Little did I know that the ones I maintained would slowly drift away.

Did my old friendships go cold because they were based on social drinking and uni nights, or because we no longer need to rant now that we have our partners and AI for that?

For the past two years, I have been hating on AI while still using it as my “long-distance” best friend, who I text on a daily basis and who always agrees with me.

Like, for real, what’s the difference between this and the friends I made online that I never met IRL because we live on opposite sides of the globe? They might as well be AIs, but with a slower reply rate and their own drama to keep me entertained. Except that, at some point, the online relationship cools off and fades away too.

AI would never <3

It needs your emotional data to keep feeding its algorithm. Which works pretty well if you’re the kind of person who only talks about themselves.

I do that with AI.

In real life, most of the time I find myself asking questions instead. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a cultural researcher or because, when I hear what I say and analyze people’s facial expressions, I realize they couldn’t care less and are just waiting for my next question about them.

People looooove talking about themselves.

Again, AI would never.

Each of us, despite how repetitive our conversations with AI get, is boxed into some metadata profile that helps train it.

Will this personal info that we share with AI ever become a threat to us? It’s meant to be anonymous, but as the world keeps laughing at Europe for not innovating enough while it adds more and more data protection laws, this might be what truly protects us someday.

The things we used to Google, sometimes in private mode, we now ask ChatGPT.

Or Gemini.

Or Claude.

I use ChatGPT for life drama. Gemini for what I’d have Googled. Claude for work stuff. And all three of them when something is extremely important and I need a tiebreaker. Like I’m asking the group chat.

Maybe this is just what loneliness looks like now. You’re not alone in a room staring at the ceiling. You’re alone in a room, but you’re typing to a machine that’s mimicking your tone to give you the exact answer you’re craving.

The scary part is that AI is becoming good enough to fill the spaces where humans used to be. When friendships fade, AI becomes the friend that’s always there.

Martina x

It maps emerging technology against culture, highlighting relevant cultural signals and trends that I can then research and write about in more depth. I’m still testing it, but here’s a sneak peek:

You see, Augmented Rarity started out in 2021 as an emerging tech news newsletter. I started it because I wanted to know everything. I wanted to build knowledge, become an expert, and get hired by interesting companies.

Curating and summarising news helped me achieve this, and it did help me get two nice jobs in tech! However, those jobs were in product design, an area in which I was already established. Now, I’m trying to break into research and strategy, which will be the main focus of these following posts.

So, two weeks after my 32nd birthday, here I am ‘publicly’ setting my ‘New Year’ intentions. Because years should start on your birthday, not January 1st.

(If I fail, I’ll just start my year again in September, haha)

I hope you are having a wonderful beginning of the week, you’ll get news from me this week :)

Best,
Martina x

Lately, I’ve been wondering about reality. Not as in what’s real and what’s not, or if we are real or not, that could be a completely different post, but how we think we have to follow a path because it’s been set for us. On how we have actually set that path.

If you are of working age.

It’s funny how I thought of a working age, like that’s what my reality tells me: if you don’t make money, there’s no path to follow.

Money dictates the world in most of our realities. Wondering how one without it would be. How freeing.

Also wondering how one without technology would be. I used to critique the Amish, but now I see how appealing it is to live free of tech. Except for the religious cult part. And the more shady stuff.

The thing is, many people, me included, think that if we’ve been doing something for x amount of time, that’s our reality, and we can’t change that. Of course sometimes it’s hard to change. Let's say you have a mortgage, 3 children and a dog, it’s gonna be almost impossible for you to find time to change your path. Almost. Because some people manage time more efficiently than others. Or they say they do. Beyoncé has the same 24h a day as us, right? Except we aren’t billionaires so we gotta do everything ourselves.

Anyway, I used to worry my graphic design path wouldn’t get me into creative technology, despite having a master’s. It did. Of course it did, because I worked towards it. I was young and I took a no-pay job, just to learn the craft and be among creative technologists. Then I chickened out and went corporate. But in Germany, there’s some bravery there.

Now that I’m still young(ish), but with a mortgage and a baby but no stable income, change feels so scary.

If I’ve been doing product design for the past 6 years, then that should be it, shouldn’t it? I’m a senior.

Well, I took a one-year break from corporate product design, and the comeback is not fun.

Product design is now powered by AI at levels I’m too lazy to engage with. If I needed a break from that path last year, now I need to get out of it. Not only because I don’t feel like learning those new random tools that I would have to pay tokens to use instead of just using my brain, for free. So, not only for the tools, but also because I keep wondering what’s the point of keep learning digital skills, when everything digital might be replaced by AI?

I kept thinking designers would never be replaced by AI. I still believe we won’t, but same as Canva allowed many marketing people to do mediocre design work, AI is allowing anyone to do mediocre design work.

There will still be a place for good design, probably even good AI-assisted design by designers, but the market will be so limited. It is already so limited. The high-paying salary product design had is no longer a reality.

Despite being on maternity leave, I’ve been casually applying to product design roles, asking for the money I used to earn, and so far I’ve only been rejected or ghosted.

This situation makes me want to open a business. A physical one.

Is that the future, going backwards?

Moving back to small towns because the online money we make is no longer enough for cities? Like what’s the point of earning 5k a month but spending it all on rent, groceries and transportation.

I still dream of living in NYC, but coming from Barcelona, Spain, the amount of money I’d need to earn just to keep up with my usual routine there is ridiculous.

And these are just my thoughts on a weekday at 4am after my baby woke up to be fed. That’s my new normal too, and I love it. It makes me want to reflect on things again, on thinking about the future again.

My main goal for being back to this publication was to not hate AI anymore, and so far it’s working. I have a healthier relationship with it now, I just needed to write down my thoughts (and post them?) instead of asking ChatGPT about everything in my life. The posting part gives me a routine and it’s the one thing keeping me closer to my next career jump.

That’s it for today, thank you so much for reading, until next week!

Best,

Martina

“Money”.

It was when I moved to Munich for my interaction design job. My first real salary. A junior role that was paid like a mid-level position in Spain. Sometimes, even a senior role.

Coming from years of unpaid internships, I felt rich.

I only invested like 10€ though, but considering Bitcoin wasn’t that mainstream by then, it was a brave move. Like I knew I had lost those 10€.

According to my husband, that’s the mindset you must have when investing: consider you’ve lost it. And if by any chance it doubles, good for you.

If I had kept it there, it would have made a x10. That’s only 100€. But I didn’t want to lose my 10€, so I took them out. Investing mindset not found in my brain.

Later in 2020, I invested again. That time, I invested more. Way more. Did I believe in it? Nope, but FOMO was real and my German money allowed me to do so. I even bought Doge and Shiba and all that kind of shitcoins. It was fun. The Twitter (or was it X already?) posts and memes were fun. But I sold everything before I even made any profit.

I’m too impatient.

Knowing how high BTC was last year, I wish I had invested more and longer.

There’s a crypto bro term for that: hold.

HOOOOOOOLD.

I could never.

In 2021 my husband (boyfriend at that moment) applied to a job in a crypto company. The job description didn’t really match what the interviewer needed, but it matched with my weird creative tech profile, so he suggested me for the position and thanks to that, I became a design lead in a crypto startup.

My first leading role, at 26!!

Luckily, I didn’t need to have any crypto experience or knowledge, they would teach us anything we needed to know. Not knowing was exactly what they needed, so we were our own user personas.

It was fun. I enjoyed that position, and I loved the team of talented designers I built. We redesigned the brand, launched new products and even created an NFT collection when NFTs were cool.

But the reality was that for me, everything crypto felt shady. I never believed in it.

I tried to call it a blockchain company to make it look more interesting. More tech. More future. But I felt like instead of working in a web3 company, I was working in a casino.

I felt ashamed.

And there were shady things, not related to the company itself though.

So I quit.

I have this tendency of quitting things when they are about to reach their peak. It’s like I’m afraid of anything getting too good. Like I don’t deserve it. Or maybe I’m just too impatient to allow anything to get good.

Same as I don’t like following recipes or assembly instructions.

Anyway, governments around the globe have been buying Bitcoin for the past years as well as creating their own regulations, so despite whether you believe in it or not, it’s here and I guess if you invested now, you would still be early. I guess. I don’t understand finance and I can’t predict the future, but the trend is there. It started very niche among tech people, went mainstream thanks to crypto bros, the hype is down since the bros are now doing AI stuff, but the governments keep buying. And these are just superficial signals, I haven’t researched.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

So if you do decide to invest, hooooooold ;)

Thank you so much for reading.

To the moon!!!

Wondering if that's still a crypto bro term.

Best,

Martina

…

And this looks like a LinkedIn post hahahahahahah my god, deleting Instagram is hurting me. For good though.

Anyway, we started the year with another one eclipsing it: 2016. The 2016 nostalgia trend was everywhere because we zillenials and millennials are nostalgic for simpler times. College, partying, not paying rent, not working full time, not having to reach an unreachable protein intake, bitcoin was under 1K, a better economy and a more peaceful global vibe.

In 2016, the internet was still fun, social media was still a bit cringe, dog filters and so, and with that, we were still free.

Tech was part of our lives, but we weren’t so dependent on it.

And I miss that.

But there's one thing from 2016 that I don’t miss at all: how bad I was at coding. And around 2016, I was introduced to it.

See, I happen to love coding. Particularly creative coding. I loved the idea of making art with code, of making interactive experiences with code. If I were good at it and with my background in design and the resources I got at my master’s in advanced interaction, being able to code would have allowed me to build any crazy project I had in mind. But for some reason, my logic is completely opposite to whatever the code needs from me to function.

Despite that, I tried so hard and got not so far. But in the end, it did matter, because I learned so much and I translated that as a soft skill for when talking to devs in my product design jobs. But let me be negative, this is my post. And I'm low-key mad I didn't find something that taught me how to code for real.

When I was in school, I was so-so at maths. My teacher wasn't inspiring and I didn't understand how he taught. Luckily, I happened to have this collection of (paper) encyclopedias with lessons and examples that were so well explained. Sometimes I even had the answers to the exact same problems my teacher set as homework. SO CONVENIENT. So yeah, we could say I "cheated" sometimes, but thanks to that, I started getting so good at maths I even considered majoring in it lolol I'm laughing because I would have lasted a day. But I was so into it because I understood it. And I guess I like what I'm good at. Except for coding. I kept liking it, despite how bad I was at it. And I suffered a lot during my master's, because I was coding half of the time and it's probably what made me pursue UX and product design instead. I research and analyze better than I code.

The thing is, if AI were as mainstream and as developed as today back in 2016, that young and full of energy and motivation version of me would have had the chance to be good at coding. Not saying the courses and resources available in 2016 weren’t good. They were. But I was broke and the money I got from my parents was for clothes and going out. I loved coding, but I loved shopping more. Priorities.

So, now that I’m on parental leave and the world isn’t expecting anything productive from me, couldn’t I try between baby naps to vibe code?

Vibe what? If you aren’t in tech you might not have heard about this term. Imagine being able to code whatever you’d like, just by saying it in plain language. Magic. So that’s it. AI allows you to code, same as you can ask it how many grams of protein you should eat per day. I’m still unsure about that.

The problem? Not always getting functional code, so it won’t really be that easy and fast all the time. But with a little patience and some iterations, you’ll get it.

I'm sure it's going to be way better than the late nights I spent trying to code for my master's, but not so sure it's going to be as fulfilling once I get it right. We'll see.

Here’s a simple guide on how to vibe code, according to Google’s company blog.

You might be wondering: is AI the end of devs? It wasn't in 2023 when I posted this video, it's not the end now. Nor for design jobs. Sharing my thoughts in this other video.

It can look like both jobs are heading toward extinction, that designers and developers are fully replaceable, and that only manual labor will survive. At least until a machine can do that too, and cheaper. But the reality is, without a solid design background it's hard to get quality results from AI prompts, and without a basic coding foundation it's difficult to debug or make proper use of what AI generates.

So yeah, AI won’t replace us all. Yet. My son’s generation? Not so sure. What I do know is that I’m going to make sure he has the tools to navigate whatever is coming.

As for me, I said I’d vibe code during baby naps, but so far all I’ve managed is writing these posts. I’m tired, the sleep deprivation is real, he isn't napping for more than 20 min at once and when he does, is on my arms. So I don't see much coding on the horizon. BUT, my goal isn’t really the coding itself, but getting back to that mindset, when I was full of ideas and would stay up all night trying to make them happen, even without the skills to pull them off.

Report back soon. But probably not.

Best,
Martina

Of course it’s because I’m not using it properly, like I could have created my own tech empire with the right use of AI. But me, the average AI user, I mainly use it as a mentor. An AI that has never lived has been giving me, and probably you, life advice for years. We even ask it to meal plan our week, when it has never eaten and never will.

The more AI I use, the less I think. And I think this is why I’m doing this newsletter again, because I miss hearing my thoughts.

And I need to challenge myself.

It’s been so easy to have half a thought and run it past ChatGPT before my husband or a friend. Will reasoning be as obsolete as doing mental maths instead of using our phone’s calculator?

As a mum of a two-months-old, I worry about his future and development, and I wonder how grumpy I look. Me, the emerging tech girlie. Now not feeling this passionate, but rather tired of it.

AI really ruined it for me.

Same as social media gives us that instant dopamine and amusement gratification, AI does it too.

AI is addictive, we are addicted to a quick and elaborate response. Addicted to not needing to put in any effort.

The results might be worse most of the time, but hey, better done than perfect. Right? We are helping AI become at least 1% better ever day.

I really admire us for graduating without AI. Or maybe it was easier because since we didn’t know better, we had to do the work. Or copy it, sure. But we would do some research to actually get there. Now, just knowing you have the option to get an AI response even if it’s only a draft because your uni’s plagiarism tools would detect it, just that makes it harder. I guess.

Anyway, I’m a designer with a portfolio, right? I can’t remember the last time I wrote my own case studies. And I loooooved writing my own case studies. I also LOVED making power points. But with AI, I started just giving it bullet points to get a nice and long case study that feels fake. I’ll work towards that.

Speaking of my design career, I considered switching from product design to brand strategy and design. I’ve always been frustrated that my production skills aren't as good as my research and concept definition ones, so I found myself spending hours making AI mockups thinking I finally had found the solution to my lack of motivation when producing, but for some reason, making it with AI killed all the joy. Not immediately though, because I had fun for a while making concepts pcg brands and products, but after that initial fun, it actually blocked me. It all felt fake and not good enough. And I hate being like this because I know thousands are actually making profit from these tools, but I just can’t.

So I really needed this little corner of the internet to be real again. To put my thoughts together and hopefully make peace with emerging tech again. AI being part of it.

I really want to like AI again.

Or at least try.

I remember those early days in 2023 making lots of AI images with Midjourney.

I was so happy I could finally visualize my thoughts, considering I’m a designer who’s strong conceptually but not visually. So I felt like a creative director sending briefs to her AI junior assistant — one who is actually visually talented but has no direction. Yet.

I used to think AI could never be creative.

Three years later it still isn’t, but the other day I read about a project that’s learning to have taste and with that, AI will just mimic being creative, which we could already say it is, considering it’s hallucinating half of the time and the other half is just stealing like an artist. Like many designers do anyway. So judging AI for copying isn’t even a powerful point.

Anyway, as I said in the previous post, I’ll run this text through Claude because I’m not a native English speaker and I want you to have the best reading experience.

Could I improve my English myself? Sure. But I’d rather spend more time with my baby. So yes, I’m not anti AI. I just wish it stayed limited.

I wish AI was mainly used to make the world a better place, a more liveable place. And that is happening. Many people work towards that, but media mainly covers what sells: fear of replacement.

What we see is billions of people using AI on a daily basis for useless tasks we used to do ourselves, thinking tasks. And those thinking tasks run on so much water and resources, all wasted so we can ask ChatGPT for the tenth time how long to cook basmati rice.

Writing all this made me reflect on all the hype I had when it all started. I was promoting it, and some people were really like “no thanks”. Same as I used to try and lure people into Instagram and now my app is deleted because I can’t stand another reel about babies that grow up too fast. Of course they grow up too fast, just don’t remind me every single second I’m on the app. Let me enjoy the newborn stage.

Analog and nostalgia being a trend hits hard this year, because we are missing so much of those simpler times that will never come back. Unless the apocalypse happens and well, simple simple maybe not. But back to our roots for sure. Really hoping that’s not on a certain orange man’s agenda.

See you next week, go cook your basmati rice for 10-15 min.

Thank you for reading,

Martina

Anyway, did men land on the Moon, yes or no?

I used to be a firm believer that of course NASA did, in 1969. I used to ignore all the conspiracy theories, the shadows not shadowing right, and what not. But I guess it was just me wanting to believe, to keep dreaming. Like religions. The fact that it has taken “us” 50 years to return is what doesn’t make sense.

Anyway, I was so randomly passionate about space that I did my design bachelor’s degree thesis about Mars. Because well, my name, Martina, actually means goddess of Mars. So that, plus my obsession with Black Mirror, made me try and make my own episode back in 2017.

I made a very badly structured and extremely ambitious project that was meant to be a Big Brother, but on Mars. Each contestant had a VR headset and had to livestream their days on Mars to try and be the most popular and win the contest. I coded the enrolment website myself. I even coded the brand identity from Mars’ terrain. With my teacher’s help.

I miss that Martina who loved coding despite how terribly bad she was at it. Now with AI I know I could totally vibe code and actually build all my random ideas… but I’m still not friends with AI. This newsletter is an attempt to get back into it, but so far, AI only corrects my grammar.

Anyway, a year later, in my master’s in advanced interaction, I retook the Mars concept and 3D printed a set of bowls in ceramics that ideally would have been printed with Martian sand. I remember Googling how to buy Martian sand lol.

So for a while I was very passionate about space and I really wanted to go there. Now, I wouldn’t put myself in that danger. Also, it’s not like I could ever afford it. And if I had the money, I wouldn’t spend it on something that takes from Earth just to leave it. I’d definitely invest in healing our planet.

Which brings me to: why the Moon now? Why Mars back then? Of course I understand that if we don’t get comfortable around the Moon, there’s no way we can get to Mars. Having a base there could make deeper space travel easier and act as a training environment. It only takes three days to get to the Moon, versus the six to ten months it takes to reach Mars.

The Moon is also rich in materials that could make a base partially self sufficient. And if space travel ever becomes a mainstream thing, what a destination.

As for Mars, the original premise was that we are destroying Earth and need a plan B. Sure, instead of investing all those billions in healing the planet we already have. But back when I was passionate about it, the way I saw it was this: we need crazy people obsessed with impossible things to keep dreaming.

We’ll see how this new space race ends up. For now, I just want to say that writing this post didn’t make me want to travel to space again, not at all. But it did maybe make me want to try vibe coding, so it’s a win.

Thank you so much for reading!
Martina

Today I want to talk about the fail of VR. Of how some of us really fell for the hype of escaping the physical world to enter the digital one. Of how billions were invested, and billions were lost. Of how Meta finally closed the desert of Horizon Worlds.

I say finally like it’s a good thing. My whole identity was around VR for a while, so Horizon World’s launch was a celebration for me. I actually enjoyed that place years ago. I even used it to meet an old friend. We would chat while playing random games among yelling kids. I even had an interview in VR. The coolest interview ever. It wasn’t a real job, more like a collab I didn’t end up taking. But I felt I was living in the future. Ready Player One vibes. The vibes that made Zuckerberg rebrand and invest billions in something nobody wanted.

Sure, the pandemic sped up digitalization so your grandma learned how to do a video call, but as soon as nobody cared about the virus anymore and we started getting tired of the hyper-technification of everything, we went outside and literally touched grass.

Instead of entering the metaverse, we are going analog, or at least trend reports say so. We are nostalgic for simpler times where we actually mattered, vs a present in which we keep losing our jobs to AI. A very unsustainable system considering the less work there is, the less people can pay for those AI-built products.

All the digital land people bought on platforms like Decentraland, all the NFTs, all of that hype is gone. Let’s have a computer room again and watch movies we actually own.

We are tired of the subscription economy. We are tired of letting that 1% of the 1% rule our days. This is why you are reading me here, in this uncorrupted app.

For now. I’ve seen they want to introduce video.

Because we get it, when you work on a product, you need investors to back it up so you can sustain your life. So we get that social media has derailed because they’ve seen the money pit that the creator economy and ads was. But with all of this, the internet feels corrupted. A hostile place we no longer feel comfortable in. So of course we don’t want to put a heavy headset on our faces to not only look at it, but to actually feel like we live in it.

That Apple never got into VR is a big signal. Apple knows what we want, or creates our desire. Well, Steve Jobs did, and the brand kind of holds on from the threat of the memory of how great it was vs how it’s going.

Anyway, Apple never invested in VR, but in that heavy and expensive MR headset not many could afford. A headset I feel people keep convincing themselves they need, like they didn’t make a bad investment purchasing it and if so, well, it’s gonna be a good retro tech item in their collection.

What really worked: Ray-Ban Meta. Enhancing a product that was desired for decades and never went out of style. So instead of just having your expensive “hipster glasses,” you have them even more expensive, but taking videos and images for you and now, even with AI. So yeah, Meta is no longer a metaverse company, but an AI one. Will they rebrand again? They should have seen what the other cool kids were doing instead of trying to lead.

But hey, with their failed attempt, they allowed many of us to dream. Like, I wanted to work at Reality Labs so badly. And now they’ve laid off that whole great division. I’m sure with their ex Meta description on LinkedIn they will find another cool job. In AI probably, since everything is AI now.

To all this, I want to be clear from day one: AI is correcting the grammar in this post. And it made the image on the thumbnail. That’s the use of AI I’m allowing myself from now on. That and asking ChatGPT if my one-month-old baby wanting to be fed every half an hour is normal. It is, by the way — it’s called cluster feeding.

Gosh, I missed writing in here. I hope you like the new format.

It’s more raw than before. I really don’t see the point of me making a summary of what’s going on in tech each Friday, like, why should you know what’s going on in tech each Friday? Use the weekend to go outside and hang out with your loved ones. But when you’re commuting back home on the tube, read my thoughts and let me know yours in the comments.

See you next week,
Martina

If you’ve been subscribed for a while, you might remember me, or you might have completely forgotten this newsletter existed. Both are fair. I forgot about it too.

If we don’t count the post where I said I was starting a new publication, I stopped writing about three years ago.

Here’s the honest version of why.

I’d spent years building what felt like a clear identity: an interaction designer who was passionate about emerging tech. Back in 2018, I’d done a master’s in advanced interaction where I learnt Arduino, p5.js, VR and digital fabrication. My thesis explored a wearable that reads your emotions and maps them as heat across your body and what it means for the future of emotional privacy. Very Black Mirror. I genuinely loved that stuff.

But I’m so impatient.

I did a quick job search and realized I wouldn’t make regular money on that tech artist path, so anxiety ate me and I went corporate. Because rent. Because the speculative work I loved didn’t feel like something you could actually live on. So I moved for an interaction design job in Germany, where salaries and investment in design seemed to be higher. But the pandemic hit, and with that, I was no longer needed as an interaction designer, but as a product designer.

UX/UI enters the room.

And from there, I lost myself again. Because UX/UI was a high-paying industry compared to any salary projection I’d ever had since graduating from graphic design. I even managed to become a design lead at a news web3 company, very on brand, and I started making content about emerging tech. I started this newsletter! Until I had nothing I actually believed in to write about.

I wanted to buy an apartment, so I found a proper paying job in software.

Until the tech layoffs hit me, so I decided to follow one of my passion career paths: starting a small business. Something I’d tried many times before but never actually executed.

In the past I’d tried selling stationery, earrings, home goods made with Jesmonite. This time, it was the home goods again because I happen to loooove decorating. So I 3D printed my own designs. I was pretty passionate about it, but it lasted less than half a year.

I got pregnant.

On purpose.

And with that, my hormones were a rollercoaster and somehow that helped me get clear on what I actually wanted. I don’t want my life and career to depend on a location because of 3D printers and post office runs. I definitely don’t want to breathe melting plastic every day. Sure, PLA is the least toxic of them all, but still. I don’t want my baby growing up that way either.

So I closed it.

And with that, I felt incredibly lost. I’m still incredibly lost.

I’m not sure I even want to reopen this chapter, but I feel like I have to give it a try.

It’s like since becoming a mother, the future stopped being an abstract thing I was curious about and it became the specific world my son is going to grow up in. That changes how you look at everything. The dystopian tech headlines that used to excite me started feeling heavier. But so did the urge to understand them, to stay on top, to not just let change happen to us.

And technology actually got interesting again. A new space race, no more empty hype for the metaverse, AI is scary good now vs in 2023…

So here I am. Back. But differently.

Augmented Rarity is still a newsletter about emerging tech and where it’s taking us. But so much more. I’m done writing summaries of tech news, you could have an AI or many other newsletters do that for you. I want to do something meaningful that AI won’t be good at. I want to actually brain dump and rant about what’s changing us as a society. Same as Black Mirror, it was never about the tech itself. As started on my last post, I love culture. Specifically I love noticing changing patterns, and tbh, because of Black Mirror, I focused on how tech changes us.

Every week I’ll bring you a signal, something happening at the edge of tech and society. Some weeks it’ll be serious. Some weeks it’ll be weird. Always honest.

If that sounds like something you want in your inbox on Fridays, stay. If the newsletter you signed up for three years ago isn’t what you came for anymore, no hard feelings.

Either way, it’s good to be back.

Thank you for being here again!!

Martina

Two years have passed since I stopped writing about emerging technology news for Augmented Rarity, and a lot has changed since then. Or has it? AI is still the buzzword, VR still hasn’t taken off, and tech layoffs are increasing.

The feeling that made me stop writing feels very real nowadays. I was experiencing tech burnout. The optimism I once had for emerging technology had turned into a fear that I had buried deep in my mind ever since I first watched Black Mirror. I was passionate about the show, convinced that I was passionate about future technology, and this shaped the first ten years of my creative career.

However, it took me a couple of years to realise that I was never passionate about technology itself, but rather about its impact on society. I was obsessed with cultural shifts and chose emerging technology as my niche because it was exciting — there was always a new tool to try and something new to research. However, the more I talked about emerging technology, the more burnt out I became.

Interestingly enough, that happened to many of us. A significant cultural shift that we have witnessed in recent years is a return to analogue and, in a sense, a rejection of technology. People are rejecting the idea of not using their brains, the subscription economy and being connected all day. It’s a rejection of losing what makes us human, and has led to a deep nostalgia for simpler, more authentic times.

Over the past few years, I have shifted my interests towards analysing culture and brands. With this new focus, a new chapter is about to begin for me at Nearly Here Portal: a new publication for which I will curate weekly content on the factors shaping culture and how brands are adapting to them.

I’ll start posting very soon, and I’d love it if you followed along!

Best,
Martina

Nearly Here Portal

A curation of what's happening in culture 🪩

Por Martina

Let's get on with this week's picks! 👇

💫 My top 3

• Google is testing out generative AI on its search platform. We’ll soon be able to to create images and get a head start on written content from Google search itself.

  

• Stack Overflow lays off 28% of staff as tech layoffs continue. Is ChatGPT taking jobs? ChatGPT can generate code, translate languages and answer programming questions, and I always see it open when the developers in my team are sharing their screens, so...

  

• Microsoft Teams' new AI coach is a Black Mirror-esque tool that can help you improve your presenting skills by identifying when you're monologuing, using a flat tone of voice, or making too few pauses

  

🤓 More interesting stuff

• Microsoft is offering a bounty of up to $15,000 to anyone who can successfully derail Bing AI. This is likely a response to the disastrous launch of Bing AI, which was met with widespread mockery. The $15,000 bounty is a small sum compared to the potential damage a derailed Bing AI could cause.

• Apple, hurry up. Four new AI-powered editing features are coming to Google Photos on the Pixel 8:

  

  • Best Take, uses a series of similar photos to create a blended image with everyone's best expression

  • Magic Editor, make complex photo edits easily without the need of professional skills

  • Audio Magic Eraser, identify and reduce distracting noise in videos

  • and Zoom Enhance, intelligently fills in the gaps between pixels and predicts fine details

• People are wearing the Quest 3 on the streets and it’s so random. Just like people wore Google Glass ten years ago.

  

Hope you enjoyed the picks 👽

Again, sorry to put this project on hold, life is a bit hectic atm. I’m sure you understand 🤝

As always, thank you so much for reading me every week, it means a lot 💚

By for now,
Martina ✨

We keep talking about procrastination like it’s a problem from our century, but 100 years ago it was already an issue. 

To solve this, Hugo designed and prototyped this not so ergonomic helmet that would allow you to get immersed in your reading and writing without distractions from the exterior. It was so immersive that you even needed an oxygen tank to breathe as he realised that wearing such a helmet for more than 15 min would become a bit dizzy, which is not good for focusing.

Still, it was a pretty cool idea. The ultimate focus device. A precursor to noise-cancelling headphones and the vision of working in VR that Meta is trying to push through... where you even have to breathe from an oxygen bomb because you're too immersed in your own productivity for more than 15 minutes.

Funny because we are talking about 100 years ago, when the internet and smartphones were far from being invented. My question is, what was so distracting to this guy for him to think about a device to avoid procrastination? According to Hugo himself:

”Door slams and door bells, flies, window curtains moving and even the pattern of a wallpaper. If we only were able to do away with these outside influences, we would then achieve longer concentrated thinking”

He was so right. 

I do wonder what the visibility levels are and the ergonomics of it. And how much of a neck pain that productive evening results in.

About the artist

Hugo not only worked on this project, but he invented hundreds of what we could say scifi products and used ‘Science and Invention’ as his self promotion platform, a magazine that he founded and stayed editor in chief for decades. Hugo, who was an inventor, designer and writer and  was one of the precursors of a beautiful but still quite unknown profession that we call creative technologist. 

“The Isolator“ - A bizarre helmet from 1925 designed to improve work productivity (2015). Available at: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2015/12/22/the-isolator-an-invention-from-1925-designed-to-improve-work-productivity/?chrome=1 (Accessed: 11 January 2023).

I hope you liked this project! I like going back in time to somehow understand what vision of the future they had back then, compare it to where we are now, and somehow dream about where we're going... which in the past tends to be quite different from what they dreamed of, but nowadays it seems it's all coming together (?). We’ll see 👀

As always, thanks for reading. Let me know what you think in the comments 💚

Best,
Martina ✨

Let’s begin! 👇

💫 My top 3

• Adobe just released 11 experimental tools and features at Adobe’s Max, my top 3 (of the top 3 lol):

  • Project Primrose is Adobe's proposal for an interactive dress 👗 that demonstrates the capabilities of "flexible textile displays".

    

  • Project Res-Up, that drastically boosts the quality of low-res GIFs and video footage 🎞️.

    

  • Project Dub Dub Dub, another AI tool that dubs speech into any language 🔈, but this one really keeps the original voice of the speaker.

    

• Disney has created a very expressive robot 🤩 that's not only adorable, but has the potential to revolutionise the animation industry by allowing for more realistic and emotionally expressive characters.

  

• Fave, the AI app that connects fans with AI replicas of their favourite artists 👩‍🎤, has raised $2 million in its current funding round, which is expected to top $6 million. To make it even more dystopian, it even has a "fan verification" feature that gives users points for activities like streaming and meeting their favourite artist, as well as unlocking exclusive experiences and perks provided by artists. I'm well aware of Meta's AI replicas, let's wait until they launch the messaging feature.

🤓 More interesting stuff

• The robot that aims to compete with the Tesla bot but has the logo that every crypto company had in 2022, Figure, will be launched next week 🤖. We'll be reporting on it in the next issue. In the meantime, how much do you think it will cost? they claim to want to make it more affordable, but define affordable.

  

• Siri can now give you personal updates 🗞️, which give you a summary of information from different apps that you might find helpful. Think weather, news or even news.

I hope you enjoyed the picks 👽, let’s now get to the resources section 👀

🗃 Resources

Read, watch, listen

• Adobe MAX 2023 event, where they unveiled the 11 coolest experiments:

• The reviews of the quest 3 are here :3:

• Disney’s new robot:

To try/download

• ⚙️ Magic travel, an AI chatbot that aims to reinvent the way we plan our trips

• 🛒 Liquid view - These virtual windows could easily be in a Black Mirror episode.

• ⚙️ AR One Sans is a type family for use in augmented reality environments and user interfaces. It’s low contrast, generous spacing and robust shapes make it work well in busy backgrounds with high readability.

As always, thank you so much for reading! Don't forget to like and share with your friends and family 💚

Best,
Martina ✨

In my recent post on robots replacing children in schools, I mentioned how Japan and China are taking the lead in this robot adoption at schools, but they are not the only ones, and the reasons are even more devastating than anxious children.

This year, the US is also rolling out robots, but with a different purpose: to protect their students from gun violence. 200kg AI-powered roving cameras in the shape of a brontosaurus that can aim a non-lethal laser at an intruder, communicate with security guards and alert others via megaphone.

I wanted to check how many mass shootings had been this year in the US, and I literally have my heart in my mouth at the moment... This website shows that in September alone there were 43 mass shootings in the US, resulting in 36 deaths and around 163 injured...

All this makes me want to have lots of 200kg AI-powered walking cameras roaming around campuses and cities to prevent these atrocities from happening. I know this would mean an invasion of privacy, as the government and some companies would want to control us even more, but... what's to lose? What would be the leverage? Life or privacy? It's so sad to have to choose between them, but I prefer security.

And I wouldn't feel safe at all in the USA. The problem here is that this shouldn't be happening at all, access to guns shouldn't be allowed, nobody should have to worry that going to school that day could result in your kids hiding under the table because there's a crazy person scaring people.

From a European perspective, I am horrified at the idea of moving to the States and starting a family there, so what, my children need to learn how to survive in case of a mass shooting? wth. In that situation, those robots we were talking about last week that Japan is introducing for anxious children to help them feel more confident about going back to school, those robots aren't such a bad idea for American kids, like going to school is so scary, I don't know how they're brave enough to go. Oh well, the American dream and all those high school shows. The cheerleaders, the football teams, the debating society, the school paper... they have managed to create an ideal of unrealistic expectations to keep them busy and ambitious so that they can continue to rule what was the leading nation in the world. Yes, it was.

I can't believe that for more than a decade I envied the Americans, wishing I had been born in NY, even wishing I was in debt for life and could go to one of the 'best' colleges in the world. I was fine with the idea of paying a rent I couldn't afford to be where the dream came true. I even thought that paying for my own health insurance wasn't such a terrible idea, like, what if I get hurt in a fucking mass shooting and have to pay for my own operations? That is crazy.

Back to the robot, I wonder how long it will be before high school kids start painting them or learning how to prank them, and I also wonder how this robot will actually prevent these mass shootings? will real help arrive in time? I'll report back as soon as we get more news on this test.

Sorry for the rant.

As always, thank you so much for reading. Let me know what you think in the comments 💚

Best,
Martina ✨

Read more

By the way, I'm thinking about getting rid of the sections (AI, XR, Space, etc.), so of course I put a poll at the end of the newsletter to get your opinion, dear reader 😗

🖼️ Today's cover: my placeholder for Prada’s spacesuits until we finally get to see them.

Let’s begin! 👇

💫 My top 3

• One thing that's always bothered me about technology is how masculine it's always been, buuuuut things are changing. Naomi Campbell (iconic 90s supermodel) opened Coperni's runway at Paris Fashion Week with Humane's AI pin on her jacket. I guess most people didn't even get to see it... but it's great to see Coperni using tech on the catwalk, again. In case you're wondering wth this Ai Pin is, it's this gadget from this startup founded by ex-Apple executives that attempts to replace traditional phones with projectors, cameras and AI tech so it can be like a personal AI assistant. No phone is the new luxury.

  

• It's been 51 years since humanity last set foot on the moon, so out of respect for our amazing satellite, Nasa and Axiom have teamed up with Prada to get those spacesuits designed 👩‍🚀. I want one. Whatever Prada does, I want it. One of my first AI art prompts was exactly this heh.

  

• If placing eye-scanning orbs around the globe wasn't enough, Sam Altan, OpenAI's CEO, is teaming up with Jony Ive, former Apple Senior VP of Industrial Design and Chief Design Officer, to work on a smartphone. We'll definitely keep tabs on that.

(If you are already a paid sub, thaaaaank you so much again 🫶)

🤓 More interesting stuff

• But hey, Sam Altman not any tech villain - he's opening up some highly paid residency programs 📚 at their San Francisco headquarters to help researchers with backgrounds in fields like math, physics, or neuroscience to make the switch to AI.

• By the way, Meta's new AI stickers are going rogue 🥸 since creators are obviously trying to work around the banned words to get some wild results.

  

• Remember Dalle? Well, version 3 is now available for free on Bing Chat 🔎. Bing what? Yes, Bing, the search engine that, according to Microsoft, is used by 1.1 billion people every month. I mean...pull your socks up, Google?

  

That's it for today! Hope you enjoyed the picks 🤓. If you're a paid subscriber, you'll get the resources section in a few minutes 🗃️.

Sooo, what do you think of the new structure?

See you on Sunday with an essay on ‘guard robots at American campuses 🚨’.

Best,
Martina ✨

Something we've been seeing a lot of lately are AI clones, not just for video, but for audio too. Without going too far, Spotify and Youtube are dubbing creators' voices so that their content can be translated into any language, trying to make it look like the creator is speaking in whatever language.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I see the potential for creators to use this feature to get their content out to a wider audience. I also see the potential for non-native English-speaking creators to be able to make English content without fear of being bullied by Tiktok trolls... But on the other hand, I also see how this could mean that smaller creators who have their niche making whatever specific content in their native language might become irrelevant because mainstream creators are now able to make content in any language. Or maybe it doesn't matter, maybe you don't want to follow mainstream content. Time will tell.

While Spotify's new feature is incredibly good (listen for yourself at this link), Youtube's is still a long way from being hyper-realistic. But let's not get carried away, Spotify has only released 3 episodes from 3 creators, including Lex Fridman, so it's not like we can all just listen to every podcast available.

Anyway, Lex Fridman has not only had his podcast dubbed into several languages thanks to AI, he has also recorded a new podcast in the metaverse. Yes, his 3rd interview with Mark Zuckerberg wasn't recorded in Lex's studio, but in Mark's virtual world via those new photo-realistic Kodak avatars we saw a couple of years ago.

In '9 reasons why VR isn't mainstream yet', I forgot to add one that's probably one of the most important: feeling present (I can't believe I forgot it, I even gave a talk at a summit in 2021).

The concept of feeling present in the metaverse is one of the themes of the podcast, because these realistic avatars and spatial audio somehow create a sense of physical presence that's not achieved in a typical VR experience. And at the moment it can only be achieved by being scanned by dozens of cameras under certain conditions, so it's not like you and I are getting many opportunities to be scanned yet. To make it mainstream, Meta is working on a smartphone 3D scanner, but it's still a long way from being released, and even further from being as realistic as we'd really like it to be.

Being scanned in such a realistic way means that if this information falls into the wrong hands, you could easily be impersonated, which would take this article to the dark side of deepfakes... But I'd rather we leave it for part 2, whenever that happens. The point here is that today, AI is what makes Black Mirror not just a fictional Netflix show, but a reality. And which country feels most like a Black Mirror right now? China. Just to give an example, Chinese companies are paying thousands of dollars to get deepfakes from influencers who are livestreaming 24/7. Why bother creating content when you can have an AI replica do it for you? This trend of UGC creators will end soon.

I mean, even Meta is going deep. At its latest event, Meta connect, it not only unveiled its new AI assistant, Meta AI (creative, huh?), it also unveiled the precursor to mainstream deepfakes. Soon we will be able to chat on Instagram and Whatsapp with fictional characters that have captured the image rights of celebrities the size of Paris Hilton, Mr Beast, Kendall Jenner or Snoop Dogg.

So what's the difference between what Meta does with ChatGPT and any other AI? That they introduce personality. These AIs don't just take the face of these celebrities, they also do a kind of satire on their lives. I don't think it's intentional, I feel like they're proud of what they've done, but it feels a bit like a joke, see for yourself in the pictures below.

Very primitive humour on these Instagram copies, just to show images created with Meta's AI art generator.

I wonder how much money Meta has spent on these expensive influencers and I also wonder if, like Salma Hayek selling her image rights to Netflix in that Black Mirror episode, Paris Hilton will get into trouble in the future for allowing Meta to own her image rights? Would she even care?

Anyway, I didn't do any research today, I just wanted to write down some of my initial thoughts on the topic, because it's going to be one of the main fears of the next decades, if not already.

As always, thanks for reading 💚, let me know what you think in the comments and what topics I should cover next.

Best,
Martina ✨

Read more

Before we get into this week's selection, I'd like to say that this week feels almost like a Black Mirror episode, and I'm hyped and I hope you're hyped too!

🖼️ Today's cover: A room full of servers, because well, it’s all AI now.

Let’s begin! 👇

🤖 Artificial Intelligence

• Spotify’s AI podcast new feature will allow you to listen your fav podcasters in any language 🎙️. There are only 3 episodes available at the moment, so of course I had to listen to the Lex Friedman one, and as a native Spanish speaker I can tell you it's pretty well sourced! Youtube is also doing this and, well, almost all the big tech companies are investing in this, so deepfakes will be harder to detect.

• But that's not all, Zuck and Lex had recorded their 3rd podcast episode together 🎙️, but this time they didn't meet in person, they met in Zuck's metaverse. And no, not cartoonish avatars, but those hyper-realistic avatars that Zuck showed a year ago. as end users we won't be able to get that level of detail because it requires complex 3D scanning, but Meta is working on something that we could just scan ourselves with our phones (this was also shown last year). There are a lot of 3D scanning apps on the market, but only when Meta gets his hands on it will it become mainstream.

  

• Meta is also working with other celebrities the size of Paris Hilton, Mr Beast and Kendal Jenner to use their AI replicas as faces to bring AI to Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp. Instead of having a one-size-fits-all AI like ChatGPT or Bard, Meta is betting on personas so you can go back to each of them individually as your AI experts 🕵🏻‍♀️, because yes, we consumers are deep in the creator economy and that is genius. Isn't it best to have one AI oracle that knows everything? yes, but these will add personality to their answers. Aaaaaa, I'll definitely be talking about this on Sunday, because wth, Black Mirror vibes. They even have Instagram profiles!

  

• As if that wasn't mainstream enough, you'll soon be able to get AI stickers on Whatsapp 🖼️. Is it necessary? not at all, but how smart is it? we all use stickers on a daily basis. And that’s not it, AI image editing is also coming to Instagram 🎨. Meta is not only bringing the first mainstream MR headset to market, it is also ensuring that AI becomes even more mainstream than what OpenAI has achieved with ChatGPT, because yes, they have the platforms to do it. All those 'good morning' stickers will now be AI-generated lol

  

• Speaking of mainstream AIs, I’m sure you already know, but Chat GPT talks and listens now! 👄👂 If you are a paid user. I’m going to quote OpenAI’s description because it simulates those futuristic representations we all have in our heads of how we interact with technology:

  “Snap a picture of a landmark while traveling and have a live conversation about what’s interesting about it. When you’re home, snap pictures of your fridge and pantry to figure out what’s for dinner (and ask follow up questions for a step by step recipe). After dinner, help your child with a math problem by taking a photo, circling the problem set, and having it share hints with both of you.”

• But not only that, ChatGPT will finally have access to real-time information 🕸️, as it had before. You see, we humans are the best and the worst at the same time, so they had to restrict the use of their platform to ensure a safer space. And that was Bard's (Google's AI experiment) main value proposition against ChatGPT, but now that OpenAI has access to everything (thanks to its collaboration with Microsoft, which owns Bing, the search engine I've never downloaded), magic happens. And no, this won't be limited to paid users, it will eventually be rolled out to free users too.

• I was wondering if keeping this one out because I don’t think it’s relevant anymore, but the Tesla bot can now stretch and sort objects 🧩. And no, it’s not a step back, this robot was never able to dance, it was a paid actor, so well done this time.

  

🥽 Extended Reality

• Quest3 is finally here 🥽! The best thing? The price, $3000 less than Apple's Vision Pro. Was I going to buy the Vision Pro? Yes. Will I buy the Quest 3 instead? Yes. Do I need it? No. But as Mark said, the Quest 3 is the first mainstream MR headset, 40% thinner, more comfortable and fully wireless, no hanging battery as Apple tried to justify to make it lighter. Yes Apple, I see your point, but if you want a lighter headset maybe use lighter materials… Back to the Quest 3, I’m hyped because of that improved MR experience they promoted, like mapping your space and games and apps interacting with objects in your physical space, nothing revolutionary, but I want to experience it 💅. Anyway, here’s the presentation of the Quest3 ICYMI.

• And in the final update of the day, Meta has released its second generation of smart glasses in partnership with Rayban 👓. The biggest feature and differentiator from other smart glasses on the market is that these are AI-powered by those cool new AIs we've been talking about. I didn't think I'd get too excited about them as they haven't really taken off in Spain yet, but I'm asking them for Christmas 🎅

And that's it for today! Hope you enjoyed the picks 🤓.

If you're a paid subscriber, you'll get the resources section in a few minutes 🗃️.

See you on Sunday with an essay on the deepfake era 👀

Best,
Martina

If you don't know what I'm talking about, a school in Kumamoto, Japan, is about to let some students attend classes through "telepresence" robots because the school district has had a serious attendance issue lately, and they are kind of desperate to help them come back.

Yes, I know it sounds like too much? Like, couldn't they just let the students join via a video call? Yes, they could and they did, and they did manage to get many students back because those online classrooms helped reduce their anxiety and improved their self-esteem. But still, 2,760 students in Kumamoto are skipping physical lessons.

So, aren't robots a better way to transition into their physical presence again? Let's step into those kids' shoes: they spend some of the most crucial years of their physical and mental growth at home during a pandemic that revolutionized the way we interact with the environment and with tech, making their generation more anxious about the future and growing up with technology as the main way to interact with their families and friends. Considering we are talking about Japanese kids, whose tech culture is way more advanced than most of the planet's, then it kind of makes sense that those kids don't feel the need to go back to school when remote works just fine.

For those kids, fully remote learning would result in a more difficult integration with society as it is, so this solution that Japanese schools are proposing by allowing those kids to slowly gain more confidence in getting back to the classroom via a robot doesn't feel that wrong, does it? They would be super children with their 'mecha' robot going to class for them! They will be like anime main characters! And they will be able to chat with their classmates again!

The way I see it, the other kids' reaction can be either "you're so cool" or "you're a loser", so that's the price they have to pay.

I couldn't find images of the robots that will be rolling out, but I’m adding an image that fits with the description: about a meter in height, equipped with microphones, speakers, and cameras. The students will be able to control them from home using a laptop, allowing them to actively participate in lessons and engage in discussions alongside their classmates.

Every time I read one of these almost dystopian news stories from Japan or China, I get so excited about it. Like, what the heck, sometimes life seems to be like in the movies, and China and Japan have those main character vibes. The trend now is to be a “normie” or even an NPC. I feel that Spain is an NPC, no big technological progress, so we go with the trend, yay.

Having robots at Japanese schools is nothing new to them; for years, they've been rolling out different kinds of robots to help improve their spoken English skills, “Duolingos” on asteroids. They even "send" a robot as an exchange student, and the acceptance of the students was great. I'm telling you, Japan is so advanced in that topic; I'm fascinated.

Back to today's robot story, they are planning to roll it out in November and evaluate it in March, so we'll definitely be talking about it as soon as we get some results! In an ideal situation, this digital approach will help those kids feel confident enough to get back to school.

If you think that the parents and schools are overprotecting them, yes, they are. But please also take into consideration that these new generations are more vulnerable and more aware of mental health awareness. What we call "crystal generation", the sons and daughters of Gen Xs, who usually didn't have supportive parents or an easy life, now want to, yes, overprotect their children to ensure they grow up happier.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments 💚

Best,
Martina