Hi friends,
It’s a stormy morning here in California as I write this. Somehow, it’s already late November, the week of Thanksgiving in the US, and I’m thinking about this little list and all the lovely people on it that I’ve been fortunate to know and work with over the years.
As always, this year I planned to do the bare minimum recommended business outreach and email you all just a tad more often. But then there were family emergencies, lots of client work, plenty of creative distractions, the arugula seeds needed planting… To be honest, I’ve never been much of a self-marketer. There’s already so much noise in the world, and I hesitate to add to overflowing inboxes unless I’m feeling especially inspired.
To follow up on my last email about the disruption taking place in our own WordPress backyard: all is resolved in Flywheel-hosted backends and has been for a while. You can now upgrade your plugins and themes with ease. (May I gently suggest that you do just that and update your passwords too?)
There’s still funny business going on between WordPress and WP Engine (Flywheel’s parent company). If you’re interested, I found this conversation on the excellent podcast Tech Won’t Save Us fascinating.
I can’t believe I’ve worked with WordPress for 20 years. These days, over 43% of all websites use WordPress as a content management system, and it holds nearly 65% of the global CMS market share. This is a trajectory I never could have imagined back in the mid-2000s when I was a grad student and my professors were saying the 3D web was coming soon. I always figured when that happened, I’d move on to something that involved less screen time—maybe become a very poor arugula farmer.
Although there’ve been plenty of tech and design changes over the past two decades, the 3D web hasn’t happened yet. And somehow, despite being a fairly meandering creative person, I’ve stuck with designing and working with WordPress for far longer than I could have ever imagined. I’ve gotten better at what I do and how I do it, but for the most part, my career hasn’t been overhauled.
These days I wonder if GenAI will change that—I’m guessing it will? I wonder if I’ll be flexible enough to embrace that change. The part I love most about what I do is the thoughtful creating of things that clarify and inspire. And that requires a combination of listening, human connection, and magical in-the-zone creation. I’m not sure if Big AI, despite its promises of more, faster, cheaper, can add to that experience.
AI widgets have been crammed into nearly every digital tool I use, but I don’t yet see a massive improvement. People say that’s coming soon (sooner than the 3D web?), and maybe they are right. But for now, generative AI still makes things that feel impersonal and introduces mistakes that take more time to unravel than to do by myself in the first place.
Mostly, I’m wary about the environmental costs of generative AI. I know this isn’t everyone’s favorite topic, so forgive me this detour, but I’m guessing you’ve heard that data centers required for generative AI are massive energy consumers? Tech Won’t Save Us has another excellent piece on this here.
Is ubiquitous generative AI inevitable? Are the benefits worth the impacts? Will my career finally be overhauled? Probably? All I know for sure is that when technology accelerates exponentially, it’s important to stay conscious about what we’re opting into if we can. And I’m guessing that heartfelt human voices, services, and creations will stand out as they always have. (But if I don’t weather the AI storm, perhaps you’ll visit my arugula stand?)
Of course, AI is just one of many things feeling highly uncertain these days. If you’re more discombobulated than usual, you’re not alone.
I keep reminding myself that I cannot know the future. And, also, that it’s okay not to know. And, also, that when I’m able to get still and quiet enough to surrender to not knowing, that’s when I’m able to be more curious, more gentle, and more open to loving.
And that’s not a bad place to be right now.
Grateful for you,
Sarah