Wrapping up 2025 (sort of)

I’m doing my annual wrap up post early this year because I’m really tired and want to completely switch off for a couple of weeks. It’s time to spend some quality time with my lovely family.

This isn’t my usual style of wrap-up. Consider this wrap up more of a call to action than a retrospective. Let’s get stuck in.

World events

We’ve watched our western legacy media and politicians alike say, “nothing to see here” while Palestinians have been massacred by Israel. In fact, our government in the UK has persecuted supporters of Palestinian rights, some of which are still on hunger strike while they are held on remand, awaiting trial. This is on top of the government’s complicity in genocide of course.

We’ve also seen (only if you look) a horrifying genocide in Sudan that continues to decimate the population.

We’ve watched our pathetic politicians and again, legacy media give ground to the far right and thin-skinned Billionaires. There’s been ample opportunities to change that direction and it’s not been taken. Personal, party affiliation and corporate interests are prioritised, as always.

The mainstream political parties will not get us out of this. Give money and support to actual progressive parties. In the UK, the only valid choice is the Green Party as I see it.

If we don’t fight back in 2026 — regardless of your political party affiliation — we’re fucked. Sports team politics helps only the rich and there are more of us than them. Never forget that and stop being comfortable with the status quo.

There are more of us than them.

The tech industry and AI

AI — more accurately Large Language Models (LLMs) — are a disaster. Don’t come at me with your mealy-mouthed “but I really enjoy it.” Grow up and start being serious.

Over a trillion USD has been pumped into this technology that works only some of the time and literally drives people to the point of suicide. Here, I collected some awful things throughout the year. Sorry in advance for making you furious.

You’d think that people in the tech industry are smart and can see these problems and I wish I could agree. Instead we see sycophantic celebrations of this technology and continuing false claims that “this is the future” and “this is a game changer”.

I agree in part about the future — you can’t put the LLM toothpaste back in the tube — but the bubble is not going to stay inflated. It can’t possibly do that, and you’ll see that fact if you just listen to people who know what they are talking about.

We have to act against this technology to reduce the damage in the long term. It is our responsibility. It’s easy to call yourself an engineer but now, it’s time to actually be an engineer and act on your ethical responsibilities.

Here’s what I’m asking people to do to take the “shine” off LLMs in the tech industry:

• Constantly and consistently post when it goes wrong. This could be on your blog or social media. Post anyway.
• When people (especially people who are paid to peddle this technology) post claims: challenge them to provide evidence and prove their claims. It might sound harsh, but it’s long overdue that “thought leaders” in our industry are held to account for the effects of their influence.
• Create a culture of shame for AI boosting.
• Never forgive and especially never forget those who have boosted and vocally supported this technology. Unless there are consequences, we’ll continue to have hype cycles like crypto, NFTs and now, LLMs. We have the power to break the cycle of cycles in our vast numbers.
• Stop paying for AI services.

Right now, it’s not a fair fight, especially as the vast majority of tech media appears to be “on side” with these AI companies. We have to change that as a collective unit. Support smaller, independent tech media and above all else, let’s organise.

Be human and improve your own skills

There’s been a bit of a culture of “I don’t need to bother doing that because of AI” and let me tell you — from someone who has been doing this stuff for nearly 20 years — that is a dangerous position to put yourself in. No single technology has surpassed the need for personal development and genuine human intelligence.

You should always be getting incrementally better at what you do. Now, what I am not saying is that you should be doing work work out of hours. You are not paid enough and frankly, the industry does not value you enough. Value yourself by investing your time in skills that make you happy and fulfilled.

Here’s some ideas:

• Make yourself, and maintain a personal website
• Make random stuff that makes you happy
• Find a creative outlet that you really enjoy
• Find other people’s creative outlets then celebrate and enjoy with them
• Spend less time scrolling timelines and chasing metrics. Spend more time embracing the things that you love
• Participate in smaller communities that bring you joy and support. Delete your Twitter account while you’re at it

I must be clear here too. When I say improve your skills, I’m not saying you have to be designing and coding. We are humans and we have vast levels of intelligence and creativity. Our purpose is much more than coding. Embrace that in whatever form you want. Embrace art.

By doing this, you’re bringing back your ability to be curious, your ability to be creative and your ability to improve. It’ll do wonders for the understandable feeling of helpfulness too.

Don’t fall into the trap of chasing metrics. Write because you want to write. Paint because you want to paint. Create because you want to create. Let the art fulfil you. Don’t let likes, follows and page views ruin that for you. Fight the urge to turn personal projects into a money making and/or clout chasing venture.

You should definitely do more designing, coding and learning to improve your professional skills, but it is your boss’s responsibility to give you the time and resources to improve those. If you are a boss reading this who doesn’t do that: you are wrong and your staff will leave unless you change that. “AI” won’t save you here.

I hope you have a restful holiday period. I want to thank everyone who has supported Piccalilli, Set Studio and my work this year. It means everything to me and next year, expect to see a lot more. I’ve written more about that in the Piccalilli year in review. It’s rosier, I promise.

Thank you to everyone that responded to my post on how hard this year has been too. I’m delighted to say that our Black Friday sales shot up and we’ve got some really good client work to get stuck into next year. To everyone I spoke to who’s also had a really hard year, I truly hope things have picked up for you too. Let’s all help and support each other in 2026, onwards.

Please make sure you rest up and spend time with the people you love and the people that make you happy. I know that’s what I’m going to be doing.

I’ve got a couple of Professional Obligations™ to do, then clocking off now for the year to enjoy the holidays with my family. Although I’m angry at the industry and the global situation, I feel like I’m in a much better headspace than I thought I would be in at this point. There have been lots of positives throughout the year, especially with Piccalilli.

Next year will be very different for me. I want to do more making. I design so little and write so little code now and I’m starting to feel really rusty. That changes in 2026. Less spreadsheets and more CSS.

I’m also going on a speaking hiatus with minimal conference attendance. The conference circuit won’t miss yet another white guy. I’ve done way too much this year, so a year off will do me good.

Anyway, let’s all come back in 2026 refreshed and take these motherfuckers down.