Traveling space-time—or what most people simply call drive time—has become my quiet pocket for reflection.
But seriously, I wonder if you hear all those beeps when you’re parking out in reverse, sensors screaming while your brain’s trying to juggle work, life, and an ever-growing backlog of notifications.
Somehow, in the middle of all that noise, you still find space to think.
Or at least, I try.
So, here’s what’s been on my mind.
The Ghosts of Post-Corona Promises
Remember the promises made post-corona? Everyone was supposed to work from anywhere. In theory, we are. I am. But it’s not just one home base; it’s a blur of client sites, offices, and dining tables doubling as meeting rooms. It’s flexible, sure. But also fragmented.
Take Microsoft Viva, for instance—a suite of tools aimed at improving employee experience across communication, learning, and knowledge sharing. Once hyped to be the glue for hybrid workers, it’s slowly being stripped back. Viva Goals? Gone. And Viva Topics—the one feature I was really looking forward to—discontinued as of February 2025.
Topics let you tune internal jargon. And yes, I say tune deliberately. Imagine typing “AI Canary” into a Teams chat and instantly seeing an info card pop up, explaining what AI Canary means, linking to docs, experts, and internal wikis. A hyperlink-powered knowledge trail. Now gone.
The New Tune of Copilot
Why? Because Microsoft is baking some, if not all, of that context into Copilot.
At Build 2025, Microsoft dropped something I’ve been dreaming of: the ability to post-train Copilot. With Copilot Tuning you can now fine-tune it—tone, templates, workflows—to generate documents that actually reflect your org’s voice. Think law firm contracts or instant RFP replies.
It’s real now. Not perfect, but real.
From Overload to Agents
Which brings me to my main point: context.
I don’t mean philosophy class context. I mean systemic, cross-app, whole-life context—like when your AI understands that the photo you sent in WhatsApp, the draft in Word, and the invoice in your CRM all relate to the same product launch next week. Because information overload is no longer an edge case; it’s the default.
Today alone: My daughter reminded me of her student-led conference. The school had sent a notification, but it was buried in yet another third-party mobile app that I barely check. What I need is agentic AI that talks to that app behind my back, quietly monitors those notifications, and nudges me when something truly matters—like a conference, a consent form, or a forgotten field trip. But hey, if they’re selling books, I get ten reminders. A parent-teacher meeting? Just one.
It’s not just schools. It’s Teams. Outlook. WhatsApp. LinkedIn. Sometimes even Facebook. My brain isn’t wired to scan that many feeds.
And no, this isn’t me yelling at clouds. It’s about limits. Evolution didn’t give us a 50-tab brain. We still carry a reptilian legacy in our skulls while being pinged across six ecosystems.
That’s why I’m watching Microsoft’s new Recall feature closely. Windows now takes a screenshot every few seconds, letting AI fetch anything you missed—even that one notification you blinked past. Creepy? Maybe. Useful? Absolutely.
But for it to work, it needs more than screen captures.
It needs sight, what you see on your mobile, your desktop, your glasses.
It needs conversation, the little things your partner says, like “Don’t forget to email back the tax guy.”
It needs connection, across your work life, your private life, and your in-between life.
And that’s where it gets interesting.
The Holy Trinity of Context: Sight, Sound, Sync
Let’s break that down into something tangible:
- Sight from smart glasses: your POV captured.
- Sound from AI amulets and 24/7 audio: your forgotten whispers, remembered.
- Sync via the agent protocol: A2A (Agent-to-Agent), with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) originally developed by Anthropic and now rapidly becoming an industry standard, alongside Microsoft’s newly introduced NLWeb concept for making websites conversationally accessible to agents.
Yes. NLWeb. I need to deep dive and will in a follow-up post, but from what I gather, it essentially turns websites into walkie-talkies for AI agents. Not just static pages to read, but interactive surfaces you can talk to, query, buy from, or link with—each becoming a node in your agent network.
The Real Killer App
Forget yet another task manager or calendar. The real killer app? It’s the one that understands your life—across WhatsApp, across screens, across real-world conversations.
An AI that sees your whiteboard sketch and captures it before you erase it.
An AI that notices a contract clause you paused on and flags it before you forget.
An AI that works with your tools but lives in your rhythm.
It all leads to a bigger question: how do we ensure these tools serve our human values—not just our calendars and their tech overlords?
The Ethics in the Fourth Dimension
Of course, I believe in the rule of three, but I always keep space for the hidden fourth. In this case: ethics.
Just because your AI can track your life doesn’t mean it should. In fact, the more powerful these systems become, the more crucial it is that we embed trust, sovereignty, and purpose by design—not as afterthoughts.
Our tools must be built with opt-ins, not overreaches. With nudges, not nudity of data. Otherwise, we’re not building help. We’re building faster engines for burnout, tuned to precision but blind to permission.
The Drive-Time Paradox
Driving remains my temple. Not the traffic. Not the gas prices. But the thinking space. Somewhere between 20 and 45 minutes is ideal—but in reality, my commute often stretches to a full hour each way. Still, it’s during that window that the world fades. You remember. You reflect. You reconnect.
One hour used to take you as far as your feet could go. Then came the bike, extending that range. Now with cars and trains, a single hour still defines our travel window—but the distance we can cover has multiplied. And soon? It might just be a teleportation of thought, across time zones, attention spans, and memory lanes.
That’s where I’m headed: context-aware, ethically grounded, ever driving.
Let me know if you’re coming along.
What's on your mind?