Five things (in tech) to keep an eye on in 2026
We're almost past the first month of 2026, and it's time to do a quick sweep of the horizon: not to find certainty, but to spot the trends that are already in motion and will probably matter once they’ve picked up speed.
Here are five things to keep an eye on, and two you shouldn't waste any time on at all.
Things that just won't happen
AGI
We won’t see intelligent LLMs this year either, or any other year for that matter. But as with all technology, we will continue to find new ways to use it. There is no need for intelligence in tools. After all, whatever device you are using to read this text isn’t intelligent, yet it’s extremely useful to you.
Autonomous humanoid robots in our homes
It won't happen this year. It probably won't happen within the next decade either.
With those obvious ones out of the way, let’s think about more interesting stuff.
What to keep an eye on in 2026:
Late-stage enshitification
Dave Karpf has an interesting take on the whole enshitification thing that is well worth reading. In summary, he writes that we have left the optimisation era, where companies sought to make money through creating attractive products and/or services and then optimise their operations. Now they’ve realised they don’t have to try anymore. We’re all trapped in their walled gardens. Disagree? Read about what X is up to, then how that was rewarded. Other companies and individuals have noticed that you no longer need to deliver or care. Better get robbin’ while the robbin’s good.
Take these guys (literally just two of them), for example, they're offering pre-bookings for hotel rooms on the moon. I mean... there are still people who haven't cancelled their Tesla Roadster orders, so why not?
The sky falling on our heads
We're a few years into a brand new space race, this time between China and the US. China has a functioning space station, and successful launches to low Earth orbit rather than big explosions on the ground. But NASA is about to launch humans around the moon this year, which will give them a leg up in the space race.
China has applied to launch 200,000 satellites into low Earth orbit, LEO for short. (Get used to seeing that TLA, btw, it'll be popular this year.) At the same time, Musk is lowering the orbit of his internet satellite network.
All this extra traffic might lead to a bunch of stuff falling back down to Earth, and we might see some serious damage from this in 2026. So far, we've been lucky.
LLM financials
Stein’s law states that “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” That, in contrast with Keynes old nugget, “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent," will influence a lot of what’s happening in tech this year. The fact remains that the only one making a profit in the so called "AI business" is Nvidia, and if it wasn’t for ever more elaborate circular deals, the whole thing would have crashed in 2025. Now that Google nabbed the attractive deal with Apple, and Anthropic is wooing developers to use Claude Code instead of ChatGPT, things are getting tougher for Sam Altman. I predict ever more elaborate promises, and I'm also expecting the OpenAI hardware op to be either postponed or a complete flop. The latest rumour is saying it will be a pair of behind-the-ear earbuds. Yeah... me neither.
Digital sovereignty
A little-discussed thing that happened in 2025 was that Karim Khan, Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, lost access to his emails after having been placed on a sanctions list by the US administration.
Microsoft has since denied that it happened, or rather... they denied that they cancelled the entire ICC. But it wasn't the entire organisation that was the issue, just the one guy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Anyhow, he lost access, which is as it should be for sanctioned individuals. But it highlights the precariousness of running American technology.
There are alternatives, and the ICC has since moved to openDesk, a German alternative with digital sovereignty as a core design principle.
There are also alternatives to US cloud servers, and as long as you're not running a highly advanced service that depends on real-time video feeds being accessible around the world, it's a relatively straightforward process to change. Enough companies have now migrated to actual European servers (rather than servers in Europe) that Amazon is losing enough business to try and do something about it.
A new design language and the end of the squircle hegemony
The Jony Ive flavour of Dieter Rams hardware design is slowly being replaced by either cozy and fun, or cassette future vibes.
A good example of cozy and fun tech is this AMAZING foldable Hello Kitty keyboard. Slap Gundam on it and you have a customer! Another non-consumer example is this flying windmill farm straight out of that Solar Punk yoghurt commercial (why did they have to name it almost like the most horrifying movie ever made?). Or this keyboard from Logitech that's been around for a while, or anything by Divoom.
If you're curious about what the Cassette Future aesthetic looks like just head over to either Teenage Engineering or Nothing. But they are not the only ones. This portable AI accessory is winning a lot of hearts, and we also have this awesome powerbank.
This, at the same time that Apple is busy stepping on rakes with the whole Liquid Glass debacle, insulting creatives and creativity with their ads, the decades-long degradation of their icons, and paying some half-hearted lip service to cassette futurism with the back of their iPhone 17 Pro model. Two textures, Apple? My gods, how brave of you.(¬_¬)
Well, maybe they'll come running out of the right field with the upcoming iPhone Fold. Who knows, they've surprised us before. Remember iPhone 4?