Hey there!
I’m Daniel. Together with Matt, we’re building Inanimate - devices and a platform to transform any home or workplace into an agentic environment.
This is Lab Notes - a record of our work and what inspires us as we build and ship Inanimate. You signed up to follow our story.
If you’re enjoying reading, please share it with a friend or colleague. Help us grow the community around Inanimate.
Previously…
Here’s what’s been happening this week.
We’re Gathering People in New York!
We are hosting another New Wave Hardware Meetup on Thursday 2nd April @ Betaworks in New York’s Meatpacking district.
If you are building at the intersection of AI and hardware, reply to this email and we’ll get you signed up.
And in London!
We’re also hosting a small gathering for hardware founders and operators in London. We call this Over Coffee.
It’s happening on Friday 27th March @ Caravan Coffee near London Bridge.
If you want to join, reply to this email, and we’ll sign you up. Limited spaces for this one.
We Posted Stickers!
You guys loved the stickers! I posted some out to the UK, USA, and Sweden. Häftig!
If you want one, reach out with your address.
What else?
We’re interviewing lots of Embedded Engineers. Full details and application form here. Please share with awesome people.
We’re experimenting with the M5Stick.
We’re understanding the many costs associated with shipping hardware.
We’re starting to find out what multi-device room orchestration feels like.
Yes, and…
Here’s what’s been influencing and inspiring me this week.
Tracking… Digital Minimalism
Smartphones have transformed our lives. But they have brought drawbacks too - dark patterns, doom scrolling, and a disconnection from the world around us.
A new category of products has emerged that try to rebalance technology in favour of people, mental health, and connection. All while maintaining access to the services that run our modern world.
This is all a response to broader changes in consumer taste and behaviour. Some trends I see and feel.
A drive for fitness, better mental health, and being in nature.
A desire for real human connection in a busy world.
A quest to reduce distractions and improve focus.
Some feel like Calm Technology. Some feel closer to Cal Newport’s philosophy of Digital Minimalism, where our interactions with technology are intentional, without draining time, focus, and attention.
Here are a few notable examples.
Vestaboard (ambient message board using a mechanical split-flap display)
TRMNL (ambient information display using epaper)
Minimal (minimal smartphone to enhance focus and reduce scrolling)
Meadow (device with essential services, allowing you to leave your phone at home)
Karri (voice messenger for kids and families)
As the quest for the Third Device continues, I think we will see more in this category in the years to come.
Reading… What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
It is the year 2119. Britain has flooded.
“...a Russian warhead goes off accidentally in the middle of the Atlantic, causing a tsunami that, combined with rising sea levels, wipes out everything but a Europe-wide archipelago of mountain peaks… The 21st century has unfolded as we all fear it will. The US is now run by rival “warlords”; Nigeria is the hegemonic power.” (Guardian review)
This is the setting for Ian McEwan’s remarkable new novel which I recently finished.
Our narrator is a literary scholar in the future, who studies a fictional poet from our present (which is his past). He uses our emails, our messages, our social media trail to study our world. He writes:
“I’d like to shout down through a hole in the ceiling of time and advise the people of a hundred years ago: If you want your secrets kept, whisper them into the ear of your dearest, most trusted friend. Do not trust the keyboard and screen. If you do, we’ll know everything…”
The book is a wonderful mediation on the relationship between past, present, and future. It is dystopian cli-fi, all undergirded by the plot of a psychological thriller.
When there is time to breath, McEwan incldues these philosophical musings about our world and our time.
Forgive me, but I wanted to include one at length.
“What music, what tasteless art, what wild breaks and sense of humour: people flying 2,000 miles for a one-week holiday; buildings that touched the cloud base; razing ancient forests to make paper to wipe their backsides. But they also spelled out the human genome, invented the internet, made a start on AI and placed a beautiful golden telescope a million miles out in space. Then, of course, hardly worth repeating, they watched amazed as the decades sped by and the Derangement gathered pace, the weapons proliferated and they did little, even as they knew what was coming and what was needed. Such liberty and abandon, such fearful defiance. They were brilliant in their avarice, quarrelsome beyond imagining, ready to die for bad and good ideas alike. As science extended its domain, religious belief and conspiracy theories swelled. They were big and brave, superb scholars and scientists, musicians, actors and athletes, and they were idiots who were throwing it all away, even as their high culture lamented or roared in pain. We thrill in horror at their feistiness. They were loud, hungry, reckless and free, except for the hundreds of millions they left behind.”
It is a brilliant read. Perhaps, in my opinion, one of McEwan’s best.
The book begs the question - if by every measure, we are living through history’s greatest period, why do we not realise how lucky we are?
Listen to McEwan in conversation with political philosopher, David Runciman, discussing the book. Buy the book on Amazon.
Thanks for reading
See you next time.