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Every year since 2010, Ive posted an article about what trend I expect to dominate the next twelve months. Throughout the 2010s, these forecasts usually focused on emerging technologies or new currents in management thinking. But around 2020, that began to shift. The annual trends increasingly centered on how we cope with change rather than the change itself. Last year my trend was The Coming Realignment. History tends to propagate at a certain rhythm and then converge and cascade around certain points. Years like 1776, 1789, 1848, 1920, 1948, 1968, 1989and, it seems, 2020mark these inflection points. The years that follow are usually spent absorbing the shock and navigating the consequences. Today, everything is up for question. Will AI boom or bust? Will it take our jobs or bring new prosperity? What kind of economic system will we adopt for the future? We are in the midst of a great realignment. What we know from previous inflections is that what comes after will be profoundly different from before. What we most need to watch is our institutions. AI boom or bust? Today, the AI investment boom is without a doubt the single biggest factor propping up the US economy. Just this year, tech giants are expected to invest roughly $364 billion in the technology. And the spending wont stop there. McKinsey projects that building AI data centers could add up to $5.2 trillion in investment by 2030. This boom is different from what weve seen in the past because the main investors arent speculators or startups, but some of the worlds most profitable companies, including Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft. Unlike in past cycles, if the industry hits a downturn, there will still be tens of billions of dollars in annual profits to cushion the blow. Still, as investor Paul Kedrosky points out, there are reasons to worry. Investment in data center infrastructure has already surpassed the peak of the dot-com boom and is beginning to approach levels last seen during the railroad frenzy of the 19th century. Also, 60% of the cost of those data centers goes to AI chips, which have a useful life of only about three years. That means this is not a boom that can wait decades to pay off. If todays investments dont generate returns in the near future, much of the infrastructure could fully depreciate before delivering meaningful profit. In practical terms, unless tech firms can earn more than $200 billion in profiton these investments alone, not from their core businessesthey will be underwater. And as investment accelerates, that bar only rises. Kedrosky also notes signs of growing systemic risk. Increasingly, tech giants are choosing to finance their infrastructure build-outs with Enron-like special-purpose vehicles. These structures cost more but keep the debt off their balance sheets. That risk, in turn, is increasingly being passed to more traditional investors, including REITs. Will AI displace humans or enhance us? A 2023 report by the World Economic Forum, analyzing 673 million jobs, predicted structural job growth of 69 million jobs and a decline of 83 million, an overall decrease of 14 million jobs. An IMF analysis found that 40% of global employment is exposed. In an interview with Axios, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years. Yet more grounded economic analyses suggest a much more modest impact. A study by the St. Louis Fed suggests a 1.1% increase in aggregate worker productivity, with much of that increase concentrated in the tech sector. A paper by Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu, which looks at total factor productivity (TFP), a measure which takes use of capital into account, sees a 0.66% increase over 10 years, translating to a 0.064% increase in annual TFP growth. A recent McKinsey report takes an optimistic view. While noting that many routine office and production jobs are likely to disappear, those that leverage technical, social and emotional skills are likely to flourish, just as Autor has predicted. However, there is reason to suspect that optimists may be merely extrapolating from historical trends that may no longer apply. Theres no guarantee that the future will look like the past. An analysis in Harvard Business Review suggested that AI could disrupt the non-routine creative work that, to this point, has been hard to automate. Meanwhile, research in Science has found that, although AI may enhance individual creative work, it diminishes the diversity of novel output, potentially stifling the very innovation it aims to support. What will be the economic system of the future? Before 1789 the world was ruled by the divine right of kings and the feudal system. Yet that year would prove to be an inflection point. The American Constitution, the French Revolution, and the first Industrial Revolution, already underway since the introduction of the steam engine in 1776, together created a fundamental realignment of power. These forces would build and clash for decades until things came to a head in the revolutionary year of 1848. Today, we seem to be in a similarly liminal space, as we decide what kind of future we want to live in. The next century and a half would be dominated by the tensions between socialism and capitalism. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the West was triumphant. Communism was exposed as a corrupt system bereft of any real legitimacy. Yet for anyone paying attention, communism had long been discredited. As far back as the 1930s, Stalins disastrous collectivization and industrialization campaigns had led to mass starvation. By the 1970s, Soviet total factor productivity growth had gone negative, meaning more investment actually brought less output. Yet today, it is capitalism that finds itself under siege from all sides. Leftist progressives like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani advocate for reining in the private sector and creating a bigger safety net. The mercantilist American president rails against free trade and nationalizes the means of production. Christian nationalists openly call for theocratic rule. At the same time, a new cadre of theorists has emerged whose ideas dont fit the traditional right-left paradigm. New Right thinkers such as Curtis Yarvin and Patrick Deneen call for wholesale reordering of society. On the more technocratic side, a new school of thought is emerging that is associated with Ezra Klein and Derek Thompsons book Abundance. Its the institutions, stupid In Why Nations Fail, economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson explain why the fate of nations rests less on innate factors such as geography, culture, or climate and more on the quality and types of institutions they build. In particular, they make the distinction between inclusive institutions and extractive institutions. Inclusive institutions protect property rights broadly across society, establish fair competition, and reward innovation. Extractive institutions, on the other hand, concentrate wealth in the hands of a small elite who exploit the broader population. These elite players control resources and use state power to enrich themselves at society’s expense. We are clearly in a liminal period in which we are struggling to adapt to shifts in technology, economics, and identity. Will AI oppress or empower regular people? Will we trade openly or retreat behind national barriers? Will we focus primarily on our local communities or see ourselves as citizens of a larger planet? As ever, there will be no shortage of pundits predicting the paths the future will take. Many of their narratives will be persuasivebut also mutually contradictory. The real tell will be what kinds of institutions we build and which ones we allow to decay or be destroyed outright. Are we creating institutions that strengthen rights and the rule of law, or those that serve the powerful? The outcome is still unclear, but the lines of battle have been drawn. If you want to know what to expect in the near to mid-term, pay less attention to predictions about technology, politics, or ideology and focus instead on institutions. Those are what create the norms and rituals that will shape the behaviors of the future.
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E-Commerce
Stargazers and scientists are getting a holiday present from the cosmos this week. 3I/ATLAS, an interstellar comet, will get closest to Earth on Friday, December 19, as part of its journey across the galaxy. Lets break the facts of this natural phenomena down because it sounds like it could be the plot of an exciting science fiction thriller. What is an interstellar comet? Much like a Christmas tree, planets in our Solar System revolve around our star, the sun. Its not the only planetary system out there. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains other systems, and if you zoom out even further, there are even more. The comet 3I/ATLAS is labeled interstellar because it comes from outside our star system and is not gravitationally bound to the sun. Its on an elliptical vacation of sorts, exploring new locations with a greater freedom than the other objects surrounding it. When was 3I/Atlas discovered? Scientists only recently discovered 3I/ATLAS, on July 1, 2025. The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System survey telescope, funded by NASA and located in Rio Hurtado, Chile, first laid eyes on the object. This observation caused scientists to go back and look over records from other Atlas telescopes to learn more. These pre-discovery findings found evidence of the comet dating back to June 14, 2025. The comet got its name because it is a tradition to name objects after the people or system that discover them. In this case, it was named after Atlas. The 3 and the I tell the world this is the third interstellar object found. Animation of comet 3I/ATLAS’s trajectory through our solar system. [Animation: NASA/JPL] How close will 3I/ATLAS actually get? On Friday, 3I/ATLAS will get the closest to Earth in its orbit, but close is a relative term. It will cross within 167 million miles of our planet. To put that in perspective, that is around two times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The comet poses no danger to Earth, meaning there’s no need to hire a ragtag group of oil drillers la the 1998 film Armageddon. How best to view 3I/Atlas Unfortunately, 3I/ATLAS cannot be viewed by the naked eye. Dedicated stargazers will need a small telescope. But the silver lining is that the comet will hang around until spring. For best results, view in the early, predawn hours. According to NASA, those who are extra enthusiastic and planning a Friday adventure should focus on the bright star Regulus in the constellation Leo, as 3I/ATLAS should appear near that location. For those who are without a telescope and would rather sleep in, NASA has done the work for you. You can visit the NASA website to view 3I/ATLAS from many different angles. Maybe the pictures will inspire you to write the next great science fiction tale. Finally, NASA’s “eyes on the solar system” tool lets you view a simulated live version of 3I/ATLAS as it hurls through space.
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E-Commerce
The Christmas holiday season is a time to step back from the busy pace of modern life and connect with our nearest and dearest instead of screens, apps and chatbots.Here are some suggestions on how to unplug from the online world for the next few weeks as you sit down for a festive meal, exchange gifts or take time out for some self-reflection. Do not disturb me Your phone already has built-in features that can help you stop getting distracted.To temporarily silence all those attention-seeking notifications, use the Focus setting on your iPhone or Android device. This mode is designed to stop interruptions when you want to concentrate. You can customize it by blocking specific apps or muting only when you’re doing certain things, like sleeping or reading.Android and iOS also have related screen time controls to manage overall device usage. Too much Instagram scrolling? Limit yourself to a daily total of 20 minutes.There are other tricks you could try, like turning the screen gray to make it less appealing. On iPhones or Android devices, tweak the color filter or adjustment settings. On Android, activating Bedtime Mode also turns the screen gray. Delete apps If you need to be more strict with yourself, then delete any or apps you’re addicted to. An effective way to stop looking at your phone is by removing those apps that you spend the most time scrolling through, even if temporarily. You can always reinstall them again if the withdrawal symptoms become too much. Get outside When the temperature drops, it’s tempting to hunker down inside and stay cozy. But don’t sit on the couch all day. Head outdoors, away from Wi-Fi signals. If it’s been snowing where you are, have a snowball fight or go sledding. To keep your hands warm, don’t forget to put on bulky mittens which your phone’s touch screen won’t respond to.Even if there’s no snow, take a walk in the woods, a park or along some tree-lined streets. Time spent outdoors, and away from screens, can benefit your mental health and physical well-being. There’s even a term for it: forest bathing. And touch grass There’s an app you can use to force yourself to literally get back in touch with nature. Touch Grass takes its name from a viral catchphrase for when someone has lost their connection to the real world because they’re consumed by what’s on their screens.It’s similar to other apps designed to restrict screen time by forcing users to take a timeout from scrolling. The difference is that Touch Grass requires users to go outside and take a picture of themselves physically touching some grass.Touch Grass has a free service level that allows you to block two apps. I found it was quite effective at stopping me from opening two of my favorite time-wasters, Reddit and Instagram, though I ended up spending more time on other apps like Facebook. To block all apps, you’ll have to shell out for a subscription $6 a month or $50 annually.If you can’t find grass because it’s winter, there’s also the option to touch snow or sand. It’s only available for iPhones so far, but there are copycat versions for both iOS and Android, though we haven’t tested them. Putting pen to paper When was the last time you sent a Christmas card? Most digital natives find it easier to type out holiday greetings or send digital cards over chat apps, than to put pen to paper.The consequence of all the time that we spend tapping, typing or swiping on our devices is that handwriting is becoming something of a dying art. But there are neurological and cognitive benefits of handwriting, research suggests. For example, taking notes by hand is a better way for students to learn and to remember information.So use this time of year to write a thoughtful message to someone special, a letter to a long-lost friend, or thank you notes for presents received. Pick up a book If you still don’t know what you want for Christmas, why not ask for a book? It’s easy to find inspiration and ideas at this time of year, when many people like to share the books they’ve read over the past 12 months, and outlets including The Associated Press compile their list of the year’s best books.Reading long-form literature or non-fiction has many benefits that can’t be gained from glancing at short-form bursts of text on your device, including a deeper understanding of a topic, developing empathy, increasing your focus and concentration and more. Lock your device up If you’re looking for a last-minute gift, how about a time-lock vault to put your devices out of reach for, say, 15 minutes, a few hours or even weeks?There are plenty of versions for sale online. For about $30, I bought a battery-powered gray plastic model that can hold several smartphones. The instruction leaflet says it’s intended to “enhance self-discipline.”Punch in the amount of time up to 30 days and a digital display will count down until it unlocks. The lid has portholes so you can thread in cables for charging while you wait.One evening, I locked my phone up for an hour and then grabbed my laptop to do some online Christmas shopping. But my plans were foiled because I forgot that authentication requests for my credit card and Amazon went to my phone. Not-as-smart phones For another gift idea, consider putting a brick phone under the tree. Also known as a feature phone, these devices cater to those who want a back-to-basics phone without all the digital stimulation that comes with a smartphone.Retro devices from Nokia evoke the early days of the cellphone era no touch screens, numeric keypads and throwback video games like Snake. Most can only make voice calls and send text messages.If that sounds too primitive, there are so-called digital minimalist phones that serve a similar market niche. Devices from Light, Punkt and Balance offer sleek, modern designs but with a stripped-down experience. Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip. Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
One of the best things about the Christmas period is all the yummy desserts found in peoples kitchens. But now one of the largest food companies in America is issuing a warning about one of those sweet treats. Heres what you need to know about a new recall from Danone U.S., which impacts one of its dairy-free frozen desserts. Whats happened? On December 15, North American food producer Danone U.S. announced a voluntary recall of one of its dessert products, per a notice posted on the website of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company is recalling its So Delicious Dairy Free brand of Salted Caramel Cluster Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert. The recall is due to concerns that the product may contain foreign materials mixed into the dessert. Specifically, there is a chance that the cashews in the frozen dessert may have small stones and other hard objects embedded within them. The potential for foreign material contamination is obviously concerning, which is why Danone U.S. is pulling the impacted products from the shelves and urging consumers who have them not to eat them. What products are included in the recall? Only one product is listed as being part of this recall, though the product has multiple best-by dates: Product Name: So Delicious Dairy Free Salted Caramel Cluster Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert pints SKU: 136603 UPC: 744473476138 Best-By Dates / Lot No (Exp Dates): Before 08 Aug 2027 The recalled product, as the notice on the FDA website states, can have multiple Best-By Dates / Lot No (Exp Dates), all of which are before August 8, 2027. Danone U.S. has also posted photographs of the recall product, which you can view here. It should be noted that the recalled product actually came in two different packaging designs. Products purchased before February 7, 2025, have a different package design than those purchased after. Has anyone been harmed by the recalled product? The recall notice does not state whether anyone has been harmed by the presence of foreign materials in the frozen dessert. Danone U.S. says, So Delicious Dairy Free is working swiftly with retail partners to remove the potentially impacted product from shelves. In the meantime, the company has already identified and corrected this issue and will soon be able to bring back the frozen dessert so many people enjoy. Where was the recalled product sold? The notice does not specify where the product was sold. Fast Company has reached out to Danone U.S. for additional details. What should I do if I have the recalled product? You should not consume the recalled product if you have it in your possession. Instead, the recall notice posted on the So Delicious website states that you should dispose of the product. For information about a refund for the product, consumers are asked to contact So Delicious via the contact form on its website. Alternatively, consumers can call the company on the So Delicious Dairy Free Care Line at 1-833-367-8975.
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E-Commerce
Last week, two fonts became the unlikely stars of a political messaging firestorm, after the Trump administration replaced Calibri as its official diplomatic font in favor of Times New Roman, claiming that an initial shift to Calibri in 2023 was part of former President Bidens DEIA agenda. The implication was clear: Calibri was framed as a liberal, Democratic font; while Times New Roman took its place as the Trump administrations more conservative choice. Now, a new study is revealing the major flaw in this logic: font is certainly a political tool, but its not inherently partisan. The study, titled Youre Just Not My Type: How Attitudes Towards Fonts Explain Affective Polarization, examines how affective polarizationor the tendency to associate positive feelings with ones political ingroup, and negative feelings with outgroupsimpacts peoples reception of different fonts. The study showed that, across multiple kinds of fonts, respondents were more likely to respond favorably to a font if they were told that it was associated with their own partisan and ideological beliefs. As the studys conclusion explains, “People will ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ the typeface in a political logo based on their political views of the candidate it represents. According to the researchers behind the study, Katherine Haenschen, Shannon Zenner, and Jessica R. Collier, this finding demonstrates that campaign designers shouldnt feel constrained to only using certain kinds of fonts in their workbecause, at the end of the day, constituents vote for candidates, not fonts. Emotion leads to analytical inconsistency This new study adds another layer of nuance to several years worth of research on how fonts are perceived in a political context. In 2019, an initial study coauthored by Haenschen found that individuals do make some instinctive ideological distinctions between typefaces. Serifs, like Times New Roman or Garamond, were rated by study participants as more conservative; while sans serifs such as Helvetica or Arial were rated as more liberal. But that perception isn’t the same as reality. Based on 2020 data from the Center for American Politics and Design, both Democrats and Republicans are more likely to use sans serif fonts, with 68% of Democratic candidates and 62% of Republican candidates using sans serifs that year, respectively. Haenschen, Zenner, and Colliers research offers more context on why that might be the case. Across three survey experiments, the researchers tested the relationship between political identity and emotional reactions to typefaces. They found that, when it comes to fonts in politics, emotions matter more than stylistic preference. In one condition, participants were shown a font along with a brief description framing it as ideologically associatedlike, for example, Time magazine rates Garamond as the most conservative font. In another, participants were shown a typeface with a partisan description (which refers to party affiliation), like, Time magazine rates Century Gothic as the most Democratic font. They were then asked to rate how much they liked the font. In both the ideological and partisan cases, respondents’ favorability ratings were noticeably impacted by their own political views. And the more partisan a respondent was, the more these descriptors impacted their choices. If you tell me, This font is liked by conservatives, and I’m a conservative, then that makes me like it even more, Zenner says. If you tell me that liberals like this typeface, and I’m not a liberal, then I tend to dislike that typefaceor it will affect how much I like it. While some respondents resisted these impacts, she says, most peoples political affiliation dominated their responses more than their actual taste. We saw that the political grouping you have can really overrun any kind of taste. But it’s good news for designers, actually For campaign designers, these results may actually be good news. Zenner says designers shouldnt worry about constraining their font choices based on ideological associations, because, ultimately, voters will associate their positive (or negative) feelings about a candidate with the font itself. Designers need to keep in mind that they still have the ability to make choices about typefaces, Zenner says. They shouldnt say, I can only pick a sans serif typeface if we have a liberal candidate, or I can only pick a serif if we have a conservative candidate, because, no matter what, the partisanship of the people who are voting swamps all these taste-level things. For some candidates, she adds, this research also opens the door to convey a more nuanced platform through design. For example, a Republican candidate campaigning in a swing state might opt for a sans serif font more traditionally perceived liberal to communicate a more forward-thinking, modern, or progressive stance, without actually alienating their voters. Affective polarization can also help explain how a font can so easily become a political flashpoint, as in the case of the Trump administrations nixing of Calibri in favor of Times New Roman. As soon as these typefaces became a topic of political discussion, Zenner says, the way people responded to them became inherently tied to their own political affiliations. Its no longer about how the font looks, or works, or whether anyone actually likes itits all about how its been politically labeled. People will be like, I only want stuff that looks like Times New Roman because I associate with MAGA and Trump, and therefore I’m going to back that up, Zenner says. Or the opposite will be like, Im definitely going to use Calibri in everything and I am going to make a statement by doing that, and I don’t know if I even care for it or if I like it or notit’ll just be the politics of it. I think it’s an example of where, yes, these differences in taste exist, but they’re very much driven by culture.
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E-Commerce
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