One More Opinion on the Future

*tap tap* is this thing on?

The last piece I wrote for the Mind Meld was over 800 days ago.

In those same 800 days, it feels like we’ve shifted decades in tech, marketing, and everything I functionally thought about for well over two years:

Over that time, I had quite my own list of threads that kept me away from writing. Grief over the loss of my dad, getting engaged and married, finishing business school, travel, weddings, ramping up at my job, and moving (multiple times) all kept my plate busy enough to justify the hiatus.

Still, the remaining existential curiosity that had driven me to write in the first place was somehow paired with this sudden realization that the world was changing rapidly.

In late 2022, the threshold to opine got higher as the evolution of modern work compounded. ChatGPT came out, multiple VC firms and influencers pivoted to AI, and the buzz in the nest grew louder as “AI” newsletters popped up everywhere. In the 800 days since I last wrote:

• New models (GPT-4o, Claude 3, Gemini 1.5) have become multimodal, capable of logical reasoning, and have begun to blur the lines between assistants, therapists and companions

• Agentic AI has introduced a slew of assistants capable of independent task execution. (Ivan Zhao put this perfectly in a recent post: “What happens when the org chart absorbs minds that never sleep?”)

• AI is fully integrated into the workspace, with office products, coding tools, and every software imaginable, capable of generating new content (through varying quality) and efficiency optimization

As my company frantically raced to keep up with our own contributions to context-aware generation in response to ChatGPT, I felt a sudden pressure for us to get things right before I could start writing my own opinions about the AI-led economy.

We ebbed, we flowed. Months passed. Models got smarter. Upstarts jumped into the race. Billboards in San Francisco started their own competition to decide who could make the word “agent” look the most sensible in context. As everyone jumped to define what came next, I felt a growing appreciation for just how provisional our certainty really is.

As this year ends, I’ve come to terms with the privilege of having been at the epicentre of one of tech’s most unique revolutions. Being close to that change taught me something simple: everybody’s best guess about the future is still a hypothesis. The way we work, build, and think is still in motion, and it will likely remain so for a while.

Certainly, one more opinion on the future can’t hurt?

Moving forward in 2026, I’m excited to write again. To think out loud. To share half-formed interpretations of fuzzy problems. To practice a bit of epistemic humility alongside all of you.

When I first started writing this newsletter, it was called the Mind Meld, focused on things at the intersection of neuroscience and marketing, like mirror neurons, emotional associations, and the psychology of everything from jingles to water bottles. The goal was to blend research with unconventional insight.

The questions I’m interested in now live beyond any single discipline. They sit at the intersection of marketing, culture, technology, and work — and increasingly, my own career within all of it.

So the name is changing.

The Meld.

It’s still about connecting dots and noticing patterns. But it’s also a space for more personal reflection: career lessons, incomplete ideas, and messier thinking that may not always land cleanly.

On March 18, 1995, Michael Jordan marked the end of a long, drawn-out hiatus during which he lost, reconnected with, and rediscovered his love of the game.

I bring this up because today, I, too, feel like Michael Jordan.

Considerably shorter, worth significantly less money, and certainly less famous, but equally excited to jump back into the arena.

It could certainly mean a few misses and a metaphorical beating by the Orlando Magic in the 1995 playoffs that superfans never seem to acknowledge in the “GOAT” debate — but it’ll be jarring, it’ll be fun, and I hope it will, at the very least, be a nice thank you to those who stuck around.

In other life updates, I was recently on the Meme Team Podcast with Sonia Baschez and Amanda Natividad. They are both also wonderful writers and marketers: Sonia writes on her Linkedin and runs a growth agency. Amanda writes a Substack newsletter called “The Menu” on marketing and creativity-related insights. Check them out!