DX Perspective: Memory Machines, A Whole New Strategy, and The Future of AI Hardware

Hi all!

Here’s your weekly dose of DX Perspective, a list of what I’m exploring and thinking about. Feel free to forward this along to friends.

kw picks

• This Week In Startups: E1885. Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu on launching the R1, future of AI hardware, and going viral at CES
• The 4 Degrees of Anthropomorphism of Generative AI by Sarah Gibbons. Users attribute human-like qualities to chatbots, anthropomorphizing the AI in four distinct ways — from basic courtesy to seeing AI as companions.

What I’m watching + listening to

• Eight Sleep: Why Data Visualization Should Be About the Future, Not the Past by Kristen Berman . If you’ve ever had insomnia, you know that it tends to perpetuate itself. Couldn’t fall asleep last night? The more you reflect on it, the more you worry it will happen again tonight. But good sleep isn’t just in your head. It’s also in your bed. Enter Eight Sleep, which tackles one of sleep's critical variables: temperature regulation. It's more than just a mattress pad; it's a gateway to tailored sleep environments. But is their app as well-designed as their physical product?
• The Informed Life Ep 131:?Nathan Shedroff on Strategy – podcast by Jorge Arango .

Emerging Tech

• Memory Machines. As we document our lives more than ever before, smartphones may paradoxically diminish our ability to recall these moments. Modem collaborated with industrial designer Betuel Benitez and design researcher Kotomi Tanaka from UC Berkeley to explore how spatial technologies could revolutionize our approach to memory retention and recall.
• Creatives and AI: Imagining a Future of Coexistence. AI is here to stay — but that doesn’t mean human creativity is on the way out. An eye-opening discussion on how creatives and AI can coexist, with Adam Pliskin (film and TV writer) and Brennan M. Woodruff (AI entrepreneur) in a candid conversation moderated by Alexandra Sternlicht (tech reporter at Fortune).

What I’m reading

• In New Workplace, U.S. Employee Engagement Stagnates. In 2023, employees in the U.S. continued to feel more detached from their employers, with less clear expectations, lower levels of satisfaction with their organization, and less connection to its mission or purpose, than they did four years ago. They are also less likely to feel someone at work cares about them as a person.
• Andreessen Horowitz’s Connie Chan to Leave as Consumer Focus Shifts to AI. For years, partners?at Andreessen Horowitz proclaimed they would scour the startup world for the next big consumer marketplace like Airbnb or the next hit consumer app out of China, areas in which the firm had unique expertise. Now, it’s shifting toward an area more en vogue across venture capital: consumer apps powered by artificial intelligence.
• A Whole New Strategy by Nathan Shedroff . This book clarifies the different aspects of strategy, offering a process that highlights better opportunities and ties together the various components in a new, integrated, and holistic approach to strategy. It integrates systems thinking, stakeholder engagement, trends analysis, and impact so that information, insights, and conclusions are unified across the various contexts of business.

Tools and Resources

• What’s next for Dev Mode: annotations, compare changes, plugins, and?more. Introducing annotations to Dev Mode, along with improvements to compare changes, plugins, and the Figma for VS Code extension.

And please give me feedback. Which bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know.

Have a wonderful weekend.

— Rachel