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Before the age of technological distraction, we lived more in tune with our bodies. We spent more time outdoors where the sun regulated our circadian rhythms, which has been scientifically proven to reduce anxiety and depression. Without constant distraction, people sat in their boredom, which became drivers of artistic endeavors, creative ideas, and human connection. But how many of us can remember the last time we were truly bored?Drove without music, or sat in a coffee shop simply looking out the window? Today, our digital devices have optimized our lives to the point of exhaustion. In pursuit of a frictionless experience, technology has eradicated the natural pauses that once grounded us in our bodies and environments. Yet research shows that taking breaks throughout the day is critical for restoring energy, improving focus, and inspiring creativity. THE MYTH ABOUT OPTIMIZATION We currently subscribe to the myth that if everything is efficient and optimized, our lives will feel easy and pain-free. We can order just about anything with the press of a button, or access infinite entertainment to fill every idle moment. Machines clean our clothes, dishes, and soon, well be able to offload daily chores to household robots. At work, we can use AI to automate tedious tasks or avoid the sometimes painful stuckness of thinking. Everything around us is designed to feel effortless, yet somehow it feels anything but. For decades, businesses have equated technological progress with the most optimized path. In many ways weve arrived, yet were more unhappy than ever. Since 2005, the depression and anxiety among young people has increased by 63%, due, in part, to greater levels of social media engagement, academic stress, and economic stress. Most of us know this experience firsthand: We get lost in a social media or news feed, only to emerge an hour later, disembodied, losing the throughline of the initial query. Or we pick up a phone reflexively, even if theres nothing pressing to do or see. Research shows that overuse of smartphones can make us more in touch with our screens and less in touch with our bodies. This has only been exacerbated as platforms have shifted away from user autonomy and toward extractive profit models. As journalist and coiner of the term enshittification, Cory Doctorow wrote in a story for Wired, Technological self-determination is at odds with the natural imperatives of tech businesses. They make more money when they take away our freedomour freedom to speak, to leave, to connect. In response, a growing movement of young people has begun leaving social media platforms, even ditching their cell phones altogether. In a New York Times story featuring Luddite teens, one teen was quoted as saying, things instantly changed. I started using my brain. It made me observe myself as a person, after trading their smartphone for a flip phone. Their goal isnt for everyone to get a flip phone, but to inspire people to reflect on their relationships with technology. DESIGN THAT GIVES USERS CONTROL With AI embedded into our devices and digital platforms, the tension between user autonomy and technological progress is growing. Our tools are evolving to anticipate our habits and desires, often outside of cognitive awareness. Now is our opportunity to step back and determine what we want technology to do for us, and what we want to do for ourselves. For designers, its about questioning how we might create products and experiences that restore control to the user over their time and attention. Only when we begin designing for moments of pause, can we begin to address our fundamental human needs. In the same way handwriting can slow your thoughts, dumb phones force users to pause and contemplate their next moves and interactions. Light Phone and Mudita are examples of a design philosophy that give control back to the user. Instead of the typical smartphone that commodifies your attention, dumb phones are designed as a tool to be used, giving users the ability to customize the apps loaded onto the device. These phones are not for everyone. The experience is intentionally slow and far from seamless. The friction is a forcing mechanism for users to pause. Like handwriting, resonant breathing has been proven to improve heart rate variability, a metric that can indicate wellbeing and mood. Devices intentionally designed with minimal features, like Ohm, help users slow down and reconnect to their bodys signals through breathwork. On the creative side, publishing platforms like Substack and Inoreader allow users to choose who they read and subscribe to. These intentionally designed platforms allow users to build their own news feeds and maximize their time rather than being fed content based on algorithms. FINAL THOUGHTS We may have different aspirations for our relationships with technology, but we should all feel autonomous in choosing them. Questioning the never-ending optimization is the first step to determining what we want our collective future to look like. For designers, its about not assuming the maximum, most feature-rich experience, but about distilling a product to its essential utility and allowing people to form their own relationship to it. Designing for natural pauses allows us all to feel a little more present and in tune with our core needs, and how to address them. So perhaps the next wave of technology isnt about doing everything for us, but instead about giving us back the space to choose. Dan Harden is the founder and CEO of Whipsaw.
Category:
E-Commerce
In 2008, we published the first listing on a bare-bones website called RunMyErrand.com: a single task, posted by someone who needed help, to be completed by an individual who had opted into making their time and abilities available. At the time, it was an untested idea, launched in the midst of the worst financial downturn in a generation, and there was no established language for what we were building. The term gig economy did not yet exist, and there was no widely accepted model for how a person in need might hire a stranger through a digital marketplace to complete a unit of work. This was before Uber, Instacart, and Postmates, and before on-demand labor became a familiar part of daily life. Smartphones were still early in their evolution, and engineers like me were only beginning to understand how mobile computing, location data, and social connection might combine to enable an entirely new economic behavior. We believed we were building a simple errand marketplace, but quickly realized this heralded a broader transition toward making these transactions of time and labor widely accessible. What we did not yet realize was that we were participating in a broader societal shift that would fundamentally change how people thought about work, income, and employment. Looking back, it is now clear that this period marked the beginning of a structural transformation in the labor market. Platforms like TaskRabbit helped make flexible, on-demand work visible, available, and scalable, while also enabling new ways for individuals to participate in the economy outside of traditional full-time employment. Over time, these models contributed to the rise of portfolio careers and multiple income streams, blurring the boundary between salaried work and independent labor in ways that have since become normalized. A New Inflection Point for Work We are now standing at another inflection point, but the nature of this shift is different. While the gig economy reshaped how work is distributed and compensated, AI is reshaping what kind of work is valued in the first place. For decades, jobs have been defined by discrete, specialized skills. Writing, coding, financial analysis, forecasting, and operational planning formed the foundation of most knowledge work, and expertise in these domains served as a proxy for value. Credentials, degrees, and job descriptions reinforced the idea that professional worth was tied to the ability to execute specific tasks accurately and efficiently. AI disrupts this model at a fundamental level. Many of the activities that once signaled expertise are rapidly becoming baseline capabilities, available to anyone with access to the same tools. Writing, coding, and analysis can now be generated, refined, and scaled with unprecedented speed, flattening the value of execution itself. Historically, technological change has displaced physical or repetitive labor, often eliminating some jobs while creating others. What distinguishes this moment is that AI does not merely automate tasks at the edges of knowledge work; it challenges the central premise that skills alone are a measurable advantage and worthwhile barometer for potential success. From Skills to Creativity As execution becomes commoditized, the next era of work will reward what these systems cannot replicate. Creativity, interpretation, and cross-disciplinary imagination are becoming increasingly valuable because they shape how judgement is made, not just how efficiently tasks are completed. What matters now is not simply the ability to produce outputs, but the ability to frame problems, apply taste and novel ideas, and connect the dots across domains. Taste and interpretation take on new economic significance, along with making sense of complexity and possible decisions amid overwhelming choice. As an investor, I have observed that many of the strongest founders operating today do not fit neatly into traditional categories of specialization. They tend to be hybrids who combine technical fluency with creative or human-centered disciplines, allowing them to reframe problems in ways that are difficult to replicate. These individuals are able to step outside established assumptions and articulate solutions that feel both novel and coherent. My own background reflects this hybrid approach. I studied math and computer science, but I also minored in dance, and I attended a small liberal arts college that emphasized interdisciplinary thinking and communication across domains. At the time, this path did not resemble the conventional trajectory of an engineer, but it proved formative in shaping how I approached building a company during a period of severe constraint and uncertainty. Constraint as a Creative Advantage TaskRabbit was built between 2008 and 2010, when venture capital was scarce and consumer trust was fragile. Operating under these conditions forced clarity about priorities and sharpened our focus on what truly mattered. While the technological landscape has changed dramatically since then, the underlying lesson remains relevant. Constraint can be a powerful catalyst for creativity, particularly in an environment where new tools make it tempting to pursue too many directions at once. Today, AI enables teams to experiment rapidly and produce a wide range of outputs with minimal friction. That abundance can be useful, but it can also dilute focus. Many organizations struggle not because they lack ideas or capabilities, but because they attempt to do too much at once. In contrast, the leaders most likely to succeed in this era will be those who can identify the few connections that matter and build with intention rather than breadth. Five Principles for the AI Era If I were starting over today, I would focus less on mastering skills and tools, and more on cultivating the capabilities for applied creativity: Study outside your lane. Perspective is built by crossing disciplines, not by staying within them. Insight often emerges from unexpected combinations rather than deeper specialization alone. Develop taste. AI can generate infinite viable options. The ability to discern what is meaningful, coherent, or worth pursuing is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable. Learn to ask better questions. The framing of a problem now matters more than the speed at which an answer can be produced. Clear questions shape better outcomes. Build with what you have. Constraint forces focus and intention. Limited resources can sharpen creativity rather than hinder it. Seek friction, not agreement. AI is excellent at reinforcing existing perspectives. Innovation more often emerges from challenge, disagreement, and productive tension. The Shape of Work Ahead Over time, these shifts will reshape how organizations hire and evaluate talent. Credentials will matter less than originalty, and linear career paths will give way to bodies of work that demonstrate creative judgment and independent thinking. Side projects, essays, experiments, and unconventional experiences previously left off of résumés will increasingly signal potential for creative thinking. In moments of profound technological change, there is rarely a clear playbook. There is, however, a pattern. The individuals and organizations that thrive are not those who optimize for efficiency alone, but those who are willing to break precedent, integrate diverse perspectives, and imagine new frameworks for value creation. In a world where everyone has access to artificial intelligence, creativity is no longer peripheral to work. It is becoming the primary currency through which work is defined and rewarded.
Category:
E-Commerce
To anchor the long rows of server racks that power the artificial intelligence boom, every data center needs thousands of holes drilled into its concrete floor. It’s a precise part of the construction process that has required workers to bend over with handheld drills for hours at a time grinding meticulously placed holes into thick pads of concrete. Now, there’s a robot doing it up to 10 times as fast. Tool brand DeWalt has just revealed a downward-drilling robot that can autonomously roam the floors of under construction data centers to drill the thousands of holes that are necessary for installing server hardware and other building elements. Developed in conjunction with August Robotics and tested on data centers being built by an unnamed “hyperscaler” tech company, the autonomous robotic drill has been used to pop more than 90,000 holes into the floors of data centers, all without human involvement. [Photo: DeWalt] A task that can take human workers up to two months in a large data center can now be handled by a fleet of three or four robots in a matter of days. “That is so critical from a construction perspective, because they can’t move to the next stage of construction until this is done,” says Bill Beck, president of tools and outdoor for Stanley Black and Decker, the parent company of the DeWalt brand. The pace is striking. For a smaller hole less than 1 inch wide and 2 inches deep, the robot can locate and drill one hole every 80 seconds. For a larger hole, 1 inch wide and 8 inches deep, it can finish a hole every 180 seconds. During its pilot phase, the robotic drill managed an accuracy rate of 99.97%. And because the robot is capable of operating 24 hours a day, project timelines can be drastically slashed. [Video: DeWalt] Making this process faster is increasingly important as data centers balloon in size. From single buildings to sprawling campuses, data centers are taking up vast amounts of space and becoming increasingly complex to build. “They’re huge slabs of concrete,” says Beck. With upwards of 10,000 holes needed to be drilled in each one, the job can be daunting. “And they’ve got to be perfect,” Beck says. “You can’t have the hole be a quarter-of-an-inch off.” That would make it seem like a hard job to want to do, but that’s assuming there are even enough people to take on the role. One analysis suggests there is currently a shortage of more than 500,000 skilled laborers in the construction industry. And workforce shortages are the leading cause of construction delays, according to a recent survey from the Associated General Contractors of America. The robotic drill offers an alternative. It also offers significant cost savings. Beck says it could cost about $65 per hole for this drilling work to be done by human crews. Using a fleet of the autonomous drilling robots developed by DeWalt and August Robotics, that cost comes down to about $20 per hole. DPR Construction, the largest data center contractor in the U.S., is prioritizing this drilling robot for testing and validation in 2026, according to Tyler Williams, the company’s field and robotic innovation leader. He says the technology has “real potential to reduce ergonomic strain on craft teams, boost productivity, and generally make the onsite experience better for people.” “Ultimately, everything were doing here is about supporting our customers, many of whom are focused on speed to market,” Williams says. “These kinds of methods are changing how projects get built and helping customers see returns on their capital investments sooner.” DeWalt and August Robotics have been piloting this technology for the past few months and believe the robotic drill is ready for wider adoption. It will be commercially available by mid 2026. As the scale of data center construction increases, especially among hyperscaler tech companies like Meta, Google, and OpenAI, there’s likely to be pent-up demand. “They’ve got money, and they want to go as fast as they can,” Beck says. “They know it’s a race in terms of getting these data centers up and making sure they’ve got the capacity to be able to compete from an AI perspective. So their big push obviously is how fast can you go?” For at least this one part of the job, the answer is much, much faster.
Category:
E-Commerce
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