Iterate Weekly - Issue 47
This week we look at the questionable intelligence of robot vacuums, defining our occupational identity, sustainable shirts made of wood, virtual vet visits, and Selling Out!
Welcome to issue 47 of Iterate Weekly!
Just a reminder that you can always reply to this email or leave a comment on the web version. I read all of them, and I appreciate the feedback, questions, and insights from all of you.
Let’s jump into this week’s stories.
🤖 Tech
When Our Vacuums Think They’re Smarter Than Us
Today’s tech story is less of a breaking news story or prediction of the future. No, it’s really just a commentary on one of the most convenient yet perplexing products in my smart home. The Roomba robotic vacuum…
Along with the Nest Thermostat, the Roomba is often thought of as the gateway product for the smart home. They’ve been around for a while and no longer feel like a glimpse into a Jetsons-like future where we never have to clean again. It’s easy enough to understand how they work. It’s a smart home product that I can easily explain (and set up) for my Mom.
But since we’ve moved into our new home, my Roomba (an i7+ model to be exact) seems to think that it’s smarter than I am. This same robot did a commendable job of keeping our old house tidy for over a year. However, it just can’t seem to wrap its head around the new place.
For those uninitiated, this model of Roomba maps out the layout of your home for you to view in the iRobot app (as seen in the photo above). It’s a pretty cool process to watch. The robot takes a few spins around your home, bumps into some things, and takes note of how the rooms are laid out. You’re then able to label the rooms and draw any virtual borders to separate spaces. When it’s all said and done, you should have a close replica of your home layout visible in the app. And your robot should be able to clean individual rooms as needed.
Our new home has two modest floors and a one-step sunken living room. While I have read stories of ambitious folks building ramps for their Roombas, I’m pretty content to manually place the robot into and out of the living when needed. The bigger problem for me is that the robot can’t seem to understand the difference between the rooms that are upstairs and the rooms that are downstairs.
Each time I’ve done a mapping run or manually set the vacuum to clean upstairs, it just updates its smart map to include some new rooms downstairs instead. It’s incredibly frustrating. I’ve tried several different methods and am running out of ideas.
This is just a silly first-world tech problem to be sure. But it’s almost the worst version of a problem like this. It’s a product that is well designed and really smart most of the time. And yet, if it tries to clean phantom rooms in my house and spins around until the battery dies, it becomes a worthless doorstop.
🎓 Education
We Are More Than Just Jobs
I want to give a shoutout to the amazing content being put out by Kevin over at “The New Fatherhood” He’s one of the early Substack creators that I’ve admired and I recently came across this story about how we often let our occupations define us.
I share his feelings about being asked “What do you do?”. My typical answer is that I work in marketing or influencer marketing if they seem like the type of person who has heard that term. If they just nod in a glazed state of agreement, I’ll probably look for a smooth way to change the subject. If they really prod, I do get into the details of working in the creator economy and helping people make money off their passions.
Sometimes I mention my writing or this newsletter if I think someone might be interested. My work with Caveday is usually a good conversation starter. Other people may better understand the work I do as a coach. The point is that there are many different ways for us to talk about our occupational identities.
The New Fatherhood article goes on to examine the concept of “The First Mountain” (our careers and traditional indicators of success) and “The Second Mountain” (fulfillment that goes beyond your career ladder) as laid out in David Brooks’ appropriately titled book “The Second Mountain”.
All I’m saying is that we should be better about answering this question about what we do. It’s totally fine for people to ask this, they mean well. It’s just not as simple of an answer as it may have been for previous generations. Let’s all just put a bit more thought into it, myself included.
♻️ Health & Environment
Sustainable Wood Shirts
A new type of sustainable fabric for a shirt? Absolutely, count me in!
The new product is coming from Adidas and they’re creating hoodies out of wood.
At first glance, I assumed it was a bamboo/lyocell/tencel product which is fairly common these days. But no, they’re actually doing something a bit different to make these shirts. They’ve joined forces with Finnish textile company Spinnova. The official fabric is called Adidas Terrex and the first product on the line is the HS1, a hoodie that combines wood-based fibers with organic cotton.
I kinda dig the natural white, undyed color. It also has the upside of not being bleached or treated to recreate an artificial color, lessening the carbon footprint. The fabric itself comes from ground-up wood pulp that creates a paste that is then mixed with the organic cotton.
I’d be curious to check out how this thing actually looks and feels in person. The other interesting thing to note is that the design allows the sweatshirt to roll up into the hood to create a pillow. Neat I guess?
🛍 Grab Bag
Take Your Pet to the Virtual Vet
I guess our society has gotten to the point where we don’t want to do much of anything in-person anymore right? Let’s add taking our pets to the vet to that long list.
A company called Dutch just raised $20Million to ramp up its telemedicine services for pets.
The company is based in San Francisco and launched just seven months ago. Late-night host Jimmy Fallon even contributed to their $5Million seed round. It’s not difficult to see why this company is on a fast track to success.
As the owner of a dog who is terrified to go into a vet’s office, I would love the ability to just point a webcam at him to talk through his issues with a vet. The in-person vet visit is also incredibly frustrating when your pet clams up and doesn’t show the behavior that you brought him in to fix. “Doc, I swear he was making this horrible sound just 5 minutes before we came into the office!”
I’m eager to see this technology become more widely accepted and I’m certainly looking into signing up my own pooch to give it a try.
💬 Quote of the Week
“To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders" — Lao Tzu
📚Content Recommendation
Sellout
The credit for this one goes solely to my wife. She suggested I read the book “Sellout” by Dan Ozzi and it did not disappoint.
I’ve always thought it strange that musicians who made it big were given the negative label of “Sellout”. This book takes a look at a series of bands just before they make the jump to a major label.
In most industries, making lots of money and gaining success is a great thing. But for bands of a certain time and genre (this book sticks to punk, emo, and hardcore but lots of genres experienced the same issues) “selling out” was the worst thing you could do.
If you listened to this type of music between 1994-2007, this book is a must-read.
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!