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I enjoyed reading this piece from Elizabeth Lopatto about the current technological conditions, and wanted to write a little bit about its ramifications for value-based design.

When we think of innovation in technology, what arrives? Maybe big developments like the iPhone. Maybe “disruptive” businesses like Uber. Machine learning – the purest expression of the technology – is, admittedly, on the list.

But I’d argue, alongside Lopatto, that the most interesting innovations in technology haven’t been very loud over the past few years. Battery technology has advanced in incredible ways, allowing for all sorts of new devices & even categories. China’s making $10,000 EVs that can go toe-to-toe with anything Detroit makes. On the software front, I’ve tremendously enjoyed using Linear for issue tracking, Octavo for document management, and Finalist for todo management.

I could go on with examples, but there’s one thing that unites them: a focus on customers and what they’re asking for. People really do fumble with PDFs in 2026. People want better cars. People want stuff that works well and gets out of their way. Companies are giving it to them.

This is not to imply that all current technology is useless, or all hyped technology is useless. But people really are using it for different purposes than the people creating it expect us to, and those creating new technology are doing so in ways that preach to the converted. Lopatto:

The actual use for LLMs in most normal people’s lives is cheating on schoolwork. For adults, it’s looking up information — LLMs are in the process of supplanting Google Search.

To assume otherwise is, now as ever, a form of noise. Loud noise, but noise. The future belongs to those who understand that the business-customer relationship is conversational, and it shouldn’t be messed with.

Leah Reich, on what big tech is doing right now:

At one time, the industry's model to profit was to sell things to willing buyers. This is the era we all remember so fondly, even if still wasn't an era in which we were really taken into consideration—the industry just made better shit. But it moved beyond that model a while ago, first by taking all our data, then by taking all our content and our conversations and our creativity. Silicon Valley found itself at the limits of how far beyond the original sell-for-profit model it could go. Even with everything it strip-mined from us and from humanity more broadly, often without our knowledge or consent, it turns out that ad revenue can't keep up forever. So it needed to find a way to push even further to make money.

This is the position Silicon Valley finds itself in now. It's trying to build products based both on this false mythology of itself as an industry and on this model of product development.

I’ve chosen to live outside of a major power center of tech for my whole adult life for many reasons. One of them is so I can turn this computer off at the end of the day and garden and cook for my friends, most of whom don’t work in tech, and talk about life. Because that will go on no matter what you do.

This has deep ramifications for value-based design. On the one hand, buyers may succumb to the hype, no matter how temporary it may happen to be. On the other, it becomes vitally necessary for us to stay in our lane and do what we do best.

So this week’s lesson is one step. It’s also the most vital step. Remember who you are and what you do. It has value. That’s the whole point.