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If you’ve noticed that the internet feels different latelymore cluttered, harder to navigateyoure not imagining it. The system is breaking down in real time, and by 2026, researchers predict that 90% of web content will be AI-generated. Quality journalism is disappearing behind paywalls while feeds fill with noise designed purely to capture attention. An innovation that was supposed to democratize information is now drowning us in it. I know this intimately because I helped build it. As founder of AppNexus, which sold to AT&T for $1.6 billion, and former CTO of Right Media, I created the technology that became the backbone of digital advertising, a multibillion-dollar industry and the economic engine funding everything from major newsrooms to niche blogs. Now that engine is stalling. You are now the product Heres what happened: instead of paying for what you have actually read or watched, the advertising system turned you into the product. Every click, search, and scroll got auctioned to the highest bidder. You became the currency. And once the dollars followed your data rather than content quality, the value of real information slipped into the background. The effects are everywhere. News organizations are consolidating rapidly or shuttering entirely. AI-generated slop is creeping into YouTube and other online communities, and flooding search results with spam. Trust in the media and the online ecosystem is on the brink of collapse. Shoes chase you around the internet, misinformation spreads faster than facts, and billions vanish to fraud. It feels like the end. But Ive seen this before. A recurring pattern The internet has a pattern: it breaks, people panic, and then it is rebuilt into something much better. Web 1.0 gave us static pages and basic connectivity. Web 2.0 brought user-generated content and social interactionbut not before people warned it would destroy traditional media entirely. Each transition looked catastrophic while it was happening. Remember when mobile first arrived? Mobile websites were impossible to read. Ads covered half your screen. Everything required pinch-to-zoom and patience. Companies spent years trying to shove desktop experiences onto phones before they figured out that mobile needed its own infrastructure. It felt broken and annoying, until it didnt. With phones constantly in hand and the first screen for most people, we barely remember the awkward transition. Another phase Were in that awkward phase again. Our attention is fragmented across more platforms, devices, and channels than ever. We seek information and entertainment everywhere, and we have higher expectations: we want access without annoyance, quality without cost, personalization without intrusion. The current infrastructure wasnt built for this reality. Now, AI has cascaded into everything. Its generating slop thats flooding search results and feeds, yes, but its also the tool were using to rebuild. We are reorganizing our lives around it: how we work, how we find information, how we consume content. What some are calling the “agentic AI economy”where AI is integrated as an intelligent intermediary that reasons, plans, and acts to solve problemsis starting to take shape. The internets infrastructure will be fine once it catches up to that shift and the industry rethinks its fundamental economics. Course correction Licensing deals, revenue sharing, and pay-per-crawl compensation models are taking shape to course correct and ensure publishers start to be paid for their value and those will continue to evolve as the industry sees what sticks. Meanwhile, AI companies themselves, OpenAI being the most recent, are investing in advertising infrastructure, recognizing that if chat and AI engines are here to stay as primary channels, they need sustainable business models beyond subscriptions. New targeting approaches leveraging agentic AI are also on the horizon, offering the promise of eliminating waste and fraud that would otherwise go toward funding made-for-advertising websites or AI slop. Companies like mine, Scope3, offer agentic advertising, using AI agents to match ads to specific content themes and values rather than relying on personal data or demographics. Try this: copy a page youve browsed and paste it into ChatGPT, then ask it to produce an ad and compare the result to whats actually on the page. More likely than not, ChatGPT gave a better ad without even needing your browser history or data. This makes content the product again, not you. Quality publishers get rewarded while content farms and fraudulent sites are starved of revenue. These are proof points that the economic infrastructure is being rebuilt. A turning point The internets promise doesnt have to die with its decline. Were at a turning point where we know AI will shape the webthats inevitable. Now we decide what kind of system we build with it. If the attention economy monetized distraction, the agentic AI economy has the chance to monetize trust. We can use AI to filter noise instead of creating it. We can reward publications that invest in fact-checking and original reporting. We can connect ads based on values and genuine interest rather than demographic profiles. Or we can let the internet collapseeither descending into unusable chaos where AI slop buries everything of value or splitting into a world where quality content exists only behind paywalls most people cant afford. The builders who understand this moment, those championing dynamics that reward quality and trust, are ready to shape whats next. The internet we want is possible. We just have to choose to build it.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its a soundand smellcar commuters have become intimately familiar with: the noxious fumes of asphalt repaving. U.S. road maintenance and highway expansion require a massive quantity of asphalt every year, roughly 400 million tons a year on average, according to Asphalt magazine, a publication of the international trade association Asphalt Institute. But a new process developed by St. Louis-based firm Verde Resources seeks to streamline the process, making it more sustainable and odorless. Verdes new BioAsphalt process, which has been in development since 2022, utilizes whats called biochar, or natural wood remnants from forestry waste that get added into the traditional asphalt material mixture of limestone and granite aggregates. This allows the road mixture to sequester a small amount of carbon. Verde CEO Jack Wong estimates that for every 100 tons of BioAsphalt that gets laid, 10 tons of carbon dioxide gets sequestered. Were essentially creating a no-brainer model for the industry to transition to, making the product as competitive as traditional asphalt with environmental advantages and benefits, Wong says. Asphalts environmental footprint is significant. In addition to using petroleum-based materials and requiring extensive energy for heating and installation, it also releases dangerous particulate matter as cars and trucks drive atop it. The National Asphalt Pavement Association estimated that laying down the material results in 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually in the U.S.; for comparison, thats about one-seventh the amount of emissions created by the nations commercial airline industry. Earlier this summer, BioAsphalt passed the initial stages of a test at the National Center for Asphalt Technology at Auburn University in Alabama. A section of BioAsphalt roadway was tested for a year, with staff running modified 80-ton trucks across the test bed to verify its durability. The material, one of a handful trying to make asphalt less environmentally damaging, has been given an okay for lower-impact applications like local roads and parking lots. “We’ve had plenty of materials and ideas come through the test track over the years, but few show the carbon reduction potential that Verde’s Biochar Asphalt does, and it’s definitely the first technology on the track with a carbon sequestration component,” said Nathan Moore, assistant director for test track research at NCAT, in a statement. While the early validation confirms its suitability for light-duty pavements, continuous evaluations are underway to determine its long-term viability for medium- to high-traffic roadways and even runways, as part of NCAT’s multiyear test cycle. The secret to Verdes process is a proprietary emulsifying agent that blends with a liquid asphalt binder to create a specialized emulsion, bonding the biochar and aggregate. This offers an alternative to the petroleum-based bitumen that traditionally binds roads Wong wouldnt reveal the exact additives in the firms process, other than to say theyre nonhazardous. A self-proclaimed Dune fan, he calls them spice. But they bond the roadway mixture without needing the heat required during the traditional asphalt laying process, which can hit 300 degrees Fahrenheit. This opens up new opportunities for the road construction industry. On-site crews dont need to cart gas canisters or additional gear to heat up the asphalt, so they can travel more lightly. In addition, since heat isnt needed in the application process, they can work longer into the cold months of the year, expanding when they can repair and resurface roads and parking lots. This also means that the factories that make the asphalt mix dont need to use heat as well. Wong added that while the BioAsphalt is about 15% to 20% more expensive to make, by weight, due to the different materials, its engineered to require a thinner layer when applied. So it actually ends up being slightly cheaper when energy savings and reduced material volume are factored in. Wong hopes to scale up quickly. BioAsphalt doesnt need to be heated with traditional furnaces, but it can be made in the same factory settings as traditional asphaltmeaning that existing infrastructure can make the mix without needing to spend money on powering industrial furnaces. Verde is working with Ergon Asphalt & Emulsions, one of the largest liquid asphalt producers in North America, on arranging distribution and licensing the proprietary process to other producers. Wong hopes to ramp up production substantially in the next year and eventually capture 10% of the market. Roadways, of course, arent just sources of pollution themselves. But they can be considered fossil fuel infrastructure because they support the use of cars and trucks burning gasoline and diesel fuel. In response, Wong says that he feels Verde’s product offers a practical way to immediately reduce emissions that go into roadway repair and expansion. Were providing an immediate solution to the day-to-day needs for our very robust and mature road network, Wong says.
Category:
E-Commerce
With more than a decade of experience working as a design and tech analyst, Andrew Hogan is all in on the efficiency and ease that tech brings to our lives. But lately at home with his daughters (ages 4 and 18 months), Hogan is grappling with something unwieldy and undefined: how parents, kids, and technology interact, from smartphones to screen time to AI. We are so eager to remove frictionavoid it and smooth over the rough spots, especially as parents, Hogan says. In fall 2024, Hogan began writing a newsletter called Parent.Tech, designed to help him, and other parents, better understand how to navigate the increasingly complex world of tech and consumer products. Some of the topics covered include parenting apps, parental controls, AIs place (or not) in homework, and how to build a framework for kids tech use. I want to be a better dad, and Parent.Tech was a path to doing that, Hogan says. Its given me some scaffolding and context to make decisions. Hogan is parenting children who are on the back end of the anxious generation, named for a book written by social psychologist and New York University professor Jonathan Haidt. Touted by Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric, the book links the steep decline in adolescent mental health to the increased reliance on screens and technology, calling this period in our culture the great re-wiring of childhood. Haidt advocates for more time steeped in unfettered play and fewer hours tethered to tech. While Haidts messaging isnt entirely new (documentaries Screenagers in 2016 and The Social Dilemma in 2020, and the Wait Until 8th campaign have all introduced similar conversations), its spurred a renewed interest among parents to seek out new ways to manage tech. Entrepreneurs are listening. In the past decade, dozens of products have hit the market with the intention of giving kids and their families (everyone, really) the tools to reclaim attention, relationships, and presence. Businesses like Yondr are making it easier for kids to go phone-free in school; startups like Tin Can ($75) are bringing back the landline; and mobile-phone makers including Light Phone ($699), Pinwheel ($119), and Gabb Wireless (phones starting at $149) are offering phones free of social media and web access. Plus, there are untold numbers of toys that promise to help children enjoy the screen-free fun they deserve. These companies have identified a real needit’s clear by now that willpower alone is not enough to keep humans off their screens. And together they are channeling our techno-anxiety into a new and growing market of products that parents are increasingly willing to shell out for. Determining the size of this market is still tricky because the products dont fit into a neat box, despite their shared mission, says Audrey Chee-Read, principal analyst in Forresters CMO practice. What you have isnt really an established category with specific guardrails [e.g., theres tech like Gabb thats considered kids consumer tech versus Yondr thats not a tech], she says. So there is probably a forecast out there on consumer or family tech products [of which Gabb, Tin Can, and Light Phone would be under] but that will also encapsulate other things like gaming. Still, its clear that these businesses are growing: From 2020 to 2023, Gabb grew 895%, nabbing a spot on the 2024 Inc. 5000 list, while Pinwheel landed in the top 5% of that same list. Jacqueline Nesi, psychologist and assistant professor at Brown University who writes a newsletter called TechnoSapiens and runs a consultancy called Tech Without Stress, says the shift is undeniable: People realize we cant get rid of technology so [theyre asking] How do we learn to live with it in a way that promotes our well-being rather than detracts from it? [Photo: Tin Can] Building protected spaces that mimic the before While most children havent experienced life without screens, for most parents (especially Gen Xers), theres a distinct before and after. An increasing number of adults, says Chee-Read, want to tether back to a time when phones werent in every pocket and we didnt feel the pull to check social feeds at school or work. Distraction wasnt as pervasive in our culture and there was a level of freedom to be in the moment. For Graham Dugoni, grappling with the desire to spend more time in the before made him a founder. His company, Yondr, makes and sells lockable neoprene pouches that allow people to leave their personal tech behind at school, work, concerts, and for other experiences to remove distraction and foster connection. Dugoni refers to the Yondr mission as creating a sort of National Park system of protected spaces. [Photo: Yondr] Its a big exercise in social psychology, he says. What happens in a phone-free space is at some level giving people a sense of freedom that they cant find in other walks of modern life. We view ourselves as part of a counterculture movement. [Photo: Yondr] Inspired by philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, who explored what it means to be in the world, and Marshall McLuhan, who studied the effects media has on society, Dugoni started the business in 2014, hand-making the pouches and selling them out of his Toyota RV. Since then, hes scaled Yondr to reach more than 300% year-over-year growth. Dugoni hopes his product will become a form of infrastructure for a world with less screen time. The company now works with schools in 35 countries and 50 U.S. states, including one-third of all New York City secondary public schools. Los Angeles Public Schools (80% of middle schools and high schools in the district) work with the company, too, and Yondrs neoprene pouches are also used at Madison Square Garden and at comedy clubs throughout the U.S. In fact, one of the first big relationships Dugoni secured was with comedian Dave Chappelle, who asks his audience members to store their phones in Yondr pouches during his shows to protect his act from online leaks and to maintain a distraction-free audience experience. Says Dugoni: Its so wildly traditional, it might be revolutionary. A big piece of being in any emerging market, he says, is buy-in and consumer education. At schools, that takes the form of writing letters to parents, holding community forums, meeting with school administration, and step-by-step, day-by-day guidance for students and adults on what a phone-free school day looks like. We always start with a why, says David Franklin, Yondrs manager of partner programming. We need to change the school culturethat changes attitudes and it pushes this idea forward. At concerts and comedy clubs, Yondr employees cruise the line into the venue, talking to attendees about the pouches, how they work, and why theyre a key part of that nights audience experience. Sometimes, Dugoni says, people resist the idea, wanting to keep their phones available. Other times, folks are happy to try the pouch for a phone-free night. The majority of our work is around experience design, he says. What things have to be true for this thing to work? It’s about how you approach people and make it conducive to their understanding: This is a special experience and what you are stepping into is worth everyone being there for it. [Photo: Light Phone] Seizing gaps in the attention economy Around the same time Dugoni founded Yondr, Kaiwei Tang met his now business partner Joe Hollier at a Google incubator program in 2014. The two founded Light Phone, one of the first dumbphones on the market, a year later. The spark for Light Phone was a desire to sidestep the attention economy and a frustration with the available options. Now on its third iteration, Light Phone III (priced at $699) offers people a chance to leave the house with a way to communicate, check the weather, listen to music, or find directions, all while free of the nagging distractions that often come along with smartphones. And while Tang knew there was a market for his product, he also quickly learned thered be tension around its adoption. Change can be awkward, and as much as Light Phone built something for people who want some space from always-on tech, there would also be some friction around what using Light Phone means on a granular level. [Photo: Light Phone] We got so much feedback from our users; when people used it, the first 15 or 20 minutes were really nerve-racking, Tang says. Everyone had this anxiety. Standing to pay for your groceries and you dont know what to do. After 15 or 20 minutes, you get over the FOMO, you remember whats happening, you pay attention to the details of the buildings or trees you never really noticed. [Photo: Light Phone] Managing that dissonance, Tang says, has been a big part of the companys growth. Askig anyone to change a longtime behavior is going to be hard, he admits. We see it with food. We know were eating too much grease. We cant help ourselves. Were trying to show the benefits of the organic and healthy food brands, but were not asking everyone to become vegan. Its the same thing with Light Phone. Were trying to show the benefits of breaking away from the smartphone. Gabb Wireless is another business aiming to knock off a sliver of this market, selling Samsung phones dressed in the companys proprietary software, built specifically for kids and teens. Gabb phones and watches have no internet and no social media. Parental controls are built in, with safety and developmentally appropriate communication tools tailored for kids. Parents also have access to a Gabb app on their phones, allowing them to tap into location sharing, video calls, and text flagging capabilities on their kids devices. CEO Nate Randle says that while businesses in the category started when the conversation around kids and smartphones wasnt really much of a thing, the market opportunity has been clear from the start. We talk about TAM [total addressable market], he says. There are more than 60 million kids in the U.S. alone between the ages of 5 and 16. There is a wide-open market for an alternative solution to smartphones. And for Gabb, showing up as a solution for families and kids has required an awareness around what it means to be a kids tech brand. Traditionally, when someone thinks of a kids brand, they go to rainbows and stars, says Brad Dowdle, VP of creative at Gabb Wireless. This is Generation Alpha. Theyve grown up around technology. Theyre savvy. It has to be aspirational, and they cant feel were designing down to them. When business opportunity and cultural change collide As these solutions emerge and build a following, its also important to zoom out on attitudes toward technology, privacy, and life online. For instance, says Chee-Read, while 63% of adults say theyre concerned about online behavior being tracked, less than half of youth report feeling similarly. At the same time, grassroots organizations are pushing for legislation in California, New York, Pennsylvania, and other states to ban phones from school. [Photo: Tin Can] A company like Tin Can, which has a mission to make the landline cool again, is showing up on national news and having a viral moment on Instagram. Jerry Chen, the founder of Firewalla, which sells cybersecurity software to homes and businesses to shield everything from baby cameras and laptops to speakers and phones, says in its first five years the business doubled in revenue annually, followed by a slowdown of 100% growth every two years. On top of all of this, of course, is a vanishing amount of institutional knowledge and understanding. As technology progresses, the number of people available to provide relevant support and advice on how to manage itespecially as parentsis disappearing. The factors present five years ago in terms of managing the way technology influences daily life are nearly irrelevant today. And five years from now, well be immersed in entirely new circumstances. Founders who can manage that kind of market speed and the dissonance around technology and its place in our lives stand to create solutions with real staying power. Entrepreneurs and CEOs like Dugoni, Randle, Tang, and Chen are selling products, yes, but theyre also shaping a new version of what it means to grow up and live in our world. This is not a market built to reject tech but rather to redefine how we relate to it. And for now, Hogans hope is that continuing to work on Parent.Tech in his off-hours will help him find the middle path in managing tech tools for himself and his kids. People need to design these tools, and then we need to pay for these tools, Hogan says. We have to figure it out. No one is coming to change it for us.
Category:
E-Commerce
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