Progress and Sponge Design

The last time I bought sponges, they were rectangles.

Two days ago I brought sponges and they were a kind of wavey-rectangle.

The time between these two purchases was probably no more than 2 months. The three-pack of Scotch-Brite I bought last time lasted about that long (too long?). Nothing about their being a rectangle struck me as any more or less efficient at being a sponge.

This particular change is pretty inconsequential. There’s a dishwasher in my house, so I’m not even all that affected by the sponge industry. But I’m fascinated by the anatomy of change, to borrow a partial phrase from E.B. White (his was an essay titled The Anatomy of Decline).

Who I was when I bought the three-pack of Scotch-Brite two months ago is roughly the same version of who I am today. Yet, had my dishwasher broken I’d suddenly be someone in a real position to understand something new about why the sponge changed and how it works.

Not to get too in the weeds, but I find it entirely possible that a world exists where the makeup of the sponge could have changed in a way that affects how I wash my cast-iron skillet vs. how I wash an 8-cup pot.

And this, I think, is why it catches my attention.

One day they’re rectangles, then two months of my life go by — Christmas, New Years, flying with one kid solo for the first time, friend’s parents dying, Dry January, 6 nights in a row of building magnet-tile-towers with my son before bed — and all of a sudden the design of the standard kitchen sponge has changed. And I was totally in the dark that this was happening.

Progress is a multiplier that flips the way things were on their head - fast. It instills doom in some and heavy doses of optimism in others.

Let’s pivot to technology with this in mind. Take algorithm updates as a measure of how quickly things change and the rate at which that compounding change can leave you without your shirt. Or make you feel dumb in a meeting where this is your domain but you’re just a clueless as anyone else.

In 2018, Google made over 3,200 updates to the search algorithm. Not all of these are major version updates; most were maintenance updates in the and some were major updates.

Can you imagine having to keep up with even 5 major updates to the thing that is the heart of your business’s organic reach?

One day you’re an SEO expert, the next you’re a novice all over again.

That’s the doomer-ish view.

The optimistic view is that this rate of change is ultimately leading to something that will be so good that it will make SEO feel like a one-man blacksmith in antiquity compared to the robotics-blacksmithing that will be generative-AI search.

I’d argue here that the SEO expert becoming a blacksmith isn’t a bad thing. They were never going to work 24/7 to get the kind of results that businesses will be able to see with the next suite of SEO tools that use AI. They can instead focus on creative writing for a business’s authentic voice or some other human-led thing that we can’t even see right now or doesn’t have a name/discipline. Side-note: I see a world where philosophers become integral to the direction of any significant company.

Just like the blacksmith in antiquity was never going to build the B-2 bomber or the Cybertruck, he now can potentially pivot his time to building things on an individual level that have more intrigue and are for beauty’s sake instead of for industry.

I’m not convinced this will play out this way — I just offer it as a possibility that I see if we are freed up by the ubiquity of AI rather than oppressed by it.

Even those who are the most in-tune with the rate of change and progress in AI and new hardware, like Sora, the Apple Vision Pro, or the Cybertruck, will have their own sponge-design moments.

I was in line at a thrift store the other day and a woman who was most likely in here 90s was commenting on the new Square reader behind the counter. The woman working behind the counter was glad to indulge and started highlighting the amazing features like product categories. Product categories.

Couldn’t help but think about the absurdity that these women are amazed with a marginally better version of tech that’s been around since 2017 while AGI is creeping in everywhere.

We all have this rectangle-to-wavey-sponge transition happening to us. At any given time, we have multiple versions happening at the same time.

Buckle up :)