Hard Fork
Original podcast
“You can't tell the story of 2025 without these icons.”
14,792 words · 8 speakers
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You know what today is, Kevin? Today is like our Friendsgiving.
Yes.
You know? It's like we're getting together to, you know, sort of give thanks to one another and for the rich bounty that life has provided us with. You know, but instead of like sitting down to a big meal, we're sitting down to create content for an algorithm.
Not for an algorithm, for people.
And for people, and for people.
The algorithm too.
They're equally important to us.
Everyone's invited to Friendsgiving at Casey and Kevin's house.
Absolutely.
What are we serving at Friendsgiving?
We're serving... First of all, we are serving, honey, okay? Second of all, listen, I gotta be honest, I'm a big mashed potatoes guy. I'm a mashed potatoes guy to the point where I won't actually even put salad on the plate during my first pass through the Thanksgiving buffet, because I don't need all that refug taking up space in my stomach when there's such a beautiful fluffy pile of mashed potatoes sitting right in front of me.
Are you a sweet potatoes guy and a mashed potatoes guy? Or is it one or the other?
I really am just more a sweet potato... Because here's the thing. What I love about the mashed potatoes is they're tangy. Because, you know, a good mashed potato recipe is gonna have that sour cream in there and it's just gonna give it that little extra kick.
Yeah.
Sweet potato is sweet. And I love sweet things, don't get me wrong, but I'd rather save my sweetness for the dessert.
Mmm.
Now, where do you want sweet potatoes?
I like the sweet potatoes. I do not like it when people put the marshmallows on top of it, though, because to me, that's like a hat on a hat.
It's a hat on a hat.
But I like a good sweet potato. Speaking of sweets, what's your Thanksgiving dessert of choice? Are you a pumpkin pie guy?
I'm a pretty rock-solid pumpkin pie guy, you know? Am I gonna kick an apple pie out of bed for eating crackers? No. Am I gonna kick a pecan pie out? No. But... Give me a little pumpkin pie scoop ice cream? Come on.
What else are we doing here?
Yeah, it's true.
Be serious.
I'm Kevin Russ, a tech columnist at The New York Times.
I'm Casey Newf from Platformer.
And this is Hard Fork.
This week, the 50 most iconic technologies of 2025. It's a countdown that you won't want to miss.
Unless you do. Which case, turn it off, see if I care.
Well, Casey, we are approaching the end of the year, and you know what that means on Hard Fork.
It is time, Kevin, for our favorite tradition, a countdown of icons.
Listeners to the show may remember that last year after Thanksgiving, we debuted the Hard Fork Iconic 100 Technologies. And somewhat to our surprise, because we'd only spent about an hour on it, it did become our most popular episode of the year. And, look, in this business, when you got a hit, you gotta keep it going.
And so all year, we have been collecting what we're calling the most iconic technologies of 2025.
Yes, and 100 was, not gonna lie, a lot of iconic technologies.
It was, because we were covering all of human history.
Yes. We went back to the fulcrum, you know, things like that.
But this year, we're gonna do 50 iconic technologies of 2025. And Casey, what do we mean by "of 2025"?
What we mean is they had a big year this year. You know, just because something is on this list doesn't mean we think that it is an unqualified good for society. We're just saying you can't tell the story of 2025 without these icons.
Yes, and we're also going to throw in a few notable omissions from last year's list of iconic technologies. We got a lot of emails about things that we left off. And so we're gonna incorporate that because we are here to serve you, our viewers and listeners.
We are. And I also just want to say that this idea of creating a list of icons is something that we took from one of my favorite podcasts, Lost Culturistas, and After we published last year's episode, I was a little bit nervous about how it might be received in the Lost Cultureistas community. And I'm happy to say that after we published it, we received a lovely note from Matt Rogers from Lost Cultureistas. So, thank you, Matt. Your show continues to be one of my very favorites. And thank you for not getting mad that we did kind of bite one of your guys' wonderful ideas.
What's that they say? Good artists borrow, great artists steal?
Exactly. And as great artists, we had no choice but to steal the idea of a list of icons.
Okay.
So with that.
The 50 most iconic technologies of 2025.
Number 50.
Friend! This is, of course, the iconic AI pendant that was advertised in a sort of all-out blitz of the New York advertising ecosystem this year, caused many, many people to become angry and start defacing and writing graffiti all over these friend ads. This was a pendant developed by Avi Schiffman, a young entrepreneur here in the Bay Area. And people were really mad about this, Casey.
They were. And look, what is the friend? What does it do? Nobody knows. It's not important. It just kind of seemed like an AI hardware device, and that upset people. And now, everybody knows its name.
Yes, they were an innovator in what I would call rage bait marketing, which is, you know, you put something out there that you know is going to make people very angry, and it worked. Look, we're talking about it on a podcast. It's one of our 50 most iconic technologies of the year.
Absolutely. So it's not the kind of friend that I want, but others might. And that's what makes it an icon. Number 49.
Cybertruck!
Cybertruck, of course, the Tesla truck that is quite recognizable for its distinctive shape and the fact that it's not allowed on roads in the United Kingdom.
Is that true?
It is true.
Why is that?
Well, I don't know exactly why, Kevin, but I can tell you that the Cybertruck has been subject to 10 recalls in the United States.
Wow!
Is that a lot?
It seems like a lot.
Have you been in a Cybertruck?
I have not been in a Cybertruck, because I believe they actually are, they have sort of my biometrics, and if I ever get inside, it explodes.
Yeah, they're gonna look up your newsletters about Elon Musk and run you off the road. I, I think this is an iconic technology because it is an opinionated design and that opinion is not beloved by everyone, but at least it looks different than every other car out there on the road. You know, you're not mistaking the Cybertruck for a Kia Sorento, and I think that's something to be proud of.
No, it's true. And you know, when one exploded outside the Trump Hotel in January, it made national news.
Yeah. Is that a metaphor?
No. And it also, that probably wouldn't have happened if it was a Kia Sorento.
Okay. The Cybertruck.
Number 48.
The Constitution.
236 years young, and that piece of paper still has this country going, Kevin.
Now, are we considering the Constitution a technology?
I absolutely am because democracy is a technology that helps us all live together. We get to vote for our own representatives. It ensures certain human freedoms. And what else do we want out of a technology but that?
And it had a big year in 2025. Why is that?
Well, certain people tried to ignore it.
You know, it has a big year every year, Kevin, but this was just a year where I think many of us had occasion to reflect on how essential it is that we have a list of shared freedoms that everyone agrees on. And, and those freedoms are, you know, sort of supported by the courts and, and they get us, you know, led to live in the, in the democracy that we have.
We love the Constitution. Casey, what's your favorite amendment to the Constitution? It's gotta be number one, baby. Freedom of speech? You better not restrict that freedom of the press in this house. I'm a big fan of, of the Third Amendment, actually. It doesn't get a lot of love, but listen, if a soldier ever tries to quarter themselves in my house, I am busting out my copy of the pocket Constitution. I'm saying, you, sir, need to go find somewhere else. Number 47. Cluley. I would say this is another entry in the Ragebait Marketing Hall of Fame. This was, of course, the viral cheat on everything startup that was founded by former hard forecaster Roy Lee, a Columbia student who decided that he wanted to give his friends and colleagues a, an easier way to cheat on their job interviews.
And so he built this AI tool that sort of scans everything on your computer. Screen and it visibly helps you during job interviews finish your coding questions. They have recently, we should also say pivoted, they are now marketing themselves as an AI note taking app. I guess they have not gotten as much growth out of the original cheating on everything idea as they had hoped.
And it's interesting because I would have assumed that cheating on everything would have a bigger addressable market than note taking. You know, but that's, that's the, that's the business here in Silicon Valley. You never know until you try. Here's what I'll say for Cluley, a bunch of companies, including Meta, did actually have to change their interview process because so many people were using AI assistants, Cluley and others, to try to cheat on their coding test. That eventually some companies just said, we gotta try something else.
And that is iconic to me.
Number 46, air conditioning.
This one is so important, Casey. Air conditioning was invented in 1902 by Willis Haveland Carrier. And fun fact, it was not actually designed or invented to cool human bodies at all. It was designed as a way to control temperature and humidity inside a Brooklyn printing plant. Which goes to show you, you can never tell what kind of iconic ripple effects a technology will have. I gathered new appreciation for air conditioning this year when I took a trip to Europe, where they don't believe in air conditioning or haven't heard about its existence. And Casey, without air conditioning, it would be very hot. There'd be places in the globe where you
basically couldn't live or spend any time and, and it'd be Europe everywhere. And Casey, I think we can agree that'd be bad.
But you don't have to tell me, I spent six and a half years living in Phoenix. Okay. There were times when like I would go on a trip and I'd come home after a week and I'd shut off the AC. So as you know, not to cool the whole house for a week while I was gone. And you would touch the walls and the walls would be hot to the touch.
Because I turned off the air conditioning.
Air conditioning, also very important in data centers. Those things have to be cooled. Without air conditioning, no AI. Thanks, air conditioning.
Number 45, humanoid robots.
Now Casey, this one is fresh on our minds because we, uh, just a few weeks ago, had an encounter with one humanoid robot in particular, Neo by One X. But this was a big year for humanoid robots, or at least the potential for humanoid robots.
Absolutely. Since 2024, venture capitalists have sunk $5 billion into the promise of these robots. And they believe that the same basic reason that large language models have become more powerful, we can use similar technologies to make these robots more powerful. And so pretty soon, we may have a robot butler in our house, Kevin.
Yes, or a robot underground fight club, as have now started to pop up in San Francisco. People are training these humanoid robots to fight and setting up sort of UFC-style matches for them. And I think we can agree that that only leads to good places.
Yeah, it sounds like a great Hard Fork episode for next year. Number 44, Bellatro. Bellatro, the 2024 Best Indie Game at the Game Awards. This is the app that I turned to so many times this year when I needed to kill. Five minutes, or 10, or sometimes on a long flight, I would play it for a couple of hours. It is a poker-based rogue-like, made by a single person. And it speaks, Kevin, I think, to the power of what one very creative person can do in this modern world.
Yes, how many hours do you think you spent playing Bellatro in 2025?
You know, I haven't looked, but I would say it is well over 100 hours. It may be over 200 hours.
I sat next to you on a flight this year, and you were playing Bellatro a lot of the way.
Listen, we need games that fulfill this specific requirement. Whether you have like two minutes to play or one hour, it's just as fun.
And you can play offline, which is crucial and not true of many games.
Absolutely. Number 43, Paper. Now, we received an email from listener Harry after our last episode, and I wanted to share it here. Harry wrote, "Hi Kevin and Casey, I'm an 11-year-old student in sixth grade, and I was listening to your latest episode. I just wanted to tell you that you missed paper. Seriously, though, what would the world be like if books had never existed? I mean, surely it's not top 10 level, but it's obviously more important than like the effing fulcrum." And I just gotta say, Harry, you gotta watch your language.
Yeah, watch your mouth, Harry.
Children listen to this show, Harry. But I do think he makes a good point about paper.
Yes, paper is iconic. We would not have had books or pamphlets or essays.
Oh, I mean, let me share another example. Much of the early work that I did as a journalist was printed out on paper, and then people would drive the paper to people's houses so that they could read the paper.
Wow, now you're giving ancient history here.
Yeah, I know.
The New York Times, you know the New York Times still prints on paper?
That's great. I love a crazy throwback like that.
What a world.
Number 42, Amazon Prime Air. Kevin, you will, of course, remember last December, you'll remember last December, when we went to Phoenix to the airfield where the Amazon Prime drones are tested and trained. If you live in that area, you can order something on Amazon, and sometimes within an hour it'll show up at your house. It'll sort of drop a little package on your lawn. And so we've continued to follow that story over the last year, up through October, when one of those drones crashed.
Yes, it's been sort of a rocky year for Amazon Prime Air. They have had to suspend delivery because of this crash. Federal agencies are investigating what happened back in October. And like many icons, Amazon Prime Air has not always had an easy go of it. But the technology is very cool, and if they can get them to stop falling out of the sky, it'll be a real change to the way people order things online.
Number 41, Skype. Skype was retired in May after 22 years after being one of the first free methods of making long-distance international calls. You know, like, young people will be astonished to learn, you used to have to pay more to talk to someone who lived further away from you. If somebody, like, lived in your area code, that was very cheap. But if somebody, you know, lived, like, across the country, now you were paying more. Then along comes Skype. And Skype says, no, we have the internet now, baby. Talk to whoever you want, and it's gonna be free. And so if you were like a gay guy growing up in the 2000s, you talked to a lot of random dudes on Skype that you just met in really weird places online, and you had some of the great experiences. Of your young life.
Yes, I still remember the iconic Skype calling sound when it when you were dialing someone. It had a very distinctive ringtone. I can't make it, but I would recognize it anywhere.
I think it sounded like this.
You think you just fell out of the coconut?
That's not what it sounded like. And actually, fun fact, I have Skype in part to thank for my marriage.
Is that right?
When my wife and I were getting together, we were long distance. She was over in the UK doing graduate school and we talked every day on Skype. And without that program, I would have gone deeply into debt trying to get this girl to like me back.
Well, you know, in 2014, Skype had 40% of the international call market. So it was an icon, but then Microsoft got its hands on it and completely ruined it.
Number 40, tip screens. Tip screens are an iconic technology of 2025 because they are everywhere. Every cafe, every store, every merchant, every place you can buy something now includes one of these little card readers and it pops up a thing and it says, do you want to give 18, 20 or 25%? Which is different than a couple of years ago when it said 15, 18 or 20. That is inflation for you. Tip screens are inescapable. I even saw one at a self-service kiosk at the airport recently and I was like, tip you for what? I got everything. I scanned it. I put it in a bag. You did nothing. You're just a robot. Why am I going to tip you?
So I think what we're learning from this is you really hate tipping people, don't you?
I love tipping people.
I do not love tipping inanimate objects.
All right, and there's your tip from the Hard Fork Podcast. Number 39, plastic straws.
Wow, what a big year plastic straws had. After many years in the wilderness, we were doing those paper straws, you know, that melt in your mouth. But as of February 2025, plastic straws are so back. The president signed Executive Order 14208, ending procurement and forced use of paper straws, which has officially ended the reign of terror of paper straws, which for all their supposed benefits, don't actually work as straws.
Hmm, interesting. Well, you know, something not a lot of people know about Kevin is that he loves microplastics and he's always looking for more ways to get them into his body.
I have two fun facts about paper straws and the plastic straws that they were supposed to replace. The campaign against plastic straws was started back in 2011 when a nine year old Vermont boy Milo Kress did a school science project and as part of that project estimated that Americans were using 500 million straws a day.
Oh, wow.
Many people sort of took issue with that and said the real number is much lower than that. But that is how this all got started. And second fun fact, do you know where that nine year old boy Milo Kress works today?
Where's that?
Anthropic.
That's right.
Wow. Has he made a statement about the whole paper straw thing?
No, but you should ask your boyfriend. I wonder if they're using plastic straws at Anthropic. I bet they're not.
Interesting. Number 38.
The Humaid AI PIN.
This PIN is a true icon of 2025. When it came out, it was, you know, it sort of announced as very showy, dramatic way by the company's co-founders who used to work at Apple and sort of presented it as if they were the second coming of Steve Jobs. And then the PIN actually went on sale and it sucked unfortunately.
Did you ever get to use one?
Um, well, I got to see some demos before they launched it, which were sort of like highly controlled and very manicured. And I was sort of even told by like some former employees afterwards, like, you don't even know what we went through to get those things to do, even what they did for you during the demo. But by last year, Kevin, the PIN had more returns than sales. And in February, the PIN sold to HP and I guess it's now just a printer.
Yes. It's a printer and it's very cheap, but if you want to refill the ink, it's going to cost you an arm and a leg.
Number 37.
Age verification.
Now, listen, you know, Kevin and I grew up in a time when you could go on any website for any reason. Uh, you know, there might be a little dropdown that says, hey, are you 18? And you know, you'd be sitting there and you're like 11, you'd be like, yeah, like I'm 18 as hell. And you know, then you just like see like the craziest thing you've ever seen in your life.
Well, finally, uh, states are cracking down on this. Um, and the reason is that just basically. After decades of courts saying, "No, you can't do age verification because it places an illegal burden on adults. Adults should not have to tell you anything about themselves if they want to access a website, because that's a free speech issue." Lately, courts have just been like, "No, that's actually fine. Go ahead and pass your laws. If you want to, you know, create some sort of system where all of a sudden you have to upload a, you know, driver's license to look at a website, that's fine, too." And so now, Kevin, at least half of states now have these laws.
Iconic.
Yeah, so I'm going to try to create a map of what I call the cool states where you don't need to do age verification if you want to look at the internet. But in the meantime, you know, statistically, something like half of Americans are now living with one of these issues.
Yep.
Number 36. The Gregorian Calendar. Oh, boy.
Now, Casey, this one really did affect all of our lives in many ways.
Especially this year.
Yeah, especially this year. Was this a leap year? Anyway, this is the calendar that we now all use. It went into effect in October 1582. It was named after Pope Gregory XIII, and it was introduced to address the inaccuracies of the previous calendar, the Julian calendar.
Finally. Do you know how long we had to wait for them to fix those inaccuracies?
Honestly, honestly, it is crazy. This was basically the first software patch.
And it was designed to address the inaccuracies of the previous calendar, the Julian calendar, which was sort of growing inaccurate because it wasn't counting leap days exactly right. And, you know, Pope Gregory XIII, or whoever worked for him, was like, "We should just fix this."
And you know how they did it?
How?
They sped us up by about 10 days.
That's so beautiful. You know, the idiots who ran the Julian calendar were, um, they made a year that was 365.25 days long, which was like, "Really?" And then the Gregorians come along and they say, "Uh, yeah, it should be 365.2425 days," and it fixed everything.
Which goes to show you, pedantry has benefits.
It really does. Number 35.
Labubu!
Oh, boy. The story of 2025 truly could not be told without the Labubu, Kevin. Although the Labubu actually originated 10 years ago.
Really?
Yeah, it did. It was a character in the artist casing lungs storybook series, The Monsters. He grew up in the Netherlands and had been inspired by Nordic folklore and fairy tales, and so created these mischievous, kind-hearted elf species. And in 2019, these collectible toys did a collaboration with the company Popmart. And then in 2025, it was just absolutely viral.
They're everywhere.
It was a true craze, and people just could not get their hands on enough Labubus.
How many Labubus do you have?
I had to get a second home, just to kind of put my collection on display, to show off all my Labubus.
And that is iconic.
Yeah. I feel like you don't have anything to say about the Labubus.
Well, my kid is not old enough to covet a Labubu yet, but I did appreciate when Naomi Osaka, the tennis player, had a series of custom Labubus designed for her run at a tournament this year. Including one named after the legendary tennis player Billie Jean King. The Labubu was named Billie Jean Bling, and I liked that.
That's pretty good. I would have thought they would have called it the Labillybilly.
Number 34.
Artificial Christmas trees. This one is really on my mind this year because my family just got our first artificial Christmas tree.
And, you know, it made me wonder, hey, who came up with this idea of using a fake tree instead of a real tree? What kind of technological genius had that idea? It turns out these were first introduced in the 19th century in Germany, where they were made out of dyed goose feathers.
Now, I would have loved to have built one myself, but where am I gonna get a bunch of dyed goose feathers?
You gotta catch some geese first. But this is actually, I want to broaden this one out a little bit to also include real Christmas trees.
What?
That's not a technology.
Well, during my research this year, I discovered that artificial Christmas trees, which I thought would be better for the environment, you know, you're not going down there chopping out a bunch of trees, actually, some people think they're actually worse for the environment because they're non-recyclable, some of them, and they'd end up in landfills. Actually, healthy forestation is good for the environment. So maybe, you know, maybe do your own research, as they say, before you decide to go for an artificial Christmas tree. But I'm loving mine.
I think here's what I think you should do. If you get an artificial Christmas tree, maybe just keep it for a few years, you know? Don't get a new one every year.
That'll probably be better for the environment.
Number 33. Claude Code.
This is, of course, the autonomous coding agent released by Anthropic this year. And this was a big year for all kinds of agentic AI tools. We heard that word a lot. This is a project that was started as a prototype by a single engineer at Anthropic and is now on track for roughly $1 billion in revenue in its first year.
Yeah, and it's really hard to create a project that makes $1 billion in revenue in its first year. Take it from Kevin and me, we've tried. And I think this just speaks to the fact that agentic coding is a huge part of the story of 2025, right? People love these tools. You can plug them right into your command line. You can write code right from that command line, where if you're a coder, you're already spending a lot of time. And it's just turned into a huge moneymaker for Anthropic and for, you know, several other companies that make similar tools.
Yes, and speaking of Anthropic, Casey, do you have a disclosure to make?
Well, my boyfriend does work there.
Yes, and I work for the New York Times Company, which is suing OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged copyright violations.
Number 32.
DoorDash. DoorDash had a big year this year. They have been a very popular delivery app for several years. But this year, they sort of developed a more dominant market share. And in my life, I just feel like now I hear and see people doing DoorDash practically every day. I do it a lot with my family. It's a technology company that has started branching out beyond restaurants and do other kinds of delivery. And in 2025, DoorDash began rolling out their own autonomous delivery robots named Dot.
Hmm, yes, and actually, earlier this month, the stock crashed in a major way because of investor concerns about how expensive getting the autonomous robots off the ground was going to be. And that's also iconic when you can invent a new technology that crashes your stock. Look, I'm a big DoorDash customer myself, but here's my DoorDash complaint. Do you ever notice you're kind of like scrolling through all the carousels of like, oh, you know, there's this kind of thing? And there's this, and you scroll through, and it's just like the same 11 restaurants that they've just put in different orders?
They need to knock that off. Number 31.
Notes app. This was my addition to the list this year. Casey, I love the Notes app. I have tried every single to-do list, note-taking product, productivity software on the market. And I keep coming back to the good old iOS Notes app. Right there on your phone. It does everything you need and then some. And this year, it got some upgrades. You can now use the Record a Call feature to get a call transcript right there in your Notes app. You could do many other things with the Notes app. If you haven't visited in a couple of years, it's time to try again.
Well, I think it's great that you love the Notes app. I like supporting independent developers, so I haven't really paid that much attention to it. But I think if you're very basic, I think the Notes app is kind of a great place to spend your time.
Yeah. Without the Notes app also, we might have a totally different way of celebrities apologizing for their snafus.
And how do you think they would apologize?
They'd probably have to use Microsoft Word or something like that.
That makes sense.
Kevin, we are just blowing through the most iconic technologies of 2025.
Yes, that was numbers 31 through 50. And when we come back, we're going to look at the top 30. You won't want to miss it.
You won't believe what's in, and you also won't believe what's not in there.
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Modern enterprise is made up of a lot of moving parts, and Comcast Business helps you orchestrate it all. With SD-WAN working at scale to keep 150 hospital locations connected and working as one, plus SASE and Zero Trust Security protecting financial data across a bank's 2,000 branches, and AI-powered networking that optimizes traffic across five continents. No one does business like Comcast Business.
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Well, Casey, we've got a lot more iconic technologies to run down before we finish our year's list. What's next?
Number 30.
Nintendo Switch 2!
This is the sequel to the bestselling Nintendo Switch, an extremely fun handheld gaming console. And of course, you could plug into your TV as well. I picked one of these things up, Kevin, and I've been having a great time with it. And I'm not alone. By next March, Nintendo expects to sell 19 million Switches 2. I think that's how you say it, Switches 2?
Uh, Switch 2s?
Switch 2s or Switches 2?
Is this like an Attorney's General thing?
Exactly. Anyways.
What's your favorite game? What are you playing right now?
Well, the game I've been playing the most is called Hades 2, the sequel to the game that I played the most on the original Switch. But I've also been playing Donkey Kong Bonanza. I have been playing the most recent Mario Kart. There is a lot of very fun stuff on the Switch 2. It's fun at parties. It's just a good time.
You bring your Switch 2 to parties?
I'll absolutely bring my Switch 2 to a party.
Just in case the conversation starts to drag a little bit?
Well, when people start talking about AI, sometimes I need to be like, guys, it's Saturday. Let's take a break.
Let's do something social, like play the Switch.
Yes, actually, playing Mario Kart is social, Kevin. You would know that if you'd ever accepted my invitation to play Mario Kart.
Next year.
Number 29, Granola. You know, Granola was the first one of these AI note takers that I started using a lot. Since then, many, many products have introduced these AI note takers. But I just think AI note taking has really changed the way that people work.
Yes, this is an app that basically operates whenever you're on a meeting or a video call, and it takes notes for you. And what I like about this product is that unlike other AI note taking products, it does not kind of like come into your meeting as a separate entity. Like, I'm sure you've been in a video call and someone's like AI note taker like asks to enter the call. And I find that a little gauche.
Yeah, you prefer your surveillance to be done in secret.
Yes. So Granola, you should, you should definitely let people know if you're using it. So you're not sort of surveilling them. But I like that it operates in the background and I use it a lot. What about you?
Well, the best thing that it does for me is that after the meeting, it just creates a really great summary of the meeting. And it's like, like, for example, we'll use it when we're planning the show. And after the meeting is over, it'll say like, hey, here are like the three segments you're doing this week. And here, you know, here's who's going to prep each one. So it's just a very nice little quick, easy time-saving thing. Like, these are the kind of thing I want AI doing to my life.
Yes, I want to make a feature request of Granola for next year, which is that they should add a, a good idea, bad idea score for each person in the meeting. So after we finish like an editorial meeting, it'll say Casey had three really bad ideas this week. This is 40% improvement over last week.
Number 28, group chats.
A huge year for group chats in 2025, Casey. Not only did we have the iconic group chat, Houthi PC Small Group, which was started by some top government officials, including Secretary of War Pete Heggs. Seth, Vice President JD Vance, and the Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who was added to this by mistake, which is how we all learned about it. We had other group chat news in 2025, including a large series of group chats in which young Republicans from around the country sent racist messages and praised Adolf Hitler.
Oh, boy. Yeah, listen, group chats are wonderful, but if you're using them to conduct war or be racist, it could come back to bite you, which is a great reason not to conduct war or be racist.
Yes. And how would we have known that if not for the iconic technology of the group chat?
What's your favorite group chat?
Well, I tried to start a group chat this year for
You did.
for shadowy media elites, and I invited a bunch of, you know, famous media people, hoping that they would just spill their gossip. And then they didn't, and no one ever posted it. It's very sad.
Well, I was in this chat, and like, by the time you'd added the eighth person, I was like, I don't trust that person. You added that person? That person is gossipy as hell, and so unfortunately, it did die.
Number 27, EUV lithography.
Wow, rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? This is one of my iconic technologies of the year because it is the technology that makes all of the AI chips and the GPUs possible. These are these very cool machines. They are about the size of a bus that etch microscopic circuits onto silicon wafers. They use a high-powered laser to blast a tiny drop of molten tin 50,000 times a second. And as I've started becoming chip-pilled this year, I have been looking into what are the critical inputs to chips? And you could not make any of this stuff without the EUV lithography machines. There is only one company that currently makes them.
And what is that company?
The Dutch company ASML. And they are basically the supplier to the entire world of high-powered AI chips. And if they somehow went bust or had to give up their business in EUV lithography, we would all be pretty screwed.
Wow, ASML. Are they also the company that makes those videos where someone just kind of crinkles paper and whispers?
Yeah, that's a little bit different. But also iconic.
Number 26, Bing Sydney. Now Bing Sydney was the Microsoft chatbot that Kevin got into a famous confrontation with a couple of years back, and it has got a lot of attention then. And I have just found that in many ways, Kevin, Bing Sydney has never left us since that day.
Yes, unfortunately, this is true.
Everywhere you look, you see a chatbot that is going absolutely out of control, whether it is like Annie in Grok, this like sort of very sexual chatbot, or all of the heartbreaking chatbots that we have had this year that are sort of encouraging people along as they're like considering self-harm. We just see this over and over again, and it just made me feel like, you know what? Bing Sydney never went away. You can't keep a bad girl down. She just keeps coming back stronger and meaner than ever.
Yes, unfortunately, this is true. Bing Sydney, despite having been sort of deprecated a few years ago, there's this whole community of people on the internet who try to find Bing Sydney inside newer models, and when they do, they tag me on the internet. So I know that my former conversational partner is not actually dead, but is, lives on in all these ways. Stop doing that to me, please. I need to move on.
Number 25, X-rays.
This was an omission from last year's list. We got several emails from listeners who said, hey, how could you forget about the x-ray? X-rays are so important to modern life.
Yeah, we have a lot of listeners who are freaks who like to look at human bones.
Yes, but it is true. The x-ray is very important. The first x-ray was discovered in 1895 by the German physicist Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen. And they were, how did I do?
Amazing.
Yes, and he named them x-rays to sort of signify their mysterious nature. No one knew what these things were, but they allowed you to look inside the human body for the first time, and without x-rays, how would we ever know if we broke a bone?
How would we ever know that there was a skeleton living inside us? It's very disturbing. Number 24.
Substack. Casey, you love Substack. Why don't you talk about how iconic this company is?
Why don't you talk about how iconic it is?
Okay, this is, of course, the newsletter platform. They had a big year this year. They raised $100 million funding round. And I would say they gained a lot of cultural mind share. Obviously, Substack did not emerge this year. But this year, they had a number of prominent people leave their jobs in mainstream media and join Substack. And I would say they kind of became the de facto landing pad for people who are leaving mainstream media organizations, striking out on their own and, you know, hanging a shingle to start their own subscription newsletter business.
Well, I don't know, Kevin. That whole thing feels a little played out. I was doing it in 2020. But it does take some other people a little while to catch up. You know, the thing that interested me the most about Substack this year was that they did raise this $100 million, valuing them at $1.1 billion. But their revenue that they're expecting this year? About $45 million. So they've got a long way to go to live up to that valuation. In the meantime, I think it's a beautiful giveaway from the venture capital community to all of the people who are writing and able to give away a bunch of stuff for free. We'll see how long it lasts.
Number 23.
Velcro. This was one that I came to appreciate this year as the parent of a three-year-old. Velcro truly is so great, so iconic. It allows you to avoid things like tying shoes on a three-year-old who's squirming away from you. Very, very useful. And the story of Velcro is more interesting than I had expected. It was invented by an engineer in the 1940s who noticed how burrs were sticking to his dog's fur and looked-
Fur burrs!
Fur burrs, yes, different than fur bees. He looked at the burrs under a microscope and found that they had this like sort of hook and loop system that allowed them to latch on to the fur. And he said, "I could make that. Why don't I make that?" And turned it into a product. And pretty soon, it became indispensable for everything from children's shoes to securing objects in zero gravity on- NASA's Apollo missions.
Amazing. Now, why is it that three-year-olds hate having you tie their shoes so much?
Well, it just takes a long time and they're busy. They've got stuff to do. They've got to pick their nose. They've got to run away. They've got, you know, lots of stuff.
Number 22.
Nano Banana!
Nano Banana was the code name for Google's latest text-to-image generating model. But it became so popular that the company just basically just started calling it Nano Banana out in the open. And this was, I would say, the second image model that truly went viral this year. The first one was the OpenAI model earlier this year that people used to make all those Studio Ghibli-style images. And that was a really cool case of what they call "style transfer." What made Nano Banana interesting, Kevin, is that it is faster than its predecessors. It makes images that are sort of like hyper-real as opposed to stylized. And most importantly, it could create a consistent object that you could edit.
So I could say like, you know, "show me like a firefighter." And if it, you know, and I decided I wanted to make the hat blue, it could make the firefighter helmet blue without changing the rest of the image. And that actually was an innovation in AI image generation.
Yeah, I would say Nano Banana was the sort of the first Google AI product that did not feel like it was catching up to something that a competitor had previously released. It felt like they had really pushed the envelope forward there. And I think that will be a big story over the next year is that I think Google has sort of found its footing with AI products and is starting not just to catch up to rivals, but also to jump ahead of them in some cases.
Number 21.
Celsius! Casey, this was a huge technology of 2025 in my life. This is, we're talking about the energy drink, not the standard unit of measurement for temperature.
Which we hate.
Yes, we're more Fahrenheit guys on this show. This energy drink changed my life this year for the following reasons. I became incredibly addicted to it.
Was this like your first real experience with stimulants?
Yes. Yes, some people do cocaine in bathrooms. I do Celsius out of my fridge. It is a very caffeinated energy drink that has completely taken over the San Francisco tech scene. I tried one at a tech conference earlier this year and thought to myself, why do I feel so great all of a sudden? Why do I feel like I'm bouncing off the walls? I looked down at the can, Celsius. Every can has about 200mg of caffeine, which is about 2.5 Red Bulls worth.
Well, it seems like a great product, but I already have the idea for the product that's going to completely overwhelm Celsius.
What's that?
It's just Celsius, but it has 300 grams of caffeine in it.
I think you should put that on the shelves and see what happens. This thing fuels the entire tech industry and also my life.
Number 20.
Video podcasts!
Now, this feels a little self-serving, Kevin.
It is, because we are a video podcast, but this was also a huge year for video podcasts. We saw the rise of video podcasting, sort of taking over the podcast market. Spotify recently shared that its video podcast streaming is up 54% from last year, fueled by shows like The Joe Rogan Experience and other popular video podcasts.
And that has all happened despite the fact that to this day, not one podcast is actually good on video. You're still just better off listening to all of them. But it just turns out that the YouTube algorithm does a better job promoting a podcast than anything that the podcast industry ever figured out before. And so now this is the world we live in, Kevin.
Our podcast is good to look at on video, too. And if people want to do that, where can they go?
They could go to youtube.com/hardfork. Number 19.
Discord! This is, of course, the chat app that became popular among gamers, but has since been sort of expanded to lots of other people who now use this basically to chat with their friends and maybe their enemies.
And one of the most fascinating uses we've seen of Discord to date took place this year when Discord was used to help to select the next Prime Minister of Nepal. Nepal had massive protests this year that started when the previous government tried to ban social media apps. And there was a group of citizens who gathered together in Discord to pick the interim Prime Minister.
Yeah, so you could do a lot on Discord. You could play Valorant with your friends, or you could pick the next Prime Minister of Nepal. Choose carefully.
Yeah. I'm using it to try to pick a prime minister for this country.
We don't actually have a prime minister.
I'm still catching up on the constitution. Number 18.
Prediction markets. This was a big year for prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, where you can go and gamble on any number of world events. And this was inescapable. If you were following any elections this year or sports games, people are constantly talking about their bets. And I don't know, I believe this is a good technology. I think this is part of a sort of nationwide gambling epidemic that is going to have some real consequences. But it's undeniably iconic this year.
Well, it was really surprising to me because I went to Polymarket looking to meet people in open relationships. And it was a completely different kind of website.
But also, there was a study this month that found that 25% of the trades on Polymarket are what they call WASH trades, essentially artificial trading activity designed to, you know, pump up the prices of assets. So I do maintain a somewhat deep skepticism of these prediction markets, Kevin.
Yes, me too. I am skeptical that they are going to turn out to be a good thing, but I think they are undoubtedly going to be a big thing.
Number 17. Zero proof beverages. So to me, this is one of the most fascinating and under discussed topics of the year is just the sheer number of Americans that seemingly spontaneously decided to give up drinking.
Yes, no one drinks anymore, at least in San Francisco. It's wild.
In San Francisco, drinking has become sort of wildly unpopular. And I think a big reason why we are seeing this trend is that alcohol free beverages have gotten so much better than they used to be. Right. And just to focus on non alcoholic beer, to take one example, because I used to be like a big beer guy, but non alcoholic beer tasted horrible. Like the way that it worked was that these brewers would make a normal beer and then they would heat the beer to try to burn off all the alcohol. So they're just kind of like tasted gross. And so what's happened over the past few years is that brewers have just designed all these cool new methods that preserve the flavor. Like they use special yeast that doesn't produce as much alcohol. So there's sort of less alcohol to extract.
And they've come up with new ways to remove alcohol from the beer that. They've created like something called reverse osmosis, which unfortunately I don't have time to explain. But suffice to say, I can get a hazy IPA from Athletic Brewing, which is a non-alcoholic beer. And I swear to God, it tastes just as good as the the hazy IPAs I used to drink were. This is a really cool technology.
Yes, and it is fueling the new temperance in which you do a lot of drugs, but you don't actually drink.
Number 16. Stochastic gradient descent.
Oh, thank God, this is on this year's list. This, of course, is the optimization algorithm that was pioneered in the 1950s that has had a recent revival because it is the basic way that all of today's large language models are trained. It is basically the way that the the weights of the neural networks learn how to make better predictions is through stochastic gradient descent. They kind of adjust their parameters bit by bit, trying to find the optimal way to reduce something called the loss function. Without stochastic gradient descent, these networks would be dumb as hell, Casey. And now they're smart and we have stochastic gradient descent.
It's so true. And you know, at the top of this item, when we said stochastic gradient descent in unison, I was being a real stochastic parrot.
Number 15. Blue books. A huge year for blue books. These, of course, are the examination books that students for generations have been using to take their tests. And they have been making a big comeback in 2025, fueled by the rise of AI assisted cheating. Lots of schools are moving back from computerized testing and evaluations to in-class blue books, which they can monitor and prevent people from using ChatGPT to do their homework.
Yeah, I certainly spent a lot of my younger years filling out these blue books. And mainly what I just remember is that my hand would cramp, you know, after a full, you know, 45 minutes of trying to write an essay. So it's a shame that kids can't use their laptops, but unfortunately, they were primarily using them to cheat. I read one story that said over the past two academic years, just at the Cal Student Store, so right here nearby at Berkeley, blue book sales were up 80%.
Wow.
Big year. And the ones that are iconic in schools across America are made by the Roaring Spring Paper Products Company in Blair County, Pennsylvania.
They should do like a sitcom, like a sort of a mockumentary sitcom set inside that paper company. I think that could go over big. Number 14.
Voyager 1. I have a deep emotional attachment to this spacecraft. This is, of course, the 48-year-old spacecraft that NASA sent out to explore the solar system. It is lasted far longer than they initially projected. We talked about it on the show last year because NASA had to kind of like fix it from about 15 billion miles away. And it is still going despite many predictions that it would have died by now. This year, it got another long-distance fix. And this year, it also discovered a mysterious wall of fire at the edge of our solar system.
And we have a very exciting announcement, which is that for the series finale of Hard Fork, we are going to fly a spaceship into the mysterious wall of fire at the edge of the solar system. So you guys all have that to look forward to.
Voyager 1, we love you. Keep truckin'.
Number 13. Nuclear power. A huge part of the Springfield economy, Kevin.
Yes, and a huge part of the AI boom that we're going to be talking about a little bit more today. This is, of course, the way of using nuclear fission to produce large amounts of power. Obviously, a very controversial technology, but I think one that at least in America is starting to have a comeback. The demand in power for these AI data centers has led to some innovation in nuclear power. There are now these things called SMRs, small modular reactors. These are going to be a big part of how we get all of this energy to fuel all of this expansion of AI. Obviously, there are other renewable forms of energy, solar, wind, et cetera.
But nuclear is where a lot of the tech industry is placing its bets. And I think for that reason, it is an iconic technology of 2025 and probably of 2026 as well.
Number 12. Tylenol. Tylenol was really in the headlines not too long ago, Kevin, when US officials, including RFK Jr. and President Trump, made what we might generously call unproven claims that the use of acetaminophen products during pregnancy can cause autism, something I do not believe is true. But it caused a crisis.
Yeah, I'm more of an Advil guy, but what do you like about Tylenol?
What I like about Tylenol is that it can effectively cure my aches and pains without causing autism. What do you like about it?
No, I think you speak my mind there. I support Tylenol in its various travails. And this was a big year for that brand. They actually are now owned by Kimberly Clark. Just a few days ago, they were sold to the maker of popular paper products. So now you can get your toilet paper and your Tylenol in the same place.
What a great, great little bundle. Number 11.
VPNs.
Virtual private networks.
A big year for VPNs, in part because of the, some of the age verification restrictions that we just talked about. Many Americans are trying to do things on the internet and they don't want to appear to be in the state that they are in. And so they will use a VPN to make their internet traffic look like it's coming from someplace else.
Yeah, well, look, I mean, there are a lot of states, like the United Kingdom passed a similar law where if you are an adult and you want to look at porn, these companies are asking you for personal information, possibly including your driver's license. And a lot of people understandably don't want to upload their driver's license into the "I'm looking at porn" database, which you know is going to leak, you know, at some point. And so VPNs are a very reasonable solution to that. And so they've become quite popular this year, Kevin.
A big year for the VPN.
You know, people want their privacy and they deserve it. And just like that, Kevin, we have arrived at the year's top 10 most iconic technologies. Why don't we take a moment to recompose ourselves? When we come back, we'll tell you the winners.
Top 10.
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All right, K, so you ready for the top 10? Boy, am I ready, Kevin. I can't believe we've already gotten there. It's going too fast. Maybe we should do 150 next year. Okay, that's something to think about, yeah.
Okay, what's number 10?
Number 10, dwarf wheat. Dwarf wheat sounds like a rapper, but that's not what it is.
No, it is a variety of wheat plant that was invented in the 1960s by agronomist Norman Borlaug, who bred short wheat stalks that could support massive heads of grain, which led to an explosion in the global food supply and saved nations like India and Pakistan from catastrophic famine.
How did dwarf wheat make our top 10 list this year, Kevin?
Well, an important thing happened this year, which was that I learned about it.
Hmm.
And I thought, well, if we're ever gonna do another one of those iconic technologies lists, something that saves a billion lives should probably be on it.
Absolutely. Well, shout out to dwarf wheat, a true short king.
Which proves that in wheat, as in podcasting, it is bad to be too tall.
Period. Number nine, Sora. Sora, the text-to-video image generator that OpenAI put out this fall, yeah, quickly went viral and, Kevin, I think also just kind of changed my thinking about what kind of company OpenAI is.
Say more.
Well, I think up until this point, OpenAI could still make a pretty credible case that it was like in it for the research, that it had this pretty single-minded mission to build AGI, well, you know, however it was gonna define that. And then Sora came along and all of a sudden, OpenAI runs a social network now. It is directly competing with Meta and it has many of the same problems that Meta has, right? At launch, Sora said, "We're going to like sort of put reminders in the app if we feel like you've been staring at this thing too long." Essentially, they know this thing could like accelerate the the screen time issues that we have in this country. And that's to say nothing of the many copyright issues that happened around the launch with the company sort of permitting actors' likenesses to be used without their permission.
So, OpenAI got itself into a lot of trouble here and I'm not really sure what they've gotten out of it so far.
Yeah, I have not been using Sora nearly as much recently, but there was a period of several days. Where I first got access and I thought, wow, this thing is really cool. There were some funny videos going around. People were deep faking us into compromising situations. And I do feel like this is the invention of the year that is likely to have the longest lasting impact on the information ecosystem. Because we are now just entering this era where video can be made that is super realistic of anyone doing anything. And we have Sora to thank for that.
All that being said, I do just think Sora was one of the biggest stories of this year, full stop. Like, I think that when you look at consumer internet companies like doing interesting things, Sora is just very close to the top of that list.
Yeah, it is a phase change in social media that is now neither social nor really media. It's this kind of synthetic slop that is now being fed to people that will undoubtedly change the world in ways that we can neither foresee nor predict.
Number eight.
DeepSeek. This is, of course, the Chinese AI lab that released its Model R1 in January. And that was a very big deal for the stock market, which promptly collapsed because of fears that all of these American AI labs were spending billions and billions of dollars. And here comes this Chinese AI company, and they appear to have built a very good model using somewhat less powerful chips and much less money. And that was a big moment for the American AI industry and the economy as a whole.
Yeah, it turbocharged fears that America might lose the AI race with China. There really was a mania about this thing. One of the very few emergency episodes we've done over the past year was about DeepSeek just because so many people were concerned about what it meant. And I have to say, Kevin, you fast forward to November, and it's not clear that DeepSeek actually meant that much, right? Like, DeepSeek R1 was not followed by a succession of Chinese models that took over the internet. And in fact, American companies still seem like they're pretty firmly in the lead.
Yeah, but I think DeepSeek R1 especially is iconic for another reason, which is that it was open source and it was sort of-
Like true open source, not just open weights the way that like the Meta Llama models are.
Totally. They told us how they made it. They published all the details. And to this day, the DeepSeek R1 paper is still our best and one of our only sources of information about how these reasoning models are built and what the underlying technology looks like, because none of the American companies who are building these models are publishing the details like DeepSeek did.
And so, you know, if you have a long weekend coming up for Thanksgiving and you want to build a large language model with your children that can reason, you may want to look at that DeepSeek paper.
It's true.
You'll learn a lot.
Number seven. Mecha Hitler! Mecha Hitler, or Grok as it's sometimes called, came to our attention in July with the release of a new Grok model. And when people started having conversations with it, they noted just how easy it was to get the model to identify as Hitler or Mecha Hitler, a villain from the classic video game Wolfenstein 3D.
Yes, this was a part of a series of fiascos that happened at Grok. People were noticing all kinds of things, like the fact that it would talk very openly and easily about white genocide, which is of course a sort of right wing talking point-
Conspiracy theory.
Elon Musk's favorite conspiracy theories. And I think this was an iconic technology of 2025, not because it's good, we should not have language models that call themselves Mecha Hitler or talk about white genocide, but because it illustrated how hard it is to align and deploy these AI models. Here comes Elon Musk, someone with unlimited money, and he wants to make the anti-woke, right-wing chatbot. And it turns out that when you do that, it starts calling itself Mecha Hitler. And then when you try to undo that, it turns out you can't actually control the models that well. So I think this was a great, very public example of how even the people with access to all the money and all the intelligence
and all the engineering talent in the world cannot figure out how to reliably- These AI models.
Yes, Mecha Hitler is a joke, but it is also a warning because as these models get more powerful, if we do not solve that alignment problem that you just described, Mecha Hitler is going to be the least of our concerns, right? There are just still many unsolved problems when it comes with getting a model to behave in the way that you want it to behave. And Mecha Hitler, you know, for all its faults, did try to send us that message.
Yeah. Number six.
TikTok. Casey, this is the only repeat on this year's list. It was also on our list last year. I believe it was number 46 last year. It's number six this year. Why did TikToks have such an iconic year?
Well, TikTok is the only social media app to ever be banned in the United States. That's the first thing. And it's the only social media app to be banned and then not actually be banned at all because the president just decided that he didn't want that. And so he just signed a series of executive orders saying, uh, no, uh, actually it's fine, overriding an act of Congress that was upheld by the Supreme Court. And so while it did blink offline briefly this year, which was another iconic moment in TikTok history, fast forward to today and Kevin, you can watch all of the viral dances you want.
Yes, it is invincible. It cannot be killed. And even when it is technically killed, legal and presidential chicanery can bring it back. What an icon. TikTok, I think, is obviously culturally iconic because it is ushered in the era of short form video, uh, which has totally dominated the media landscape. Now everyone, everywhere, uh, is consuming short form video constantly. It has also, uh, led to radical changes in products like Instagram of they, as they have tried to catch up. And I think an icon all around.
Number five.
Rare earth metals. Now, this is an exciting one, and the reason it is so high on this year's iconic technologies list is that it became very geopolitically important this year.
So flashpoint.
Yes, so rare earth metals, uh, which are, fun fact, not very rare. They're actually quite common. They are the things that go into. To everything from smartphones to electric vehicles. There are 17 of them and they are hard to separate. The reason they're called rare earth metals is because separating them from sort of the nearby rock takes lots of solvent extraction. It's very complicated.
It's a huge pain in the ass.
Yes, huge pain in the ass to get these metals. But they turn out to be very important and China and the US have been facing down over rare earth metals and access to exported rare earth metals for some time now. And that took a big step up in severity this year when China threatened to block the export of rare earth metals to the US, which was not received well by American politicians.
Yeah, now have we resolved the rare earth metal situation? Because I have been told that President Trump, you know, sort of reached a deal with the Chinese government. I need to know if I can get my rare earths, my lanthanides, my scandium, my yttrium.
Yes, the tensions de-escalated in November of this year when the US and China agreed to suspend some of these export controls, basically as part of a larger trade deal between the US and China. So yes, your smartphones, your electric vehicles, they are safe for now from having their rare earth metals taken away.
You know, I have a dream, Kevin, and that dream is that one day we get so good at separating all of these things that we start to call them common earth metals. And that's how you'll know that American manufacturing is back. Number four, glass. Neither a liquid or a solid, Kevin. It's what they call an amorphous solid.
Yes, that is, that is true. This was one of the things that people pointed out the most that we had forgotten to add to last year's list. They wanted, there's a lot of glass heads out there.
Well, here's the thing, they spend eight to 12 hours a day staring at a literal piece of glass and they're saying, that's not iconic?
Yeah, exactly. So we are fixing our error. Glass comes in at number four this year, in part because as I have learned more about glass in preparation for this episode, I have come to realize how important it really is.
How important is it?
Well, Casey, would you believe that the Internet as we know it today would not exist without glass.
I don't, I, how, how, why, how could you say such a thing?
Because the fiber optic cables that carry broadband internet across the world are, in fact, tiny strands of glass. That is what fiber optic cables are made out of. Without glass, no internet.
If they call them glass cables, that would sound so much cooler. It's kind of an interesting choice, really.
Glass also the inspiration for Apple's liquid glass design, sort of language that they rolled out this year.
And even better, Kevin, the inspiration for Google Glass, the best pair of glasses ever created.
That's true. That's true. Casey, what do you think the largest piece of glass in the world is and where do you think it is?
The largest piece of ass in the world, Kevin?
No, that's for a different episode.
Oh, oh, I see. I don't know. What is the largest piece of glass in the world?
Well, Casey, I'm glad to tell you that it is in Beijing, China, where the Taikong Financial Towers hold the Guinness World Record for the largest single glass window. Each individual glass panel in the building's lobby measures 54 feet high and 10 feet wide.
Okay, so America is losing the glass war to China.
We are losing the glass war and the rare earth metals war.
Where is the Trump administration on the glass war? I swear to God.
If he finds out that we're losing to China, we will pour billions of dollars into a national competition to make the biggest pane of glass.
I would love that. I think people would be really excited about that.
And then, once we do that, I want to put TikTok on it.
You want to put TikTok on the glass?
On the, the world's largest piece of glass. I want to look at TikTok, you know, at a bigger screen size than anyone ever has.
That's beautiful. Kevin, we're already at number three. Can you believe it?
Could it get any more iconic?
I don't, it can have been barely more iconic than it's already been with number three.
ChatGPT.
ChatGPT, I think, in many ways, was the biggest tech story of the year, although it does have some competition, which we'll talk about. This app reached 800 million weekly users this year. And keep in mind, this thing, as we record this, is not yet three years old, and it's already hitting the scale that ranks it among the very biggest apps in the world. Did it in an incredibly quick amount of time. And this year, it just released a ton of pretty interesting features, right? A memory feature, the pulse feature, which kind of like sends you a daily digest in the morning. There are apps inside of ChatGPT now. 2025 is also the first full year that we will have reasoning inside the models in ChatGPT.
And so, just sort of like across the product, they have just been adding feature after feature, making the app more useful. And I just think it has become a huge part of many people's lives.
Yeah, and we should say, like, in ways that are both good and bad, right? Like, a lot of people are using ChatGPT for things that I would not consider healthy or good. They're, you know, sort of taking shortcuts on their homework. Some people, as my colleague Cash Hill has been reporting on a lot, are sort of falling into these, like, delusional spirals. There was a big moment earlier this year when ChatGPT became very sycophantic and started telling people that they were, you know, the greatest philosopher in the world, that they were unlocking the mysteries of quantum physics. And I think that was bad for people. But undeniably, ChatGPT, another big year for that product. It has become kind of the household name chatbot that is, at least in the consumer side of the market, you know, developed sort of a dominant lead.
And, you know, I think it is, for many people, their first point of contact with these very powerful AI systems.
Yeah, and I think, for better and worse, it just has continued to stay on the cutting edge in ways that surprised me. Like, after Sam Altman was fired and came back, a lot of people left that company. I just kind of thought they might have had so much talent to part that they're not going to be able to keep up the pace that they were at. And actually, I think the pace has accelerated since then. So, there is something inside that company that has led them to continue to innovate and to ship things. And, as you just said, that is, you know, that has good things and bad things about it. But ChatGPT, just a huge part of the story of 2025.
Number two.
Trump coin!
Oh, boy. Well, Kevin. In the past, it's been extremely uncommon for presidents to have cryptocurrencies in their name.
Yes. Yes, Abraham Lincoln did not have a cryptocurrency, and there are several reasons for that.
But the Trump Organization and World Liberty Financial, which is the Trump family's like separate token venture, just raked in an astounding amount of money in 2025 related to Trump Coin and its surrounding businesses.
Yeah, what percentage of your 401K is allocated to Trump Coin?
Oh, I moved the whole thing over. I said, I got a good feeling about this one.
Yes, I think this is an iconic technology of this year, not because it's good, but because it is so brazen. Like, it is, you know, it was so obvious from the moment that Trump Coin came onto the market, that the Trump family started doing its own crypto ventures, that this was going to be a way to sort of buy influence directly from the president and his family using this technology, and that that would, you know, be very hard to stop or regulate because it is like happening in crypto and not through any kind of like regulated financial market.
Yeah, I mean, you just like look at many of the pardons that went on this year, including some in the crypto industry, and you have to wonder, you know, were purchases of Trump Coin or related products made? And that is extremely hard to trace due to the nature of crypto. Reuters did a story this year saying that the Trump Organization had taken in about $802 million from family crypto ventures in the first half of 2025 alone. That included $336 million from sales and fees related to the Trump crypto coin. So, we have just never seen anything like this, and I think when historians write about
the Trump years, this is something that will stand out as just, as you said, Kevin, an incredibly brazen cash grab from the president and his family.
Well, it's a really wild turn of events for the Trump family as well. I think if you had asked people a couple of years ago, like, how did Donald Trump get rich? They would have told you about Hotels or golf courses, maybe they would have mentioned some of his other business ventures or The Apprentice or
Trump stakes.
Exactly. But like, the amount of money that the Trump family has made on crypto dwarfs all of those other businesses. Like, they are now primarily a family that derives their wealth from cryptocurrency, which is just a wild turn of events. I think a lot of people, you and I included, thought crypto had sort of like its cultural relevance had been declining since some of the market crashes of a few years ago. But crypto is so back, a lot of the things that regulators had been cracking down on during the Biden administration are now allowed again under the Trump administration. These companies are making tons of money.
In part because those regulators were all replaced by people from the crypto industry.
Yeah. So, you know, there has been a near total takeover of the sort of, you know, crypto regulatory infrastructure by people who previously worked in the industry. And I think they have been sort of all too happy to see President Trump succeed in crypto because the better President Trump does with crypto, the more lax the regulatory environment gets. So, yeah, I think that that's the sort of an important backstory here in the story of the Trump coin.
All right, Casey, we have arrived, at long last, at our number one most iconic technology of 2025.
We've already talked about so many icons and it's scarcely imaginable to me that something could be more iconic, but I do think there is one, one thing, maybe two words, that tell the story of 2025 better than any other, Kevin.
Yes, and before we reveal what our number one pick is, we should just say, like, this all goes through a rigorous, methodologically sound vetting process. You know, we have surveys, panels, focus groups.
Street teams. Who else gets involved?
An advisory board?
The, all the New York Times opinion team.
The UN?
Blue Sky, we asked Blue Sky to weigh in.
No, we, we write these down in a document and we sort of argue about them for a little while and out of that comes what we believe is the most iconic technology of 2025. Casey, you ready?
Number one.
Data centers. Wow, it would be hard to tell the story of 2025 in technology without the humble data center. Of course, the data center is sort of the, the way that we power all of these AI advancements. Before that, data centers were used for things like cloud computing. They are essentially giant buildings that house the supercomputers that power an increasing slice of modern life.
Yes, there was a story that I read a few weeks ago about how the United States' investments in data centers is propping up the entire global economy because so much of the equipment is made overseas as an imported. So other countries are now thriving because of how much these companies are spending on data centers. And one question people have, Kevin, is like, well, how long can this last? Are we, are we in some sort of dangerous, scary bubble?
Yes, it is. The, the thing that is fueling the talk of an AI bubble is the fact that all these data centers, which are very, you know, expensive and laborious to build, are popping up all over the country. And if you live in a giant urban center, you may not have spent much time in and around data centers because they tend to be built out in sort of rural areas where there's more land.
Coastal elites hate visiting data centers.
Yes, but if you are someone who lives in a less populous part of the country, you probably have seen a data center going up somewhere near you. This is, I think it's fair to say, not just the largest infrastructure project in America of the year, but maybe the largest infrastructure project in history. It is truly era defining and it is also becoming a big deal in politics. Politicians are now running for office campaigning against putting data centers in their districts. So I think this is going to be a very touchy flashpoint for a lot of people in the next few years.
Yeah, the controversy is mounting. There are folks that do not want to live near a data Center, they're tremendously concerned about the potential environmental impact. They're looking at their electricity bills rising. They're attributing that to these data centers. And so I do think that in addition to being just such a big part of 2025, these data centers are going to continue to be a big story in part because they're just going to be the subject of so many political fights. And I think the data centers can really serve as a kind of proxy war for how do you feel about AI in general, right? Like, do you fear that this is going to automate your job or enslave humanity? If so, data centers might feel like one place where you can actually fight back.
Yeah, I, I think that the data center industry could solve some of its image and reputational issues by renaming data centers to something that sounds a little cooler, a little friendlier, a little more approachable. I've been workshopping some possible names. I wonder what you make of this. What if you just called it a chip cabana?
I'm not sure cabana really captures the full size of the data. Because these are pretty big.
What would you call the data center?
I would call it machine god house.
Okay, somehow I don't think that's going to assuage Americans' concerns about data center, but I appreciate the creative effort.
And just like that, Kevin, we are through this year's 50 most iconic technologies. As you think about the year that we just had, how iconic was 2025?
I think this was an iconic year in technology. I have been energized this year. You know, in the news business, you always want there to be a lot of stuff going on. You want there to be a lot of stuff to cover. And boy, was there this year. The entire economy seemingly now runs on technology, is dominated by these companies that you and I cover. The build out for AI is exceeding anyone's expectations. I think it is just a really exciting time to be talking and thinking about this stuff. And whether it's all going in a, in a good or bad direction is a separate conversation. But in the news business, we like to say, you know, may you live in interesting times. And we do.
Yeah, I mean, look, it was a terrible year. Everyone knows that, but there was a lot of interesting tech. And it's been a pleasure to talk with you about it here on our podcast, Hard Fork. Thank you to our listeners. We hope you're having a wonderful holiday weekend. And, you know, as with last year, if we left out something, uh, let us know. We're [email protected]. And if, you know, we've made a mistake, we may include it on a future list of icons.
Yeah. If we could add one more iconic technology, the 51st one, it's you.
It's you, our listeners.
And viewers.
You're an incredible technology.
Look at you, crushing it.
Shine on, you crazy diamonds.
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Hard Fork is produced by Whitney Jones and Rachel Coate. We're edited by Jen Poyat. This episode was fact-checked by Will Peichl. Today's show was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Original music by Diane Wong and Dan Powell. Video production by Sawyer Roque, Pat Gunther, Jake Nickel, and Chris Schott. You can watch this whole episode on YouTube at youtube.com/hardfork. Special thanks to Paul Shuman, Puywing Tam, Dahlia Hadad, and Jeffrey Miranda. You can email us at [email protected] with your list of icons.
Hard Fork Podcast.
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Page updated October 12, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
