Dear Reader,
This morning I've been thinking about momentary friends. Those people that you meet and bond with because you happen to be in the same place, but for whatever reason you don't keep in touch. You never trade phone numbers or look each other up on social media. All you have is the moment you share together. Sometimes I think our modern connected world makes those kinds of friends impossible to make but then I get reminded that they aren't. There's something unappreciated about making a friend you share space with and then leave behind. This year, if you're resolving to spend more time with your friends (and you should!) ... consider this a friendly reminder to maybe stay open to the idea of making momentary friends too.
Moving on to stories this week, there's a fun combination of articles about future musical instruments, the AI data center fueled land grab, why many Gen Z workers don't really aspire to be the boss, and how China's AI boyfriend industry is taking off. Plus you'll read about the resurrection of Kickstarter, top loyalty trends for 2026 and how cursive is making a comeback.
Enjoy the stories and stay curious!
Rohit
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Gen Z Doesn't Want To Be the Boss. They May Have a Point.
Disruption is the name of the game in the workplace today which means the future is very much uncertain. As a result of this uncertainty, new research is showing many Gen Z workers don't aspire to climb the career ladder and be the boss. Many, in fact, are ready to turn down a promotion if it involves becoming the boss ... a behaviour some are describing as "conscious unbossing":
"Gen Z is redefining promotions and leadership, according to consulting firm Robert Half, whose recent survey found that 40% of Gen Zers only want promotions if they don’t involve becoming a manager. Early in their career, many Gen Zers have seen their managers burn out, so the positive aspects of leadership are often overwhelmed by the fear of constant pressure, mental health issues, and sacrificing their personal time ... these young workers are more interested in becoming an individually skilled professional than someone’s boss."
When you consider how much invisible emotional work comes with being a boss, the added accountability and how much of your day would likely be spent dealing with people and their problems instead of doing "real work" ... the idea that young people might not want to be the boss isn't so hard to understand. Focusing instead of honing your own personal skills and expertise may even prove to be a wiser way to prepare for the next phase of their careers. Who needs to be the boss when you can become otherwise indispensable for your skills.
They might be onto something.
How Technology is Rethinking Songs and Musical Instruments
Yesterday Eleven Labs announced a collaboration with Grammy award winning artists like Liza Minnelli and Art Garfunkel to use their AI tools to compose and perform all-new tracks. Their self-titled Eleven Album is available for streaming now and features snips of more than a dozen new songs from a platform that many are afraid may be contributing to the death of music and musicians. It may be a clever PR stunt, but listening to the songs—they sound anything but AI-generated, which is not surprising considering the actual artists were involved in their creation from the start.
In other music news, Georgia Tech hosted their annual Guthman Musical Instrument competition where creators compete to invent the most compelling new musical instrument. This year's top ten included everything from a 24-string concept built around a repurposed bicycle wheel rim, a magnet-based hovering keyboard, a seven-foot-tall double bass with an Indian classical design and a "Demon Box" that converts invisible electromagnetic waves from everyday electronics into sound. Together, these stories offer a picture of the future of music that sometimes we see depicted in the imagined worlds of science fiction where it's created in new ways, made real with instruments not yet invented and inspired by the talents and work of the music makers who are most willing to be the first to try something new.
The AI Land "Gold Rush" Is Here, But There's A Missing Story
At multiple points this week, I came across different stories and conversations about the same thing: the so-called "gold rush" of land grabbing and real estate boom fueled by the need for land to build data centers for the exploding needs of AI processing:
"Developers are scouring the map for places where electricity is available now — or can be made available faster than somewhere else — where water rights are secure, and where fiber can be brought online without years of delay. The result is a scramble for land that looks less like traditional economic development and more like a competition for raw inputs ... land that would once have been considered remote or undesirable is now suddenly valuable — and it's not because people want to live there, but because machines do."
As with any gold rush, there are people trying to find a way to get their piece of the pie—with much speculation and financial markets moving toward this trend. The trend line of most of the stories seems to be that the energy needs will double by 2030 (if not earlier) and that this will become an irreversible trend for the future. The solutions for this future that shift that trend are less publicized but much more interesting. For example, MIT published a report on the emerging research into how to reduce energy use and promote more sustainable AI. Chinese startups made the news last year for pioneering an energy efficient AI-chatbot.
The point is, alongside the stories of the land rush and shift towards building even more data centers for even more power-hungry AI applications ... we should also actively seek out the stories of the startups who are finding ways to deliver that power in more sustainable and scalable ways.
