Hope you are making the most of your holidays as we all seek to swim back to the surface for 2021. What a year. Just wanted to send along a few thoughts for the future of tech and share a few other things that made me think twice. Finally, I want to thank you for subscribing to this little ~monthly exercise of mine. And I encourage you to write a bit more in 2021 yourself. Have long believed: If you want to better understand what you do and why you’re doing it, write about it. Writing is such an underrated form of discovery.

What has become an ~annual tradition, I took a shot at summarizing a set of themes for the future of tech that I am excited about. They stimulated quite a bit of discussion online, and you can read the full post here. I would say themes around “Eduployment,” “Channels Of One,” and every niche enterprise function becoming multi-player (and the implications of this) solicited the most feedback. But here are the eight themes:

Li Jin’s essay on “Building the Middle Class of the Creator Economy” was chock full of insights and data. I especially resonated with her framework and deep dive around “platform design decisions that can help make success attainable by many.” (summary below). Highly recommend you read it on Li’s Substack.

Having spent a lot of my career seeking to port desktop and web experiences to mobile apps, I have been trying to reconcile the great comeback of desktop in my own work and life (even before COVID). And the latest M1 chips from Apple add additional gravity to this trend.

Have a safe holiday and new year. Thanks again for the engagement, feedback, and idea sharing this past year. -scott