







This is part one of the Crossover Project. Part two is here and part three is here. A conference talk based on this work is now available here. I sat in front of Mat, idly chatting about tech and cuisine. Before now, I had known him mostly for his cooking pictures on Twitter, the kind that made me envious of suburbanites and their 75,000 BTU woks. But now he was the test subject for my new project, to see if it was going to be fruitful or a waste of time.
Gergely Orosz on Twitter / X
What can us, engineers else learn from designers and design engineers? Turns out there’s lots, based on talking with one of the best design engineers in the industry, @Mappletons.Timestamps:00:00 Intro03:24 From anthropology to tech10:18 What does a designer do?18:23 How… pic.twitter.com/wFlNLnUdTI— Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) September 23, 2026
Presentations — Benedict Evans
Every year, I produce a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. New in May 2025, ‘AI eats the world’.

Resetting on engineering expectations in the age of AI
I’m accepting new sponsorships for The Modern Leader for 2026. If you’re interested (or you think your company may be interested), you can learn more here.
Matt Webb
I have worked with some of the world’s largest firms on design-led product invention using new technology for over 20 years. I was MD of two London startup accelerators with R/GA Ventures, and co-founder and CEO of pioneering design studio BERG, where we shipped connected products and got work into the New York MoMA.
Design Engineering with Maggie Appleton
The 1989 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Real World of Technology"
Technology has always been a part of human existence. Today though, says the experimental physicist, Ursula M. Franklin, technology has large-scale effects on culture itself. Ursula Franklin is an experimental physicist, University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, a former board member of the National Research Council and the Science Council of Canada, and a companion of the Order...

The Geopolitics of AI Infrastructure - Dylan Patel, SemiAnalysis
Taking on the Technosphere: A Kitchen Debate
In his original writings on the technosphere from the early 2010s, Peter Haff identified its existence as a grand metabolizing system. Back in early 2016, spurred on by the preparation for HKW’s Anthropocene Campus: The Technosphere Issue, a vehement debate sprang up in the home of science and technology scholars Gabrielle Hecht and Paul N. Edwards: How valid is Haff’s approach? What is its overall reality? And what is its heuristic purpose? In this republication of their dispute, you, the reader, can engage alongside Hecht and Edwards in the ongoing question of whether the concept of the technosphere is indeed “a useful tool,” “silverware,” or “a barren gadget” in understanding the current and future condition of planet Earth.

What technology takes from us – and how to take it back | Rebecca Solnit
The long read: Decisions outsourced, chatbots for friends, the natural world an afterthought: Silicon Valley is giving us life void of connection. There is a way out – but it’s going to take collective effort


Anthropomorphism Is Breaking Our Ability to Judge AI
Tech Policy Press fellow James Ball asks, how should we interact with a technology designed to ‘speak’ with us on what appear to be human terms?

Robin Spielmann — Design Engineer
Design engineer at the intersection of code, design and art. My own little space on the internet: side projects, writing, photography and postcards.

These engineering students made a self playing piano from scratch
Alex Komoroske on Twitter / X
What if technology didn’t feel so… hollow?Some friends and I just released a manifesto about a world where tech leaves us feeling nourished (along with an evolving list of theses about how we can build it)https://t.co/sfKBVZ2zXr— Alex Komoroske (@komorama) December 5, 2025
How much of a UX designer’s job can AI really do? Here’s my day…
We are all Product Engineers now | Seldo.com
Agents are eating the software development lifecycle from the bottom up — code generation already gone, review and ops following fast. What remains is figuring out what people actually want, which can't be automated or scaled. That job is called product engineering, it pays $240k, and nobody's training for it.