The future keeps happening

Part III

This May marks three years of writing a little story every week; by then I’ll pass 150 posts. I’d forgotten I wrote Part I and Part II of this New Years series; I read them again. Little time capsules. Each story is like a stepping stone — little peaks back in time.

I turned 60 in 2025, so this year also marks the beginning of my 7th decade on Earth; happy to be here.

A couple of years ago, in 2024, I wrote the first one of these New Year’s posts, looking forward to tech to come. A lot of AI — it was just going mainstream, motivating me to play with tech again and build up my little post-Microsoft design biz.

Took some hits before I wrote the second one — my parents died — a different marker of passing time. That was rough and so that second update looked back as much as forward.

I wrote through turning 60. I think 60 hit harder now that I’m the oldest living generation in my branch of the family tree.

So, we partied.

But in 2025, my story mix shifted and I wrote more personal stuff. I wrote about my Mom and my Dad on their birthdays. I remembered my Mom’s Immigrant Journey and surviving the Holocaust. I remembered my Dad, his time in WWII and abrupt and solo move from the East Coast to Los Angeles at 19.

My dad loved our annual family road trips up the coast and so, inspired by him, in February we got the Amazing Spider Van where we’ve racked up 12,000 miles across a dozen trips. Trip reports — TrailTales — started showing up occasionally on Wednesdays in addition to the Friday TechTales.

Past is prologue — more to come and I appreciate you reading and checking in!

So, off we head into 2026. Embrace that New Year’s vibe where we all rally for hopefulness.

I wrote more about AI last year, including a go at historical fiction, drawing a parallel between the great railroad buildout in the 1900s to what we are witnessing in AI today.

The Great American AI Buildout

But AI feels different in 2026. The AI culture wars will keep fading, but in the background AI will continue to ascend to the top of the tech stack, plumbing our future. The tech giants will slug it out — the level of investment is insane and I’m here for it.

I wish this wave would take out Facebook/Meta, but I’m afraid that’s just wishful thinking. It’s still unclear how AI shapes consumer tech like Social Media but AI slop will get less sloppy.

AI image models made a huge jump towards the end of 2025 with the release of Google’s Nano Banana. You only need to look at the progression of my dancing baby through Parts I and II to conclude that 2026’s disco baby is the best:

A developing AI narrative is us versus China. Will they get the chips? Will they out-automate us? Out-robot us?

One way to see how this might play out is green energy: China went from emissions villain to 3X its non-fossil power since 2010 - no other nation comes close to how quickly they are building.

AI needs lots of power, so now China is pursuing the holy grail of clean and plentiful energy — Fusion.

Clean, Limitless Energy Exists. China is Going Big in the Race to Harness It

Another parallel that’s going to be interesting to look back on is robotics. For AI to make the next leap in spatial cognition, it’s not enough to train on gobs of text and images — it needs hardware in the real world: walking around, seeing things, touching things.

While the US is undeniably ahead in AI models, China is undeniably ahead in robotics. China now fields the largest robot army on Earth, installing nearly 10X as many industrial robots as the US last year.

iRobot, the early American consumer-robotics pioneer (Roomba!), just gasped its last gasp after the Amazon acquisition was blocked by the Justice Department. It’s now owned by China’s Picea Robotics.

Finally, let’s look up. Reality — and a few spectacular Starship explosions — have squashed talk of imminent Mars colonies. But SpaceX now has regulatory approval to fly Starship up to 25 times a year starting in 2026, so let’s see if they can reliably put the thing in orbit and stick the booster landing.

Meanwhile, competition is heating up. The bonkers Datacenters in Space subplot is taking shape, and we may have found ET.

Lots to look back on; lots to look ahead to.

Happy New Year!