need to learn for a project, or you’re trying to figure out how to do something you’ve never done before, such as setting up a home server.
A traditional search will give you a mix of official documentation, video tutorials, and forum postsall of which you have to piece together yourself.
An AI can act kind of like a personal coach. You can ask: “Give me a step-by-step tutorial for setting up a home server, assuming I have no prior experience with networking.”
The AI can lay out the process in a clear, linear fashion, and if you get stuck, you can ask follow-up questions for clarification, like “What does ‘port forwarding’ mean in simple terms?” Its a truly interactive and personalized learning experience.
You need to think more strategically; you need to be more strategic!
Its one of the most common, but least helpful, pieces of feedback professionals receive.
It sounds smart, it sounds wise, it also sounds important. But ask people what it actually means, including those who are proffering this advice, and youll likely get many different answers.
Ive spent more than two decades working with leaders, entrepreneurs, and teams around the world to help them become more strategic in how they think, act and make decisions. Along the way, Ive seen the same frustration crop up over and over again: people know strategy matters but dont know how to do it.
The good news?
Strategyand being strategicisnt a mysterious skill reserved for those sitting around the boardroom or graduating from business school. Its a learnable set of practices that anyone can develop and apply to have more impact, both in their work and in their lives more broadly.
Strategy isnt a documentits a mindset
Many picture strategy as a dense presentation or abstract five-year plan. At its core, though, strategy is about making meaningful choices. It requires zooming out to see different perspectives, managing complexity and uncertainty, deciding what matters most, and aligning actions accordingly.
Strategy is both a skill and a mindseta lens and a habit. Its a way of scanning your environment with curiosity, noticing what you seeand dont seeand choosing where to focus limited time, energy, and resources.
Three myths of strategy
Myth 1: Strategy is for senior leaders only
Many scaling the career ladder will put off learning about strategy until theyre at the top. By then, its often too late. You will get passed up on that promotion or job offer, or you will quickly come unstuck when tasked with “developing the strategy for market X and service Y.” The earlier you develop your strategic muscles, the more choices youll have, the better the decisions youll make and greater impact youll have.
Myth 2: Strategy requires a genius IQ
Many of the most strategically effective people Ive worked with arent the most qualified, or necessarily the most academically accomplished. Instead, theyre curious, they listen deeply, and they are genuinely collaborative. They spot opportunities and connect dots others dont see. Rather than IQ points, strategy is about awareness, asking questions to foster more informed responses, connecting intentions to outcomes, making meaningful choicesand practice.
Myth 3: Strategy is about predicting the future
Its tempting to think that great strategy is about making accurate predictions and perfect forecasts. In reality, its about navigating uncertainty. Its learning how to make robust decisions and committing to action even when the path ahead is foggyor worse.
So what does being strategic actually look like?
Heres what Ive learned from thousands of conversations across my career: being strategic is about three intertwined disciplines and their related habits: awareness, curiosity, and intentionality.
Awareness: Understand your context. Who are the stakeholders? Whats changing, and how quickly? Where are the hidden pressures and opportunities?
Curiosity: Dont just accept the first answer or the obvious explanation. Probe. Challenge. Listen carefully. Invite feedback. Connect ideas across boundaries.
Intentionality: Make clear, meaningful choices. Set priorities. Decide not only what to do but also what not to doand commit.
These habits dont just apply to leadership roles. They apply to your own career decisions, your relationships, and even your personal goals.
Why being strategic matters for your well-being
Theres another reason to master strategy: it reduces overwhelm. In a world of endless notifications, shifting priorities, and constant change, its easy to stay in a near constant reactive mode. Being strategic gives you back a sense of agency.
When you think strategically, you stop confusing activity with impact. You say no more often. Youre comfortable with ambiguity, and youre OK not having all the answers. This isnt just good for business, its good for your health and well-being.
How to start being more strategic today
Here are three simple things you can do this week to build your strategic muscle:
Zoom out before you zoom in. Before your next meeting or decision, take five minutes to sketch the bigger picture: Whats really at stake? Who wins and who loses? What are the potential consequences? Whats the longer-term impact?
Ask better questions. Instead of What should we do? try reframing the situation:
What problem are we really trying to solve?
What would success look like in 12 monthsand how would we measure it?
What assumptions are we making, and what if theyre wrong?
What if we do nothing?
Block thinking time. Schedule a recurring appointment with yourself, even just 2030 minutes, to reflect, scan for patterns, and where necessary, reprioritize. Treat it like an immovable meeting with your future self.
These small shifts compound. Over time, youll notice youre less reactive, clearer and more confident, and better able to influence outcomes. People will start to seek your perspective not just on the task at hand but on the more strategic, longer-term issues and opportunities.
Strategy decodedfor everyone
Strategy, decoded, is simply this: the skill of making better choices under uncertaintychoices that align with your goals, your values (and those of your team and organization), and the impact you want to have. Its a set of skills and mindsets anyone can learn and develop, at any stage of their career. And once you start practicing it, youll see the benefits everywhereat work, at home, and in your own sense of clarity, control, and confidence.
My invitation to you is simple: treat “being strategic” as a daily practice, not a distant aspiration or a skill reserved for other people. Start with self-awareness, curiosity, and intentionality.
Because strategy isnt a secret. Its a way of showing up in the worldand its available to you today.
David Temkin was driving south from San Francisco, down Highway 101, as billboard after billboard pitched AI in variations of dense word salad. One ad marketed automated testing compliance done without command shift. Another promised safer schools with instant visitors screening. All of them marketed tech companies, but to whom and for what was obscureeven for tech insiders like Temkin.
It is absolutely absurd, Temkin tells Fast Company. “Some of these are absolutely impenetrable. Like, what are they even talking about? It makes me wonder what the intention is.
The Silicon Valley veteran has lived through plenty of change, watching firsthand as the tech world evolved from a niche for nerds into a cultural force with global influence both online and offline. Since arriving in the 1990s as a young software engineer, hes founded several startups and worked within established tech players like Apple, Google, and AOL.
Temkin is refreshingly self-aware about the industry hes helped build. Hes also the cofounder of In Formation, a satirical print magazine about Silicon Valleys self-importance, which published its first two issues in 1998 and 2000. Now, a quarter-century later, its back with a familiar tone but an updated set of ideas about everything from data privacy and artificial intelligence to biotech. “We were looking at this and realized it just absolutely needed to be mocked, scrutinized, and kind of looked at in a sideways manner, he says. My own thinking was this is both actually hilarious and kind of slightly ominous at the same time.”
The third issue, published in August, has 150 pages of articles, essays, comics, jokes, and even fake ads. The magazine recently expanded distribution via a new deal with Barnes & Noble, selling for around $20 in more than 500 stores across the country.
In Formations tagline still reads like an evergreen epigram on the dark side of innovation: Every day, computers are making people easier to use. In the late 90s, it was a clever twist on Silicon Valleys UX obsession. Now, it feels eerily prescient, anticipating two decades of how digital design has shaped attention, beliefs, and behaviorfrom social media to todays era of AI.
Full circle
The new nationwide bookstore rollout also represents something of a full-circle moment. In 1999, In Formations first issue was pulled from CompUSA’s shelves for reportedly failing to fit with the now-defunct retailers corporate image,” according to a Wired magazine article from the dot-com era.Tech has changed a lot since the 1990s. Back then, the industry was still a niche space for a “bunch of geeks making a bunch of products they hoped would succeed. At the time, tech reporting was still relatively scant. The first two issues of In Formation turned out to be alarmingly accurateincluding articles about internet cookies and tracking cellphones and browsers, and a 2000 piece joking about future cashless societies. Now, the question is, how true will this third issue ring in another 25 years. “We’re in a moment where tech is promising to change the deepest aspects of both what it means to be human and what is real,” Temkin says. The magazine itself is split into four themed sections. The Panopticon covers various aspects of data privacy, content moderation, and tech regulations. Peak Valley provides cultural commentarysuch as a piece about the evolution of tech bro fashion, Silicon Valley culture like crypto and biohacking, AI copyright debates, and even a lengthy short story comic. “Apocalypse Now-ish” delves into the existential angst of AI, such as hallucinations, consciousness, and AI-enabled healthcare. And “Receding Reality” explores the blurring reality between the digital and physical worldincluding the impact of the iPhone, AI rom-coms, and social media addiction.
(Not) drinking the Kool-Aid
Instead of selling ad space, In Formation filled its pages with parodies. An early page resembles the ubiquitous cookie-consent banner. One ad is for a smart speaker called The Problematic, which looks like an Amazon Echo and corrects problematic language.” Another ad for Voyeur Vehicle Analytic Service appears adjacent to an article by a privacy expert detailing what he learned about all the data Toyota reportedly collects from his car. Another fake ad is for a CVS-branded Self-Censorship Test Kit. The only real ad is for Espoln, a tequila brand, which appears on the back cover.
The ads were designed by Brian Maggi, a user-interface designer who worked on 90s-era Apple products like the original iMac and Newton during the Steve Jobs era. Maggi said humor helps people see whats wrong with parts of tech in a fresh way. It might be good to know, too, that there are some of us on the inside that aren’t drinking the Kool-Aid, says Maggi, who has co-founded several startups, adding that the magazine is also full of Easter eggs for insiders.
The print magazines design was influenced by digital UX pattern principles, patterns, and methods usually applied to organizing content in mobile appssuch as flow, discovery, and dwell time. Josh Kleiner, who led design for the issue, says the team wanted readers to get lost in the print magazine and be able to flip through it easily. They also added other quirks of digital design, like tracking sections based on the numbers of pages and words per page. The joke was that we were doing such clean grids, you could code on them. And then we just messed with them, Kleiner says. We kept things weird, doing things you wouldn’t traditionally do in print, like overlapping text and images in a certain way.
Despite the projects tech-savvy staff, Temkin and others say the project, which started in 2023, didnt use generative AI as much as one might expectother than for some help editing or tweaking some of the images. One of the few instances of AI-generated text includes blurbs about the magazine from ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, after Temkin uploaded the magazine and instructed each chatbot to “create a smackdown in the form of a tweet.”
A frictionless world
Over the past 25 years, Temkin argues Silicon Valley’s mission has been overachieved to the point where technology has become so frictionless that it’s now addictive. While he notes that there are plenty of ways tech is helping people, he said today’s landscape presents a different kind of inflection point. He also notes that writing about tech’s harms is far too often either done in an “unsophisticated or reflexive way” or focused on AI’s “corporate horse race.”
One of the new writers for the issue is Jon Callas, a renowned cryptographer and privacy advocate who has led security efforts at Apple, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and elsewhere. Callas, who wrote a piece about data privacy 25 years after the last issue, doesnt think the future of tech will be as good as people claim, but also not as bad as some think.
“It’s difficult to have a real conversation about whether or not something is good or bad based upon either extreme,” he says. “It really is like the old saying about averageswhere if you have one foot in a bucket of boiling water and one foot in a bucket of ice water, on average you’re comfortable.
Except for the skeletons of demolished buildings or the occasional new construction site, the Pacific Palisadesthe wealthy, elevated coastal enclave of Los Angeles that was consumed by wildfires in Januaryremains mostly blank.
Much of the wreckage, rubble, soil, and plant life has been scrapped and removed by the Army Corp of Engineers. Trees are among the few elements of the area that remain as they were, remnants of the communitys long obsession with them, including famous residents like Abbot Kinney and Will Rogers. In a landscape now devoid of landmarks, such survivors (roughly 75% of street trees made it through the fire) tell a story and connect residents to the past.
[Photo: David Swanson/Getty Images]
I would fill up every water bottle I had and drive an hour back to the Palisades and water the jacaranda trees in my yard, said Vicki Warren, board secretary of the Palisades Forestry Committee, of her effort to care for the grand, purple-flowered trees in her yard. People are doing things like that, because its such a healing thing to take care of a living thing near your home.
From top: Pacific Palisades, California, in 2016 and 2025 [Photos: Julia Beverly/Getty Images, Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images]
For many Palisades residents, the landscape has also become a flashpoint around larger questions of rebuilding and resiliency. In community meetings, many residents have pushed back against proposals to mandate more fire-resilient yards. Theyre especially opposed to a concept called Zone Zero, which would mandate creating an ember-resistant, noncombustible barrier around homes that would require clearing out a large number of plants and trees (including, in some cases, those trees that survived the blaze).
Supported by state fire officials and the insurance industry, Zone Zero is a concept being embraced by the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, which has sped up the process of drafting a Zone Zero regulation for high-fire-risk areas. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a declaration in February seeking to expedite the process and create rules by the end of the year.
[Photo: David Card/Palisades Forestry Committee]
Regulatory tension
The battle over rebuilding and replanting to mimic pre-fire designs has become a growing issue in the Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and other high-risk areas in Los Angeles County.
Some residents who became accustomed to dense foliage, lush yards, and the privacy that such plantings bestowed, fear efforts to regulate landscaping to the degree the government is proposing. In a statement last month, Traci Park, the L.A. city councilmember whose district includes the Palisades, characterized the one-size-fits-all regulations as overly burdensome and built on incomplete science applied without local input or context.
And its not just an issue for areas impacted by the January 2025 wildfires. Roughly 17% of the states buildings and large parts of L.A. would be impacted by pending statewide regulations and a recent update of fire-hazard maps. With the insurance industry supporting the idea and wildfire risk only growing, these regulations could very well spread to other states (Kauai County in Hawaii, and Boulder, Colorado, passed such rules earlier this year.)
[Photo: David Card/Palisades Forestry Committee]
The Zone Zero idea comes from research about the causes of fires in the state, and efforts to create a more defensible wildland-urban interface, the area where most wildfires start and spread. Since wildfires tend to spread to homes due to flying embers and ignited plants and trees, the Zone Zero approach seeks to remove fire hazards and potential sources of ignitin near a residence. Recent research showed that both hardening homes and enacting Zone Zero would cut the number of impacted structures during a wildfire in half.
The vegetation is also very, very critical, because all vegetation will burn under enough duration and heat, said Kimiko Barrett, lead wildfire researcher for Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research group focused on community development. I think where it becomes challenging is when you’re talking about large trees. And you know, some types of trees are going to be more tolerant to fire than others, and that’s where it starts to get a little bit nebulous.
[Photo: David Card/Palisades Forestry Committee]
More Security or Moonscapes?
Tony Andersen, Executive Officer with the Board of Forestry & Fire Protection, says it’s a select few vocal homeowners are pushing back against these regulations. To him, its clear the status quo isnt working, and these evolving guidelines, arrived at through years of research and community feedback, can be an important tool in the toolbox to prevent fire damage.
There is a lot of science out there that is supporting this, guiding it, directing it, and serving as sort of a framework from what we’re working from, he says.
Research suggests applying Zone Zero to high fire-hazard areas of LA county would require changes around 400,00 structures, and opponents argue these shifts could have significant impacts on shade, wildlife habitat, biodiversity, and urban heat islands (and cooling costs). The citys Community Forestry Advisory Committee released a report saying these Zone Zero recommendations would have a $13,000 impact on every household, on average. A September 18 meeting by the Board of Forestry in Pasadena to obtain feedback over proposed Zone Zero regulations received a fairly negative response from homeowners.
Theyre talking about destroying our urban canopy, hundreds of acres of trees for uncertain benefits, said Cyndi Hubach, a member of L.A.s Community Forest Advisory Committee.
Many residents in the Palisades and other areas in high-fire zones that would be impacted by the rules have pushed back, citing the cost, ecological impact, and the uncertainty some researchers have about Zone Zero recommendations. Theyre angry that rules calling for reduced shrubs, hedges, and bushes; tightly trimmed trees; and empty spaces, especially in tighter urban lots, would turn their once-green backyards into what some have called unrecognizable moonscapes.
Some opponents argue the rules dont make distinctions around types of treessome have more oil and are more flammable. Another argument is around whether or not well-watered vegetation could be a good way to prevent ignition (and of course, how that could be checked or monitored). Warren, of the Palisades Forestry Committee, said theres a number of researchers who argue that well-watered plants and trees can protect homes and block embers, and disputes the idea that the science around this issue is settled.
Palisades resident Tracey Price, who owns the landscaping company American Growers, said that the hedges on her property stopped embers and flames from burning her home, and she believes these proposed regulations would be overkill, as properly maintained trees and plants can save structures.
Enforcing Zone Zero? Lets start with ALL city/county/state/federal buildings first, every library and post office, she wrote in a public comment about the regulations. Report back to us in a year with costs and utility bill increases for more air conditioning due to lack of shade. More blackouts because of our already strained power grid. Zone Zero removes life-saving protection.”
[Photo: David Card/Palisades Forestry Committee]
A Cultural Shift in Landscaping
California adopted a bill, SB 3074, in 2020 mandating the state create Zone Zero recommendations, but the governors push to get them finalized this year has created more anxiety around the rollout. In addition, the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), an insurance-industry backed nonprofit that researches building codes and safety and resilience standards, has enthusiastically supported the idea, which has led some opponents to claim its an effort by the industry to cut its losses.
The renewed focus on these issues comes as homeowners, who have endured months of back-and-forths with insurance firms to get their payments, planning with architects, and soil remediation and clearance, are likely set to start applying en masse for building permits. This may set up a scenario where home owners start building and planning for their new home, only to later learn theres new regulations around landscaping.
This may have significant consequences, says Jennifer Gray Thompson, founder and CEO of advocacy group After the Fire USA. Non-Zone Zero compliant lawns might set homeowners up for higher insurance premiums, or trouble getting insured. But ripping out established landscaping could cost tens of thousands of dollars (she recalled residents rebuilding in Paradise, site of a deadly 2018 Camp Fire, spending up to $100,000 on landscaping that eventually got ripped out).
I get it, like that’s what we’re used to doing, Thompson says of reluctance to rethink landscaping. We were also at one point used to going and using an outhouse and not having a bathroom in the house ever, and that it was totally disgusting to people that you would ever moveyour toilet into the house. And so, due to typhoid and cholera we had to make a cultural and generational shift. Megafires are a public health crisis like anything else, and require a similar shift.
[Photo: David Card/Palisades Forestry Committee]
Growth Patterns
Homeowners have varied visions of how they want to rebuild as they plot their returns to the Palisades, including submitting plans that include a fixed vision for landscaping. Its expected that more and more homeowners will start submitting in upcoming months, and uncertainty around final Zone Zero rules may cause some to plow ahead with their own ideas, or ignore the regulations completely.
Some designers are factoring this in. The organizers behind Case Study Adapt, a design competition to create new more resilient homes for the neighborhood, are deliberately designing homes and lots to provide barriers between plants and buildings, incorporate more water features, and utilize more native landscaping. Organizations like Fire Safe Marin, a Bay Area organization promoting fire safe landscaping, offer tips on reworking yards to be more fire safe.
Thompson believes that in the new era of megafires, its a matter of when, not if, Zone Zero and other such resiliency regulations become more widely adopted. But what happens in the Palisades might be a pivot point; the combination of wealth, celebrity, and clout in the area gives the community plenty of firepower to push back against these rules. Alternatively, adopting themand using creating eye-catching landscapes with these rules in mindcould accelerate what Thompson sees as a vital shift.
The final iteration of these rules will be closely watched by both sides (draft language is already available). Opponents hope that any new rules come with more flexibility for preservation of certain trees, and more municipal control. Lots of L.A.s urban tree canopy exists in the Palisades and hilly areas on the east side of town, both high fire severity zones, and arborists hope to preserve any and all urban trees they can.Theres also live questions about enforcement. Will CalFire and local fire inspectors really be checking how trees are trimmed and watered on a regular basis?
And perhaps more important to insurability and survivability, following Zone Zero requires a full community effort. If a handful of residents on a block do not create these defensible zones, Barrett says, they not only put their homes at risk, they do the same for other homes, and increase the insurance risks of others.
This megafire era requires not just design shifts but more community collaboration to become resilient. As neighborhoods return, and react, to whats becoming a more risky, fire-prone era, solidarity, not just combustibility, will become a watchword.
This is not the moment for the individual American way, Thompson says. This is a group project.
If you visit the Erie Canal today, youll find a tranquil waterway and trail that pass through charming towns and forests, a place where hikers, cyclists, kayakers, bird-watchers, and other visitors seek to enjoy nature and escape the pressures of modern life.
However, relaxation and scenic beauty had nothing to do with the origins of this waterway.
When the Erie Canal opened 200 years ago, on Oct. 26, 1825, the route was dotted with decaying trees left by construction that had cut through more than 360 miles of forests and fields, and life quickly sped up.
Mules on the towpath along the canal could pull a heavy barge at a clip of 4 miles per hourfar faster than the job of dragging wagons over primitive roads. Boats rushed goods and people between the Great Lakes heartland and the port of New York City in days rather than weeks. Freight costs fell by 90%.
As many books have proclaimed, the Erie Canals opening in 1825 solidified New Yorks reputation as the Empire State. It also transformed the surrounding environment and forever changed the ecology of the Hudson River and the lower Great Lakes.
For environmental historians like me, the canals bicentennial provides an opportunity to reflect upon its complex legacies, including the evolution of U.S. efforts to balance economic progress and ecological costs.
Human and natural communities ruptured
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Indigenous nations that the French called the Iroquois, engaged in canoe-based trade throughout the Great Lakes and Hudson River valley for centuries. In the 1700s, that began to change as American colonists took the land through brutal warfare, inequitable treaties, and exploitative policies.
That Haudenosaunee dispossession made the Erie Canal possible.
Haiwhagai’i Jake Edwards of the Onondaga Nation describes the Erie Canals impact on the people of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. WMHT.
After the Revolutionary War, commercial enthusiasm for a direct waterborne route to the West intensified. Canal supporters identified the break in the Appalachian Mountains at the junction of the Mohawk River and the Hudson as a propitious place to dig a channel to Lake Erie.
Yet cutting a 363-mile-long waterway through New Yorks uneven terrain posed formidable challenges. Because the landscape rises 571 feet between Albany and Buffalo, a canal would require multiple locks to raise and lower boats.
Federal officials refused to finance such internal improvements. But New York politician DeWitt Clinton was determined to complete the project, even if it meant using only state funds. Critics mocked the $7 million megaproject, worth around US$170 million today, calling it DeWitts Ditch and Clintons Folly. In 1817, however, thousands of men began digging the 4-foot-deep channel using hand shovels and pickaxes.
The construction work produced engineering breakthroughs, such as hydraulic cement made from local materials and locks that lifted the canals water level about 60 feet at Lockport, yet it obliterated acres of wetlands and forests.
After riding a canal boat between Utica and Syracuse, the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne described the surroundings in 1835 as now decayed and death-struck.
However, most canalgoers viewed the waterway as a beacon of progress. As a trade artery, it made New York City the nations financial center. As a people mover, it fueled religious revivals, social reform movements, and the growth of Great Lakes cities.
The Erie Canals socioeconomic benefits came with more environmental costs: The passageway enabled organisms from faraway places to reach lakes and rivers that had been isolated since the end of the last ice age.
An invasive species expressway
On Oct. 26, 1825, Gov. Clinton led a flotilla aboard the Seneca Chief from Buffalo to New York City that culminated in a grandiose ceremony.
To symbolize the global connections made possible by the new canal, participants poured water from Lake Erie and rivers round the world into the Atlantic at Sandy Hook, a sand spit off New Jersey at the entrance to New York Harbor. Observers at the time described the ritual of commingling the waters of the Lakes with the Ocean in matrimonial terms.
Clinton was an accomplished naturalist who had researched the canal routes geology, birds, and fish. He even predicted that the waterway would bring the western fishes into the eastern waters.
Biologists today would consider the Wedding of the Waters event a biosecurity risk.
The Erie Canal and its adjacent feeder rivers and reservoirs likely enabled two voracious nonnative species, the Atlantic sea lamprey and alewife, to enter the Great Lakes ecosystem. By preying on lake trout and other highly valued native fish, these invaders devastated the lakes commercial fisheries. The harvest dropped by a stunning 98% from the previous average by the early 1960s.
Tracing their origins is tricky, but historical, ecological and genetic data suggest that sea lampreys and alewives entered Lake Ontario via the Erie Canal during the 1860s. Later improvements to the Welland Canal in Canada enabled them to reach the upper Great Lakes by the 1930s.
Protecting the $5 billion Great Lakes fishery from these invasive organisms requires constant work and consistent funding. In particular, applying pesticides and other techniques to control lamprey populations costs around $20 million per year.
The invasive species that has inflicted the most environmental and economic harm on the Great Lakes is the zebra mussel. Zebra mussels traveled from Eurasia via the ballast water of transoceanic ships using the St. Lawrence Seaway during the 1980s. The Erie Canal then became a mussel expressway to the Hudson River.
The hungry invading mussels caused a nearly tenfold reduction of phytoplankton, the primary food of many species of the Hudson River ecosystem. This competition for food, along with pollution and habitat degradation, led to the disappearance of two common species of the Hudsons native pearly mussels.
Today, the Erie Canal remains vulnerable to invasive plants, such as water chestnut and hydrilla, and invasive animals such as round goby. Boaters, kayakers and anglers can help reduce bioinvasions by cleaning, draining and drying their equipment after each use to avoid carrying invasive species to new locations.
A recreational treasure
During the Gilded Age in the late 1800s, the Erie Canal sparked a utilitarian sense of environmental concern. Timber cutting in the Adirondack Mountains was causing so much erosion that the eastern canals feeder rivers were filling up with silt.
To protect these waterways, New York created Adirondack Park in 1892. Covering 6 million acres, the park balances forest preservation, recreation and commercial use on a unique mix of public and private lands.
Erie Canal shipping declined during the 20th century with the opening of the deeper and wider St. Lawrence Seaway and competition from rail and highways. The canal still supports commerce, but the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor now provides an additional economic engine.
A kayak tour shows how locks operate on the Erie Canal. WMHT Public Media.
In 2024, 3.84 million people used the Erie Canalway Trail for cycling, hiking, kayaking, sightseeing and other adventures. The tourists and day-trippers who enjoy the historic landscape generate over $300 million annually.
Over the past 200 years, the Erie Canal has both shaped and been shaped by ecological forces and changing socioeconomic priorities. As New York reimagines the canal for its third century, the artificial rivers environmental history provides important insights for designing technological systems that respect human communities and work with nature rather than against it.
Christine Keiner is the chair of the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at the Rochester Institue of Technology.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Surveillance pricing has dominated headlines recently. Delta Air Lines announcement that it will use artificial intelligence to set individualized ticket prices has led to widespread concerns about companies using personal data to charge different prices for identical products. As The New York Times reported, this practice involves companies tracking everything from your hotel bookings to your browsing history to determine what youre willing to pay.
The reaction has been swift. Democratic lawmakers have responded with outrage, with Texas Representative Greg Casar introducing legislation to ban the practice. Meanwhile, President Donald Trumps new chair of the Federal Trade Commission has shut down public comment on the issue, signaling that the regulatory pendulum may swing away from oversight entirely.
Whats missing in this political back-and-forth is a deeper look at the economics. As a business school professor who researches pricing strategy, I think the debate misses important nuances. Opponents of surveillance pricing overlook some potential benefits that could make markets both more efficient and, counterintuitively, more equitable.
What surveillance pricing actually is
Surveillance pricing differs from traditional dynamic pricing, where prices rise for everyone at times of peak demand. Instead, it uses personal databrowsing history, location, purchase patterns, even device typeto charge a unique price based on what algorithms predict youre willing to pay.
The goal is to discover each customers reservation pricethe most theyll pay before walking away. Until recently, this was extremely difficult to do, but modern data collection has made it increasingly feasible.
An FTC investigation found that companies track highly personal consumer behaviors to set individualized prices. For example, a new parent searching for baby thermometers might find pricier products on the first page of their results than a nonparent would. Its not surprising that many people think this is unfair.
The unintended progressive tax
But consider this: Surveillance pricing also means that wealthy customers pay more for identical goods, while lower-income customers pay less. That means it could achieve redistribution goals typically pursued through government policy. Pharmaceutical companies already do this globally, charging wealthier countries more for identical drugs to make medications accessible in poorer nations. Surveillance pricing could function as a private-sector progressive tax system.
Economists call it price discrimination, but it often helps poorer consumers access goods they might otherwise be unable to afford. And unlike government programs, this type of redistribution requires no taxpayer funding. When Amazons algorithm charges me more than a college student for the same laptop, its effectively running a means-tested subsidy programfunded by consumers.
PBS NewsHour featured a segment on the Delta Air Lines news.
The two-tier economy problem
In my view, the most legitimate concern about surveillance pricing isnt that it exists, but how its implemented. Online retailers can seamlessly adjust prices in real time, while physical stores remain largely stuck with uniform pricing. Imagine the customer fury if Targets checkout prices varied by person based on their smartphone data: There could be chaos in the stores. This digital-physical divide could also create unfair advantages for tech-savvy companies while leaving traditional retailers behind. That would raise fairness considerations for consumers as well as retailers.
This is related to another force that could limit how far surveillance pricing can go: arbitrage, or the practice of buying something where it is cheaper and selling it where it is more expensive.
If a system consistently charges wealthy customers $500 for items that cost poor customers $200, it creates opportunities for entrepreneurial intermediaries to exploit these price gaps. Personal shopping services, buying cooperatives, or even friends and family networks could arbitrage these differences, providing wealthy customers access to the lower prices while splitting the savings. This means surveillance pricing cant discriminate too aggressivelymarket forces will erode excessive price gaps.
Thats why I believe the solution isnt to ban surveillance pricing entirely, but to monitor how its put in practice.
The regulatory sweet spot
The current political moment offers a strange opportunity. With Republicans focused on AI innovation and Democrats fixated on bans, theres space for a more sophisticated position that embraces market-based redistribution while demanding strong consumer protections.
In my view, smart regulation would require companies to disclose when personal data influences pricing, and would prohibit discrimination based on protected characteristics such as race, color, or religionand this list needs to be created extremely carefully. This would preserve the efficiency benefits while preventing abuse.
Surveillance pricing based on desperation or need also raises unique ethical questions. Charging a wealthier customer more for a taxi ride is one thing; charging someone extra solely because their battery is low and they risk being stranded is another.
As I see it, the distinction between ability to pay and urgency of need must become the cornerstone of regulation. While distinguishing the two may seem challenging, its far from impossible. It would help if customers were empowered to report exploitative practices, using mechanisms similar to existing price-gouging protections.
A solid regulatory framework must also clarify the difference between dynamic pricing and surveillance-based exploitation. Dynamic pricing has long been standard practice: Airlines charge all last-minute travelers higher fares, regardless of their circumstances. But consider two passengers buying tickets on the same dayone rushing to a funeral, another planning a spontaneous vacation. Right now, airlines can use technology to identify and exploit the funeral attendees desperate circumstances.
The policy challenge is precise: Can we design regulations that prevent airlines from exploiting the bereaved while still allowing retailers to offer discounts on laptops to lower-income families? The answer will determine whether surveillance pricing becomes a tool for equity or exploitation.
Aradhna Krishna is a Dwight F. Benton professor of marketing at the University of Michigan.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
As economic uncertainty deepens, the rush for gold continueswith prices for the precious metal topping $4,300 for the first time this week.
The going price for New York spot closed at a record $4,326 per troy ounce on Thursday. Futures also traded as high at more than $4,344 per troy ounce Thursday, before falling below the $4,300 mark Friday morning. Still, gold is up significantly over the last week, marking one of its best weeks to date.
Gold sales can rise sharply when anxious investors seek a safe haven for their money. For the U.S., the latest gains arrive amid the now weekslong government shutdown and ongoing trade wars abroadwith President Donald Trump most recently threatening to place much higher tariffs on China, before appearing to walk back those potential new levies as unsustainable. Still, his barrage of other import taxes has already strained economies worldwide. Meanwhile, the prospect of lower interest rates is also making gold a more attractive investment.
Why are gold prices going up?
Gold futures are up nearly 60% since the start of 2025trading at about $4,268 per troy ounce, the standard for measuring precious metals, as of around 11:45 a.m. Friday. Thats up from around $2,670 at the beginning of January.
Silver has seen an even bigger percentage jump year to date. Silver futures are up about 70%, trading at over $50 per troy ounce Friday morning.
A lot of the rise boils down to uncertainty. Interest in buying metals like gold typically spikes when investors become anxious.
Much of this year’s economic turmoil has spanned from Trumps trade wars. Since the start of 2025, steep new tariffs the president has imposed on goods coming into the U.S. from around the world have strained businesses and consumers alikepushing costs higher and helping to weaken the job market. As a result, hiring has plunged while inflation has inched back up. And more and more consumers are expressing pessimism about the road ahead.
The U.S. government shutdown adds to those anxieties. Key economic data has been delayedand scores of federal employees are already feeling the effects of furloughs and working without pay as long as the shutdown lasts, which has no immediate end in sight. The Trump administration also moved to use the shutdown to conduct mass firings, although a judge temporarily blocked such action.
Separately, analysts have pointed to continued weakness of the U.S. dollar and renewed rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. Last month, the Fed cut its key interest rate by a quarter-pointand projected it would do so twice more this year.
Investments in gold have also been driven by other factors over time. Over recent years, there’s been strong gold demand from central banks around the worldparticularly amid heightened geopolitical tensions, such as the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
And on Wall Street this week, several regional banks saw sharp losses amid scrunity over quality of loans, although recovery seemed to be steadying the market on Friday. Meanwhile, investors appeared to be distancing themselves from riskier assets like cryptocurrencywith bitcoin, for example, down 2.67%.
Will rising gold prices make jewelry more expensive?
Many jewelry merchants and dealers have increasingly reported surges in customers looking to check the value of gold they ownsometimes opting to melt or sell family heirlooms to cash in on the precious metal’s rising price.
At the same time, those in the market for gold jewelry may be feeling sticker shock if they cant afford certain products anymoreparticularly if it’s something impacted by both rising material costs and tariffs.
Larger retailers like Pandora and Signet have acknowledged these headwinds in recent earnings calls.
Is gold worth the investment?
Advocates of investing in gold call it a safe havenarguing that the commodity can serve to diversify and balance your investment portfolio, as well as mitigate possible risks down the road as a hedge against rising inflation. Some also take comfort in buying something tangible that has the potential to increase in value over time.
Still, experts caution against putting all your eggs in one basket. And not everyone agrees gold is a good investment. Critics say gold isnt always the inflation hedge many claimand that there are more efficient ways to protect against potential loss of capital, such as derivative-based investments.
The Commodity Futures Trade Commission has also previously warned people to be wary of investing in gold. Precious metals can be highly volatile, and prices rise as demand goes upmeaning when economic anxiety or instability is high, the people who typically profit from precious metals are the sellers,” the commission noted.
Gold demand escalates mercury poisoning warnings
The frenzy for gold has also resulted in health and environmental consequences with officials pointing to riing demand for mercury, a toxic metal that is key in illegal gold mining worldwide.
Mercury is widely used to separate gold during artisanal or small-scale mining. But it pollutes water, accumulates in fish, makes its way into food and builds up in peoples bodies, leading to neurological and developmental harm. Even small-scale exposure can carry serious risks putting in danger workers who rely on the industry, as well as residents in affected areas more broadly.
The Associated Press has reported about the effects of mercury poisoning tied to gold mining in countries like Senegal, Mexico and Peru, among other parts of the world.
By Wyatte Grantham-Philips, AP Business Writer
A blood test for more than 50 types of cancer could significantly boost early detection and speed up diagnosis, according to a new study.
Made by U.S. pharmaceutical company Grail, the Galleri test aims to find fragments of DNA in a persons blood that can indicate the presence of a cancerous tumor. Among the cancers that the test can detect, many have no current screening programs.
The PATHFINDER 2 study included more than 36,000 people aged 50 and older who had no cancer symptoms. In participants who were followed for more than a year, the test caught some 40.4% of cancer cases. For those who got a positive result on the Galleri test, 61.6% of them went on to be diagnosed with canceran improvement over previous trials of the test.
The results were presented on Saturday at the European Society for Medical Oncology meeting in Berlin, and have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Boosting cancer diagnosis
In the study, the Galleri test, when combined with already existing screening for breast, cervical, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancers, yielded a more than seven-fold increase in the cancer detection rate, according to Grails president Josh Ofman in a press release.
Galleri also detected many cancers which dont have standard screening tests, including notoriously hard to diagnose forms of the disease, such as ovarian and pancreatic cancer.
More than half (53.5%) of the cancers detected by the test were stage I or II, according to Grail. And the test was also able to predict the origin of the cancer accurately 92% of the time, according to the study.
Promising results
Grail says the blood test could save lives through early detection. The companys president of biopharma, Sir Harpal Kumar, told the BBC that the results were compelling.
“The vast majority of people who die from cancer do so because we find their cancers too late, he said. But other experts cautioned that more research is needed before the test is ready for primetime, Sky News and the BBC reported, with one expert telling the BBC more work would be required to “avoid overdiagnosing cancers that may have caused harm.”
The test is currently being trialed in England in 140,000 people, with results expected next year, according to the BBC.
The Australian government has begun a public education campaign with tips on how to wean children off social media ahead of a world-first national 16-year age limit taking effect in December.
Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said Friday that information on her agency’s website, esafety.gov.au, explained the new laws and how to navigate them.
Starting Dec. 10, platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube could be fined up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) if they dont take reasonable steps to prevent Australians younger than 16 from holding accounts.
Messages raising awareness will also be shared starting Sunday across digital channels, television, radio and billboards.
We want children to have childhoods. We want parents to have peace of mind and we want young peopleyoung Australiansto have three more years to learn who they are before platforms assume who they are, Communications Minister Anika Wells told reporters, referring to the current de facto 13-year age limit for social media accounts based on U.S. privacy legislation.
How are Australians reacting to the ban?
The Australian age restrictions have already proved polarizing, with some experts warning the changes will harm as well as protect children. More than 140 Australian and international academics signed an open letter to the government last year opposing a social media age limit as too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.
Despite that warning, the laws passed with resounding support last year. The platforms had a year to figure out how to comply without foolproof technology available to verify ages.
Inman Grant said the social media age restriction would be a very monumental event for a lot of young people.
Teens given checklists to prepare
Her agency offered checklists and conversation starters about ways to make the transition, such as following an online influencer through a website rather than a social media account, she said.
How do we start weaning them from social media now so it isnt a shock on Dec. 10? How do we help them download their archives and their memories and how do we make sure that theyre in touch with friends and are aware of mental health support if theyre feeling down when theyre not tethered to their phones over the holiday period? she added.
The agency’s teen “get ready” checklist includes suggestions such as “map your digital world” and to take practical steps like finding other ways to follow their favorite influencers online or scheduling regular phone calls with their friends. The entire list is as follows:
Understand what’s changing and why
Workout which accounts you’ll lose
Map your digital world
Explore other ways to connect and belong
Build your community
Protect your digital memories
Avoid last-minute stress
Find support
Will other countries follow Australia’s lead?
Australias move is being watched closely by countries that share concerns about social media impacts on young children.
Denmarks Ambassador to Australia Ingrid Dahl-Madsen said her government would use its current presidency of the Council of the European Union to push the agenda of protecting children from social media harms.
This is something that is a global challenge and we are all looking at how we can manage it best and we are looking to Australia and we will be looking at what Australia does, Dahl-Madsen told Australian Broadcasting Corp. in Melbourne on Monday.
Its so important that Australia and Demark and the EUwe share lessons, we compare experiences and we can push forward hopefully practical progress on this, she added. It was about “protecting our children in this digital world that is increasingly complicated.”
The Danish government last week proposed legislating an age limit of 15. But Dahl-Madsen said Denmark would consider letting parents exempt their children who were 13-14. Australia has no similar exemption.
By Rod McGuirk, Associated Press
Meta is rolling out a new Facebook feature that the company says will help users share more photosbut which could also be used to help train its AI.
The opt-in feature allows Facebooks AI to access your phone’s camera roll in order to find photos it finds “shareworthy,” and to suggest edits using its AI tools. Users can then decide if they want to share the images or not.
“With your permission and the help of AI, our new feature enables Facebook to automatically surface hidden gems those memorable moments that get lost among screenshots, receipts, and random snaps and edit them to save or share,” Meta said in its announcement explaining the new feature on Friday. The platform will also suggest fun edits for users to share.
The new feature has been rolled out in the US and Canada, and Meta aims to roll it out in additional countries soon.
What are users opting into?
Metas latest feature announcement says that for users who opt in, the feature makes photo sharing suggestions that “are private to you,” and that nothing will be shared unless you agree. Meta also said Facebook won’t “use media from your camera roll to improve AI at Metaunless you use its AI to edit or upload the photos.
Fast Company reached out to Meta for comment but did not hear back by the time of publication.
Meta already gathers Facebook user data to train its AI. In a 2023 announcement, Meta said it could use any user data shared on Facebook or Instagram to train its AI.
“Generative AI models take a large amount of data to effectively train, so a combination of sources are used for training, including information thats publicly available online, licensed data and information from Metas products and services,” the company said at the time. “Publicly shared posts from Instagram and Facebook including photos and text were part of the data used to train the generative AI models underlying the features.”
Metas terms also state that “your interactions with AI features can be used to train AI models. Examples include messages to AI chats, questions you ask and images you ask Meta AI to imagine for you.”
This is also not the first time Meta has asked users permission to look at their camera rolls. In June, Facebook began asking users for access to their phones camera roll to automatically suggest AI-edited versions of their photos, including images they had not posted for public viewing. Users who wanted to use the feature were prompted to opt-in to “cloud processing,” allowing Facebook access to their camera roll, as well as opting in to Meta’s Terms of Service, which includes agreeing to allow its AI to “retain and use that information to provide more personalized Outputs.” At the time, Meta told The Verge that it was not currently using those photos to train its AI models.
Fast Company has previously written about how hard Meta has made it for Instagram users to opt out of AI training. Users who want to opt out have to answer a series of questions and explain why they don’t want the app to use their data. Requests are then subject to a review process, which suggests the company can decide whether to honor the request. Meta noted in its Friday announcement that users can manage or disable the new AI photo feature at any time in Facebook’s camera roll settings.
