Recently I worked with a start-up attempting to build an electric truck that can also ride on rails like a train. Awesome.

They’re doing incredible work, with just four people. Four!? How!?

This is the hallmark of the new era.

Teams will shrink. Small enterprises will go from 10 employees down to 1-4. The quality of these people will be vitally important.

But what a small team will be able to achieve over the next five years will be truly mind-blowing.

Alt title: How often do you check your spam folder?

Our world (and our future) is about hiding the more we’re producing.

We see fewer emails, thanks to spam filters. But the emails are there, we just ignore them.

Each email sent and ignored uses a tiny bit of energy. That energy adds up.

On the surface, we see some simple text on a screen, apparently writing itself.

But underneath? Massive amounts of distant energy are belching out smog to make it happen.

Instead of consuming energy twice, once to send, and once to ignore, I’d love to see a future in which we stop sending the spam in the first place, where our band-aids don’t cause as much of a burden as the problem itself.

A man can dream!

In a land of endless egos like Silicon Valley, it’s a cardinal sin to question the sanctity of a company’s mission internally or externally.

Bad-mouth Apple? Good luck getting invited to their next conference. You’re either in, or you’re out.

But in a world of sycophantic AI and employees who are afraid to tell the emperor she’s naked, ruthlessly ensuring everyone is on board is a poor strategic choice.

Every company needs at least one person who can see the truth and isn’t afraid to call it out.

Pointed, well-intentioned criticism is where all long-term growth begins.

Early in Hunter Thompson’s The Rum Diary (written in the ‘60s), the protagonist shares a sentiment we all can relate to:

"I felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going.”

At this strange and exciting moment in human history, I certainly feel driven by these two emotional extremes.

Our media landscape is one of forced simplicity: You’re either on Team A, or you’re on Team B. Pick a side!

But the reality is, intelligent people have always been able to hold two ideas in their head at the same time.

It’s not hypocrisy. It’s not inconsistency. It’s intelligence.

Vibe coding is the ability to create software programs without knowing how to code.

Using natural language alone, we can use a variety of tools to prompt our way to a working piece of software.

Just last week, I created 5 small applets to automate mundane tasks.

Four out of five worked surprisingly well. The fifth? A total nightmare.

My background programming calculators in assembly language in middle school helps me get out of some technical jams that might stop others, but I wouldn’t call myself a full-stack engineer.

At the moment, vibe coding allows us to do just enough to be truly dangerous. To fool ourselves momentarily into thinking that we could prompt our way to the next Spotify or Netflix.

But the minute things get complex (and they always get complex), we’re standing alone in rural China without a translator.

It’s tantalizing, maddening, exciting, and terrifying. And we’ll need skilled engineers for the foreseeable future.

Still… Getting closer.