/ Blog / / Blog /Ever since I saw that video of the Tesla Roadster, I can’t stop thinking about it. Not how cool it is, not how innovative or how interesting it is, but how stupid it is, and also just how stupid many products feel these days.
I grew up with Back to the Future and Star Wars. The idea of a flying car is intrinsically futuristic and cool to me. There’s no debate worth having about that. But the problem is how it works in reality. In my mind, it was never a technical issue as much as a safety issue.
In the very first scene of Back to the Future Part 2, Doc flies the DeLorean on a space highway, through heavy rain, and immediately dodges a flying taxi. He’s the smartest guy in the series, but his flying doesn’t inspire confidence. He takes a light-guided “exit ramp” down to Hill Valley, where he then free-flies into an urban environment, landing the DeLorean between buildings.
Think of the most capable person you know having the ability to not just drive a hunk of metal at high speeds, but fly a hunk of metal at high speeds.
In Attack of the Clones, Anakin is piloting what can only be described as a flying car. He’s the prophetic chosen one, a master pilot with incredible reflexes, and to his credit, he flies it without accident. But he is also incredibly reckless. He backs out of the parking spot and flies inches above two other parked vehicles. He does not follow traffic in any space lane, and at one point angles the vehicle straight down, narrowly avoiding dozens of other ships. Though he does not take this route, the speeder he’s chasing drives directly through a building, which is incomparably more dangerous than the Walt Disney World monorail gliding through the Contemporary Resort. Anyway, Obi-Wan lands the speeder adjacent to a crowd in a busy metropolis.
Can you even imagine a world where we could begin to trust humans with such a technology?
I mean, we do, to an extent trust other humans with the ability to fly. There are rules regarding airspace, and as far as the United States is concerned, an inch of the ground is considered flying and such rules apply. Just as an example, you must fly at least 1000 feet above the highest obstacle, within a 2000-foot radius. So there’s no reality in which a flying car could ever take off, land, or fly anywhere near a building. For good reason! And of course, a driver’s license does not equate to a pilot certificate.
Look, I know the flying version of the Tesla Roadster was a stunt. It is a well-coordinated stunt, and I have to admit that I’m impressed by it. But the day I watched that video, when the idea of a flying car became reality, I knew no one could ever have one. Seeing it exist in the real world made it clear to me.
This is not really about flying cars, so I appreciate if you’re still here reading this.
There’s that oft-quoted line from Ian Malcom in Jurassic Park, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” And I really am feeling that a lot lately. I feel it with almost everything I see now.
Every time a new product is introduced, like the Apple HomeView, the iPhone Duo, all these AI-generated apps, and subscriptions for those apps— I find myself asking, “What are we even doing here?”
When you see an AI-generated food poster. It’s disrespectful to the people who make the food. It’s misleading to every customer. The entire purpose is to trick people.
I’m sorry, this is not really about generative AI either.
Earlier this week, I had a Detroit-style pizza (in Tokyo!) and it was so good. I missed that that kind of pizza. I really needed it in my life, and afterward I thought I should start measuring things in how they improve my life. And I know it sounds silly, but this pizza sincerely improved my life.
Yesterday, I went to the Apple store near Tokyo Station, just to check out the iPhone Duo. I waited a few minutes for someone to give one up at the table, and… it was dead. Just zero percent battery. I waited for another, picked it up, opened it, closed it, tapped around the interface, took a few photos, and put it back. It was incredibly hard for me to understand how this product, which costs more than 100 times as much as that pizza could provide me anywhere near one-hundredth of the satisfaction I had eating that pizza.
I still think about how good that pizza was. But I can’t say there’s anything I really like about iPhone Duo. But also, what value does a product like Apple HomeView have when every user already must own an iPhone or iPad for it to function? I’ve said it before, there are no glasses that will replace a smartphone. My iPad can’t replace my smartphone. Nor can my Apple Watch. These can only ever be accessories to the primary device, be it a phone or a computer, depending on who you are.
The iPhone Duo could be the primary device for someone who doesn’t use a computer. I can understand that because some people are already like that with their phones. But that’s not me, and chances are if you’re reading this blog, it’s not you either.
Apple HomeView seems like it’s for no one, though. Every function is already available on the device required to use it, and those personal devices already are within reach. Apple HomeView, of course, is not always within reach. It can only be in one spot. It is more akin to a desktop computer, in my mind, than an iPad, just because it requires a permanent electrical tether. And while it is the cheapest desktop computer Apple sells, it remains squarely an accessory with a primary device requirement.
Let me rein this in. I think all these products, services, hardware, software… it’s all starting to feel very, very unnecessary. It seems to me that companies like Apple are not content with their total market saturation, so they have to double-down on that. It’s not enough to just have a phone or a computer, with new ones every few years. You need Apple Watches and iPads and HomePods too. Apple Vision Pro was already a tough sell, but Apple HomeView—at a small fraction of the cost—is weirdly harder to justify.
What is this? Who are we building for now? Who is that app—generated entirely with AI—actually for? How can someone who “makes” such an app dare to think the value of what a computer merely farted out could possibly be worth a $10/month subscription fee?
I mean—after all is said and done, we have more devices connected to the Internet than ever. Truly unprecedented amounts of connectivity. Yet, the best future we can imagine is hoping enough people are curious about whatever visionless product comes out next, to bite again and again. Fad after fad. I can’t convince you that Apple HomeView is that much of a better product than the Humane AI Pin, which I wish I could simply forget about.
The truth is that none of this is exciting to me. I think the entire tech industry is exhausted, because there’s nothing left to solve.
I remember whenever I would critique AI early on, or any new gadget that came out with some new gimmick, people around me said that even if I wasn’t, they were happy that people at companies were brave enough to try new things, and they’re “still excited” about technology, as an industry.
So let me reframe what I just said about being unexcited by all of this lately: I’m unexcited because the tech industry stopped being thoughtful. But they sure did start marketing thoughtfulness. They packaged up the idea of a visionary leader. And stamped it on every product going out the door. Every new product comes with a solemnity about how much thought went into it. How smart it really is. How good of a product all that thought makes it.
If I’m being honest with myself, It’s hard to imagine how much better my life is from all of it, versus how much those same things made it worse. I’m not about to go off into the countryside and throw away all my electronics. But at some point this all stopped being about building things that people really need in their lives, to genuinely improve their lives, and started being almost exclusively about extracting as much money as possible from people.
Yeah, I guess that’s capitalism for you.
I want to believe we can all be better about this. We don’t have to build things for the purpose of making money. We can not just have hobbies, we can build little businesses, based solely on what makes life actually better.
I don’t think dreaming big or being inventive has to at all be about how much money we can make. It can just be about enriching our lives. I think that’s much more worthwhile. If we can let ourselves do it. We could stop asking if we could do something. And start asking if we should. I think we’d be building much better things for the world.