Category: Tech

I Wanted to Be Wrong About eFishery. I Really Did.

I remember the pitch. I remember the guy. I remember sitting in the same room as him around ten years ago, listening to people praising his tenacity, seeing well regarded people and startup figures laud him as a visionary, and walking away feeling that gnawing sense I’ve come to trust over the years. When the story feels too clean, too heartwarming, too startup-perfect.

But I didn’t say anything publicly to avoid being called out for having a markedly opposing view and being highly skeptic about it, not to mention the predictable judgment that would have come, accusing me of being envious while not being anywhere near successful. It was after all a gut feeling with little to back it up and I wasn’t about to go on a mission to take down the latest tech darling of the nation, the pride and Joy of the Indonesian startup community, with no support. This company was an international sensation and people in my circle knew of my doubts but I don’t recall posting publicly about it.

When everyone else was throwing praise and cash at a fish-feeder startup like it’s the second coming of Grameen Bank, it’s easy to start wondering if maybe you’re just being cynical. Maybe you’re jaded. Maybe the founder really was a scrappy visionary from East Jakarta who’s cracked aquaculture and was about to scale empathy and catfish across Southeast Asia. I mean look at all those articles about the company and how this guy appearing out of nowhere becoming something of a tech startup prophet.

Except now, here we are: $300 million gone, farmers screwed, machines abandoned, and the poster child of “tech for good” exposed as a meticulously constructed con.

And you know what? I’m not surprised. I’m pissed.

Because I wanted to be wrong. I wanted this story to be true. I wanted this to be the one that proved that impact and innovation and bottom-of-the-pyramid hustle could build something real. But from the beginning, eFishery had all the wrong kinds of charm: the underdog myth polished to perfection, the handcrafted pitch deck trauma-bonding with VCs who wanted to save the world without leaving the hotel lounge.

He said all the right things. He did all the right gestures, looking all pious and revered. And when the numbers didn’t line up? When the tech was too expensive for the people it was supposed to help? When the revenue made zero sense for a company claiming to transform Indonesia’s rural fish farms? Everyone just nodded harder.

I watched as global investors, SoftBank, Temasek, Sequoia (Peak XV), Social Capital, lined up to outbid each other for a slice of this sweet, scalable fiction. And the media? Oh, we played along too. We love a redemption arc. We love a startup that feeds fish and our desire to feel like capitalism might still be capable of doing something decent. Again, with all these big name international funds coming in to feed the fish feeding startup, who am I to contradict their supposed intellect and superior judgment?

But deep down, I kept thinking: this doesn’t smell like fish. It smells like a fishy performance.

Now that it’s unraveled, this wasn’t just a few optimistic numbers or an overzealous forecast. This was systemic. Two sets of books. Ghost transactions. Fake shell companies. A finance operation so convoluted it’d make a crypto bro blush. All of it propped up by a moral calculus so warped it might as well have been cribbed from a freshman philosophy seminar: “Yes, I lied, but I helped some farmers, so doesn’t that count for something?”

No, it doesn’t. You don’t get to run over everyone with the trolley and call it “net positive.”

The real damage here isn’t just financial. It’s reputational. It’s trust. It’s yet another blow to the already fragile belief that startups in emerging markets can build something real without burning down the ecosystem around them. This kind of fraud doesn’t just hurt investors. It makes it harder for every honest founder grinding away on a real solution with real traction and real limitations.

And don’t get me started on due diligence. Multiple rounds of funding, multiple term sheets, global funds with armies of analysts, and no one noticed the company stopped filing basic financials in Singapore? That feeder machines were supposedly deployed at scale with zero supply chain footprint? That fish feed producers weren’t even aware of this supposed revolution happening in their own backyard?

The worst part? Some people will still excuse it. They’ll frame it as a tragedy. As a good person corrupted by pressure. A “lesson” for the ecosystem. I get it. That’s cleaner. Easier. But I can’t do that. Not after watching people celebrate this company like it was changing the world, when some of us knew it wasn’t adding up.

There were moments when I wondered if I was just being too harsh, too skeptical. I thought, maybe I’m just tired of the hype machine. Maybe I’m projecting.

Turns out I wasn’t projecting. I was just paying attention and my gut was screaming against my rationale.

And now, here’s the wreckage: laid-off staff, bankrupt farmers, investors licking wounds, and a founder who thinks starting a frozen seafood business is part of his redemption arc.

No. You don’t get to fail upward on the backs of people you lied to.

This wasn’t inevitable. This wasn’t an honest mistake. This was a choice, repeated, amplified, and dressed up as progress. And he did it because everyone he asked told him it’s okay to do it because they all did it too. They all failed him and everyone paid the price. Fake it til you make it, they said. Well, in this story, nobody made it.

And I hate that my gut feeling was right.

On the other hand he managed to hoodwink Chamath Palihapitiya who deserves everything coming at him.

Apple’s billion dollar Indonesian drama

The Apple investment saga in Indonesia highlights the tension between government ambitions, expectations, and the realities of global business strategies.

Tirto published an article about what’s happening with the Apple investment story in Indonesia with quotes and statements from government officials and analysts. It wouldn’t be the Indonesian government if it didn’t generate drama out of foreign relations or commercial arrangements worthy of a telenovela.

A few things about this drama. Apple has yet to deposit or realize the last $14 million of its $100 million investment commitment made in 2016. It’s chump change for the company but necessary to unlock the permit for the latest iPhones and end the sales ban which the government enacted last year because of it. Only Apple knows definitively why they haven’t delivered on this. Meanwhile there’s been no update on the status of the Bali Apple Academy, announced by Tim Cook in April on his visit to the country. This fourth Academy in the country is likely to be part of the unrealized investment.

Indonesia has also been on Apple’s sales performance radar for a few years now having posted consecutive quarterly sales increases and mentioned specifically during multiple financial calls, so it’s in Apple’s best interest to keep the momentum going. The country makes roughly 50 million Android phones a year mainly for the domestic market, and 85% of phone imports in 2023, or 2.3 million of them, worth around $2 billion, were iPhones. The government is keen to reduce this foreign spending by getting Apple to make phones locally.

Armed with this information and situation, the Indonesian government decided to increase pressure on the company to make good on their promise and weaponised it to force them to eventually offer an investment worth a billion dollars late last year.

Political ego meets business reality

Expecting companies to invest in Indonesia just because they’re doing well in sales ignores the realities of running a sustainable business. Sure, it’s fair to want businesses to contribute to the markets they profit from, but investments can’t be driven by sales numbers alone. They need to make sense, whether it’s about supply chains, regulations, or long-term viability. Pressuring companies to invest without considering these factors often leads to rushed, unsustainable decisions that end up costing everyone in the long run.

That said, there’s room for a balanced approach. Instead of tying investments directly to sales, Indonesia could focus on creating conditions that make investing worthwhile, like improving infrastructure, offering clear incentives, and ensuring regulatory stability. This way, companies can contribute meaningfully without being forced into decisions that don’t align with their business goals. Fair contributions are important, but they should come from partnerships built on mutual benefit, not pressure. Otherwise, it’s just a short-term fix with a long-term price tag.

Apple’s Vietnamese success

Indonesian officials and analysts love to compare Apple’s meager investment in the country with the $16 billion Apple already spent in Vietnam since 2019. The company has 26 suppliers and 28 factories in the country as of 2022 and they announced in April that they will spend much more.

Apple didn’t invest in Vietnam because the market loves the iPhone so much, they’be been investing for years and each time increasing their commitment because the government offer attractive investment opportunities and incentives, provide a stable and consistent environment for businesses, deliver the necessary labor force, and ensure long term investment and production sustainability and security despite political upheavals. Not to mention the factories are mostly located near China which allows them to maintain a streamlined supply chain operation. Indonesia doesn’t have that advantage.

Vietnamese mobile developers also took up the Apple platforms because they saw opportunities, not because they were pushed or coaxed into the platforms. They didn’t need an Apple Academy to get developers going. Most Indonesian developers and companies only see opportunities based on local sales numbers and market size. They don’t see beyond the domestic market. That’s why it was a struggle to find quality Mac and iOS apps and developers from Indonesia before the Academies opened.

By the way

The article also mentioned about the Ministry of Industries spokesperson saying that Apple submitted their investment proposal over WhatsApp. It sounds like the government wants to shame Apple for sending such an important document over a chat app but the country runs almost entirely on WhatsApp. Comms within and across government ministries and agencies are done almost exclusively on the platform, with letterhead documents for official records.

What are the chances that they sent it that way because they were told to submit the document ASAP and the paper doc would follow after, and that they haven’t managed to schedule the meeting with the Ministries because November and December are holiday months for the company? I mean, if it’s that important, Tim Cook could get a few execs to drop their holiday plans and make the meeting but it seems that the urgency of this deal has yet to reach that critical level.

Indonesia’s big tech dream among broken systems

Bloomberg has a piece criticizing the way the Indonesian government has forced Apple to invest a billion dollars and make a commitment to build a factory or two in the country.

Using a protectionist playbook to get companies to build factories could end up sidelining Southeast Asia’s largest economy when neighbors are rolling out the red carpet for investors who are relocating from China ahead of Donald Trump’s potential tariffs, analysts said.

What Indonesian policymakers, officials, and ultranationalists refuse to acknowledge isn’t just the shortsightedness of protectionist policies, but the recklessness of enforcing them without the infrastructure to support a modern tech manufacturing ecosystem.

They cling to the illusion that forcing tech giants to build products locally is enough, ignoring the fact that manufacturing doesn’t happen in isolation, it’s an interconnected ecosystem dependent on robust infrastructure, not just financial sticks and carrots.

The Indonesian government isn’t just using the wrong policy, they’re operating with the wrong mindset entirely. They also haven’t squared the collapsing textile industry and the falling demand in the auto industry with their tech ambitions. Apple manufacture devices for the global market regardless of their origin while Indonesia’s manufacturing industries tend to be dominated by domestic sales.

Local content requirements cover a range of industries, from cars to medical devices. Together with decades-old problems such as red tape, high taxes and a less productive workforce, Indonesia’s manufacturing growth has slowed to a crawl.

In contrast, neighbors like Vietnam and India are offering tax incentives, swift approvals and the freedom to source their components from across their global supply chains, Gupta of the Center for Indonesian Policy Studies said.

That makes them attractive for companies looking to produce for export and explains why Apple can invest a much larger $15 billion in Vietnam despite the nation having a smaller domestic market than Indonesia, he said.

How platforms like TikTok and Twitter are like life itself

Social platforms reflect people’s behaviors but unlike life, you can uninstall and stop visiting them.

TikTok and Twitter are often described as mirrors of life; chaotic, messy, sometimes brilliant, sometimes horrifying. But here’s the thing: life didn’t come with an “uninstall” button. These platforms do, sort of (you can remove the apps or stop visiting them altogether). And that makes it a lot harder to accept their messiness as something we just have to live with.

The harm they cause is undeniable. The misinformation, the rabbit holes, the amplification of violence and hate, it’s all right there, front and center. And because these aren’t immutable forces of nature but products of human design, it feels logical to think: Why not just turn them off? If a bridge kept collapsing under people’s feet, we’d stop letting people walk on it. If a factory was spewing toxins into the air, we wouldn’t celebrate the occasional mural painted on its walls, we’d shut the thing down.

But TikTok and Twitter aren’t just digital bridges or toxic factories, they’re also marketplaces, stages, classrooms, protest grounds, and cultural archives. They’ve been instrumental in amplifying marginalized voices, organizing grassroots movements, and spreading ideas that would’ve otherwise been silenced. Shutting them down wouldn’t just erase the harm, it would also erase the joy, the connection, the organizing power, and the little moments of humanity they enable.

That’s the tension we’re stuck with: the pull between “this is causing so much damage” and “this is doing so much good.” And it’s not a tension we can resolve cleanly, because both are true. These platforms are not neutral, they’re shaped by design choices, incentives, and algorithms that reward outrage, escalate conflict, and keep users scrolling no matter the emotional cost. But they’re also spaces where real, meaningful things happen, sometimes in spite of those same algorithms.

It’s easier to point fingers at the platforms themselves than to reckon with the fact that their messiness isn’t an anomaly, it’s a reflection. They thrive on the same things we do: conflict, validation, novelty, and the occasional hit of collective catharsis. The darkness they expose isn’t artificially generated, it’s drawn out from people who were always capable of it. TikTok and Twitter didn’t invent bad faith arguments, moral panic cycles, or performative empathy, they just turned them into highly optimized content formats.

That’s why it’s so tempting to reach for the “off” switch. Because these platforms don’t just show us other people’s mess, they show us our own. They force us to confront the uncomfortable reality that the world doesn’t just have ugliness, it produces it. And no matter how advanced our moderation tools get, or how many advisory panels are assembled, there’s no elegant way to algorithm our way out of human nature.

But accepting that doesn’t mean we stop holding these platforms accountable. They’re still products of human design, and every design choice, from the algorithm’s preferences to the placement of a “like” button, shapes behavior and incentives. The companies behind them can and should do better. But even if they do, the fundamental tension remains: these spaces are built on human behavior, and human behavior will always be messy.

Maybe the real discomfort isn’t just about what TikTok and Twitter are. It’s about what they reveal about us. The chaos, the harm, the brilliance, the joy, it’s all a reflection. And if we can’t figure out how to look at that reflection without flinching, no amount of platform reform is going to save us from ourselves.

P.S: Let me just add that I’m talking about the old Twitter, not the cesspool of unhinged miseducated misinformed mass of misguided white supremacists that it has increasingly become, a.k.a discount 4Chan. On top of that, outside of the English speaking sphere of the platform, the old Twitter still exists unbothered or unaffected by what’s happening outside of their spheres partly due to cultural differences, partly due to lack of relevance, partly due to language, and perhaps a handful of other reasons.

Study shows AI overwhelmingly favors white male in hiring job seekers

Just read an article at Ars Technica that highlights something we should all be paying more attention to: AI-driven hiring tools still have a long way to go in terms of fairness. Tests show these systems tend to favor white and male candidates, confirming that even with all our tech advances, biases persist in ways we can’t ignore. And this isn’t the only article discussing this, it’s only the latest, which means it’s a long known problem that hasn’t been rectified.

For all the hype around AI’s potential to revolutionize hiring, if it’s just reinforcing biases, what’s the point? How are these algorithms trained and why are they showing a such a strong bias towards white male candidates?

If you’re a recruiter or decision-maker, it might be time to rethink the role of AI in hiring. We all understand the basic tenet of data processing, garbage in, garbage out. Until there’s a proper process in the middle that takes away such biases, people shouldn’t be fully reliant on technology for such purposes because it’ll only reinforce them.

These high end filters make “decisions” based on their training data and will reflect biases that are already incorporated. I’m sure you’ve heard about facial identification or hand sensors that don’t work properly or have high error rates when the skin color is darker.

Not saying human-led processes aren’t prone to bias, I mean these tech “solutions” were after all built to minimize the impact of biases from human judgements, but when the outcome is no different or maybe even worse, that’s no solution at all.

The Collapse of Chinese EV Startups is a Wake-Up Call for the Industry

Rest of World published a compelling piece on the collapse of several Chinese EV startups, and there’s a glaring lesson for the entire industry: Car startups shouldn’t be developing their own software. They should rely on established software companies to build, license, and deploy that software.

Think about it: You shell out tens of thousands, maybe more, for a car—an investment you expect to last for a decade or longer. And for EVs, the software isn’t just a dashboard convenience, it’s central to the entire driving experience. From battery management to over-the-air updates and self-driving features, software makes or breaks the car.

Now, let’s imagine you buy a shiny new EV from a flashy startup. Three years later, that startup folds. What happens to your software updates? What happens to the core functionality of your vehicle if the startup disappears? Spoiler: you’re screwed. 

When an EV company collapses, it’s not just a question of no more updates or no more customer support. It’s much worse. Your vehicle could be left with outdated software that becomes incompatible with new systems, or worse, it could stop functioning altogether. This is especially true when startups decide to build their own custom software ecosystems from the ground up. It sounds like a smart idea to stand out in a crowded market, but it’s more like building a sandcastle next to the ocean—it’s not going to last, and it’s the customers who end up with sand on their shoes.

Take Byton, for example. They were around for four years, from 2017 to 2021, with big dreams of luxury electric SUVs featuring fancy tech. It was a Tencent – Foxconn joint venture, but all their resources couldn’t save them from the software pit they dug themselves into. They poured talent, effort, and money into creating a massive dashboard screen with a custom UI, promising AI-driven features. And where did it get them? Bankruptcy.

Or consider Bordrin Motors, another four-year wonder from 2016 to 2020. They developed their own vehicle operating system and digital cockpit platform. Sounds cool, right? Well, it would be if they hadn’t run out of money trying to maintain it all.

Established software companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft have been making software for decades. They know what it takes to keep an ecosystem alive, stable, and, more importantly, secure. The idea of rolling your own software is not new—remember when every gadget maker wanted to make their own OS? It was a disaster then, and it’s a disaster now. Why should carmakers fare any better?

Instead, EV startups should focus on what they’re supposed to be good at: building great electric cars. Let the software experts handle the software. Tesla, for all its faults, is still in the game partly because of its strong software focus. They’ve managed to build a robust platform that, so far, has stood the test of time. But here’s the catch: not every startup can be Tesla, nor should they try to be. 

Some Chinese EV companies are getting it right. Look at Xpeng Motors and Li Auto. These guys are smart. They’re doing a mix of in-house development and licensing from established tech providers. Xpeng partnered with NVIDIA for AI computing and works with Desay SV Automotive for some software components. Li Auto isn’t too proud to license components for specific functionalities. And guess what? They’re still in business!

Licensing software from a more established player means that even if your car startup fails, your customers aren’t stuck with an expensive, bricked paperweight in their driveway. Their car can still receive updates, still work, and they aren’t left holding the bag. It’s akin to separating hardware from software in the tech world: Apple doesn’t build its processors, TSMC does. Apple doesn’t make its screens; Samsung does. Division of labor works for a reason.

Apple is an example of a tech company that wants to do the whole widget and they mostly do these days, but still not everything. They design their hardware but they don’t build them. The manufacturing and assembly go to partners like Foxconn and Pegatron. They didn’t design their own processors until they have the resources to put together the teams for it. And in their early days they didn’t even design their own products. Apple hired frogdesign (now just Frog) to design their computers and come up with a design language to be followed by the company’s lines of products so they all have the same style.

The problem is that too many startups have founders who think they can do it all. They want to control every aspect of the experience, which is admirable until reality sets in. Building a car is hard enough. Making great software is equally hard. Trying to do both? It’s a fool’s errand. And who pays the price for that arrogance? The consumers.

It’s one thing to purchase a phone or computer and no longer receiving updates or support after 3-4 years but when it’s a car that costs tens of thousands of dollars, you damn sure want to be able to use it for more than just a few years or at least sell it at a decent price when you need to.

No startup founder builds their company expecting to fail, so of course they will spend resources to do everything. However, when a company is just starting up the leaders need to be able to determine what their areas of strengths are, what sort of resources can they pull, and what factors can or should be outsourced to leverage outside expertise and increase internal efficiency. Once a company is strong enough to maintain a solid core and grow a business from there, then they can begin to consider building or developing non core elements internally. Of course, they also need to be able to identify what their actual core strengths are, lest they focus on the wrong things and end up accelerating their own collapse.

The key takeaway here is simple: EV startups need to know their limits. No matter how much venture capital you have or how many big names are on your board, you’re not a software company just because you hire a few software engineers. You’re a car company, so act like one. Leave the software to those who know it best. Because in the end, if you go under, it’s the customers who will feel the real crash.

Late night talk shows could be in danger, Jimmy Kimmel says

The entertainment landscape has changed so much since 20 years ago there’s no guarantee we’ll even have regularly scheduled programming anymore on TV, let alone late night talk shows in 10-20 years.

Shifting behavior means people watch clips or recordings of talk shows online instead and unlikely to watch the original broadcasts, taking away the value of advertising on live shows. If they want these shows to stick around there has to be a new business model to justify their production.

Streaming companies have been experimenting with hosting traditional TV content such as reality TV, talk shows, and current affairs, but the success of these types of shows are far and few in between. The context in which these types were made popular no longer exist with non linear entertainment.

The era of conventional TV programming is coming to an end and it’s going to be very challenging for many to deal with.

Variety:

“It used to be Johnny Carson was the only thing on at 11:30 p.m. and so everybody watched and then David Letterman was on after Johnny so people watched those two shows, but now they’re so many options.”

Not only are there so many options, but Kimmel argued that streaming platforms like YouTube and social media channels that break up late-night episodes into clips to watch after the episode airs has also limited the urgency of tuning in live.

“Maybe more significantly, the fact that people are easily able to watch your monologue online the next day, it really cancels out the need to watch it when it’s on the air,” he said. “Once people stop watching it when it’s on the air, networks are going to stop paying for it to be made.”

Turning a dead iMac G4 into an M1 Mac

Noted gadget repairer Hugh Jeffreys came into three disused (and abused) iMac G4 and went to work to restore one of them by using a display from an Intel MacBook Pro and a newly purchased M1 Mac mini.

Most people would just buy the Mac mini and grab an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse and they’ll end up with a perfectly fine desktop computer but obviously Jeffreys is no ordinary consumer.

He went to work by replacing the dead 17″ screen with one from an old 17″ Intel Core MacBook Pro with an anti glare or matte display (you can tell from the metal or silver bezel around the screen instead of a black one) circa 2009-2012. He then cannibalized the M1 Mac mini and rearranged the components to fit inside the iMac’s dome base.

It took him about 9 hours to complete the Frankensteined iMac which now identifies itself as an M1 Mac mini. Definitely not for the faint hearted and requires expert hands, resources, and patience.

The iPhone is obviously more than a phone

It’s a handheld mobile platform that does so much more than make phone calls after all, so using the phone aspect as the primary designation of the device when it’s probably among the least used function seems like a misnomer.

The moniker was probably the easiest one to go with back in the day. Apple wanted to distinguish the device from the iPod, which was still a strong seller in 2007, and people associated cellular devices with nothing else other than phones, at least back then, so it made sense to call it the iPhone even when it’s “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator.”

It’s easy to see why Louie Mantia thinks the iPhone name is not a good fit but after 17 years the name has cemented itself as one of the strongest brands that has ever existed. The iPod seems like a more logical name for a multipurpose device and might have been great had Apple not felt the need to introduce the iPhone brand but I think that ship has sailed. The iPhone name has taken just as strong of a hold and recognition as the iPod in roughly the same amount of time, bland as it may be.

In four years the iPhone will be as old as the iPod was when it was retired in 2022. The iPod as a product category lasted 21 years. It doesn’t seem like Apple is a company that would make such a change after all these years and we don’t even know if the iPhone as a product category will still exist five years from now (probably will).

Might Apple resurrect the iPod name? Who knows, they resurrected the iBook name once (and retired it again in favor of Apple Books) but they no longer follow the i- convention of naming products so chances of that happening is probably pretty slim.

The iPod was a great name and its legacy lives on in podcast and AirPods and if the rumors of a touchscreen AirPods case ever come true, I’ve a feeling they’ll still be called AirPods.

Canva’s templates are taking over the world one flyer at a time

Love the post by Joan Westenberg here addressing a concern that many hold over the widespread use of templates, specifically Canva’s templates.

As design becomes far more accessible than ever, millions of people with little design skills or lacking access to professional designers, guided by their sense of aesthetics, are able to churn pleasing or professional-looking designs for their needs.

At the same time, the reliance on popular templates is beginning to resemble what’s happening to cafes around the world that sport similar aesthetics to attract customers who want to share photos to Instagram, or homes that resemble IKEA showrooms.

She wrote:

But while Canva has unlocked design for the masses, an unintended consequence has been the dulling of creativity into a uniform “Canva aesthetic.” Because the app makes it so easy to create competent designs, much of its 55 million-strong user base simply relies on the platform’s most popular templates and elements. The result is a visual sameness wherever Canva designs show up, as if the world has been blanketed by an army of aspiring graphic designers who all graduated from the same school.

You can’t blame individuals for taking the path of least resistance. Creating a Canva design takes minutes and requires no skill. It’s fast, cheap and gets the job done for cash-strapped small businesses, students, nonprofits and others who can’t afford a professional designer. An original design carefully crafted from scratch is always going to look better. But why go to the effort when Canva lets you churn out something nearly as good that’s based on best practices?

For Canva’s millions of happy users, that’s clearly a worthwhile tradeoff. The question is whether it’s good for design and creativity writ large. Like the McDonald’s-ization of cuisine or the Ikea-fication of home decor, Canva’s templated approach is pushing visual communication towards a more accessible, but ever more generic mean.

If it sounds like it’s bad, it depends on your perspective. With so many people sporting similar, identifiable visual design, our world may end up looking aesthetically bland and generic but as with design trends over time, that is not a new thing, not by a country mile.

At one point, buildings resembled the Roman architecture with prominent columns and symmetrical forms. Then there was a gothic period in the 19th century before Art Deco became the rage in the early 20th century. We also had a modernism movement with bold, flat, minimalistic designs with steel and glass for much of the 20th century that in many parts remain in fashion today.

On the digital side, we had to endure the terrible period of PowerPoint templates and bullet points jammed on our faces for a while before Garr Reynolds began advocating for what he calls Presentation Zen and Mac users started to rebel and adopted Apple’s design sensibilities through Keynote. Today, perhaps ironically, corporate decks are beginning to adopt the Apple product summary style thanks to Figma templates.

And I haven’t even talked about the dynamic visual design trends of the 80s and 90s. Or how generic looking homes have always been a thing to the point where you can often tell from what period or decade it came from.

Like Joan said, you can’t blame people for taking the path of least resistance. At least more things look nicer today (from our current aesthetics sense) thanks to Canva templates.