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Logan Ivey has tried everything to cut down on his screen time. He bought a modern dumbphone thats designed to be used as little as possible, tried a device called a Brick that removes distracting apps and notifications from a smartphone, and even resorted to a classic flip phone when all else failed. Still, nothing was working. So he turned his iPhone into a 6-pound weight. The 6 Pound Phone Case is a bulky, stainless steel contraption designed to make your smartphone extremely annoying to use. Inspired by the aesthetics of an 80s brick phone, the case transforms a typical, ultra-portable iPhone into a cumbersome eyesoreand thats the whole point. Ivey, who has been using the case for the past two months, says it has helped cut his screen time in half. Currently, the 6 Pound Phone Case is just a prototype, but Ivey is raising money through a Kickstarter page to sell a small batch of the cases for a whopping $210 each (the hefty price tag, he says, is due to the high manufacturing costs and current tariffs on steel). [Photo: Matter Neuroscience] Iveys invention is the latest in a recent series of out-there projects designed to help smartphone users hack their brains into cutting the doomscroll short. In the late 2010s, dumbphones enjoyed a spike in popularitybut since then, many users have met with the unfortunate reality that they need smartphone functions like maps, Google, email, and other services to navigate the day-to-day. Creative minds have thought up all kinds of solutions to this conundrum, including an app that forces you to literally touch grass before you scroll, a phone case that doubles as a tiny screen, and an app that uses an animated bean character to guilt-trip you out of going on social media. The 6 Pound Phone Case is the newest addition to this wacky smartphone detox lineupand it might just be the most effective. [Photo: Matter Neuroscience] Designing a 6-Pound Phone Case Ivey uses social media for a living. Hes both an independent creator and a full-time social media producer for Matter Neuroscience, a company he describes as dedicated to bridging the gap between everyday behavior and molecular science. Part of Matter Neurosciences mission has included building an app that lets users track their emotions every week to understand what kind of behaviors drive happiness. Through this project, Ivey says, he realized just how much his phone was sapping his energy and blocking his feel-good neurotransmitters. After trying dumbphones, a flip phone, and app blockers, Ivey realized that, especially given his job in social media, it was just too inconvenient to try replacing his smartphone. Instead, he needed a way to make his iPhone feel more like a tool than an addictive pastime. [Photo: Matter Neuroscience] I asked myself, How can I keep all the functionality of my phone, but still use it less? Ivey says. Then I thought, like, What if my phone was just really heavy and inconvenient to use? Matter Neuroscience partnered with Ivey to help make the idea reality. He turned to the clunky form factor of an 80s brick phone as inspiration, designing a case with one flat surface and two jutting rectangles on its top and bottom. Cutouts for charging, volume buttons, power, and a tapered camera hole keep every part of the phone functionalbut its stainless steel construction, which can be removed only by unscrewing four screws with an Allen wrench, makes it physically difficult to hold for too long. At 6 pounds, your hands and arms physically get tired while using it, the cases Kickstarter page reads. That fatigue reminds you to put the phone down. Further, it adds, the cases size is inconveniently big, purposefully preventing the user from tucking it in their pocket. You have to carry it in a bag like a laptop, or leave it in another room. That means fewer phantom notifications, fewer sidewalk swipes, and fewer brain rot sessions while pooping (and maybe less hemorrhoids). [Image: courtesy Logan Ivey] In Iveys experience, the 6 Pound Phone Case has cut his screen time from four and a half hours per week to just two. While Ivey does hope to sell some of the cases through his Kickstarter with Matter Neuroscience, he doesnt have plans to patent the design, and sees it as a concept that could have genuine potential for other phone case companies. Those little moments in life where you just instinctively reach for your phone, I don’t do anymore, Ivey says, because I either don’t have it on me or it’s too heavy.
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E-Commerce
If you’ve noticed that the internet feels different latelymore cluttered, harder to navigateyoure not imagining it. The system is breaking down in real time, and by 2026, researchers predict that 90% of web content will be AI-generated. Quality journalism is disappearing behind paywalls while feeds fill with noise designed purely to capture attention. An innovation that was supposed to democratize information is now drowning us in it. I know this intimately because I helped build it. As founder of AppNexus, which sold to AT&T for $1.6 billion, and former CTO of Right Media, I created the technology that became the backbone of digital advertising, a multibillion-dollar industry and the economic engine funding everything from major newsrooms to niche blogs. Now that engine is stalling. You are now the product Heres what happened: instead of paying for what you have actually read or watched, the advertising system turned you into the product. Every click, search, and scroll got auctioned to the highest bidder. You became the currency. And once the dollars followed your data rather than content quality, the value of real information slipped into the background. The effects are everywhere. News organizations are consolidating rapidly or shuttering entirely. AI-generated slop is creeping into YouTube and other online communities, and flooding search results with spam. Trust in the media and the online ecosystem is on the brink of collapse. Shoes chase you around the internet, misinformation spreads faster than facts, and billions vanish to fraud. It feels like the end. But Ive seen this before. A recurring pattern The internet has a pattern: it breaks, people panic, and then it is rebuilt into something much better. Web 1.0 gave us static pages and basic connectivity. Web 2.0 brought user-generated content and social interactionbut not before people warned it would destroy traditional media entirely. Each transition looked catastrophic while it was happening. Remember when mobile first arrived? Mobile websites were impossible to read. Ads covered half your screen. Everything required pinch-to-zoom and patience. Companies spent years trying to shove desktop experiences onto phones before they figured out that mobile needed its own infrastructure. It felt broken and annoying, until it didnt. With phones constantly in hand and the first screen for most people, we barely remember the awkward transition. Another phase Were in that awkward phase again. Our attention is fragmented across more platforms, devices, and channels than ever. We seek information and entertainment everywhere, and we have higher expectations: we want access without annoyance, quality without cost, personalization without intrusion. The current infrastructure wasnt built for this reality. Now, AI has cascaded into everything. Its generating slop thats flooding search results and feeds, yes, but its also the tool were using to rebuild. We are reorganizing our lives around it: how we work, how we find information, how we consume content. What some are calling the “agentic AI economy”where AI is integrated as an intelligent intermediary that reasons, plans, and acts to solve problemsis starting to take shape. The internets infrastructure will be fine once it catches up to that shift and the industry rethinks its fundamental economics. Course correction Licensing deals, revenue sharing, and pay-per-crawl compensation models are taking shape to course correct and ensure publishers start to be paid for their value and those will continue to evolve as the industry sees what sticks. Meanwhile, AI companies themselves, OpenAI being the most recent, are investing in advertising infrastructure, recognizing that if chat and AI engines are here to stay as primary channels, they need sustainable business models beyond subscriptions. New targeting approaches leveraging agentic AI are also on the horizon, offering the promise of eliminating waste and fraud that would otherwise go toward funding made-for-advertising websites or AI slop. Companies like mine, Scope3, offer agentic advertising, using AI agents to match ads to specific content themes and values rather than relying on personal data or demographics. Try this: copy a page youve browsed and paste it into ChatGPT, then ask it to produce an ad and compare the result to whats actually on the page. More likely than not, ChatGPT gave a better ad without even needing your browser history or data. This makes content the product again, not you. Quality publishers get rewarded while content farms and fraudulent sites are starved of revenue. These are proof points that the economic infrastructure is being rebuilt. A turning point The internets promise doesnt have to die with its decline. Were at a turning point where we know AI will shape the webthats inevitable. Now we decide what kind of system we build with it. If the attention economy monetized distraction, the agentic AI economy has the chance to monetize trust. We can use AI to filter noise instead of creating it. We can reward publications that invest in fact-checking and original reporting. We can connect ads based on values and genuine interest rather than demographic profiles. Or we can let the internet collapseeither descending into unusable chaos where AI slop buries everything of value or splitting into a world where quality content exists only behind paywalls most people cant afford. The builders who understand this moment, those championing dynamics that reward quality and trust, are ready to shape whats next. The internet we want is possible. We just have to choose to build it.
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E-Commerce
Its a soundand smellcar commuters have become intimately familiar with: the noxious fumes of asphalt repaving. U.S. road maintenance and highway expansion require a massive quantity of asphalt every year, roughly 400 million tons a year on average, according to Asphalt magazine, a publication of the international trade association Asphalt Institute. But a new process developed by St. Louis-based firm Verde Resources seeks to streamline the process, making it more sustainable and odorless. Verdes new BioAsphalt process, which has been in development since 2022, utilizes whats called biochar, or natural wood remnants from forestry waste that get added into the traditional asphalt material mixture of limestone and granite aggregates. This allows the road mixture to sequester a small amount of carbon. Verde CEO Jack Wong estimates that for every 100 tons of BioAsphalt that gets laid, 10 tons of carbon dioxide gets sequestered. Were essentially creating a no-brainer model for the industry to transition to, making the product as competitive as traditional asphalt with environmental advantages and benefits, Wong says. Asphalts environmental footprint is significant. In addition to using petroleum-based materials and requiring extensive energy for heating and installation, it also releases dangerous particulate matter as cars and trucks drive atop it. The National Asphalt Pavement Association estimated that laying down the material results in 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually in the U.S.; for comparison, thats about one-seventh the amount of emissions created by the nations commercial airline industry. Earlier this summer, BioAsphalt passed the initial stages of a test at the National Center for Asphalt Technology at Auburn University in Alabama. A section of BioAsphalt roadway was tested for a year, with staff running modified 80-ton trucks across the test bed to verify its durability. The material, one of a handful trying to make asphalt less environmentally damaging, has been given an okay for lower-impact applications like local roads and parking lots. “We’ve had plenty of materials and ideas come through the test track over the years, but few show the carbon reduction potential that Verde’s Biochar Asphalt does, and it’s definitely the first technology on the track with a carbon sequestration component,” said Nathan Moore, assistant director for test track research at NCAT, in a statement. While the early validation confirms its suitability for light-duty pavements, continuous evaluations are underway to determine its long-term viability for medium- to high-traffic roadways and even runways, as part of NCAT’s multiyear test cycle. The secret to Verdes process is a proprietary emulsifying agent that blends with a liquid asphalt binder to create a specialized emulsion, bonding the biochar and aggregate. This offers an alternative to the petroleum-based bitumen that traditionally binds roads Wong wouldnt reveal the exact additives in the firms process, other than to say theyre nonhazardous. A self-proclaimed Dune fan, he calls them spice. But they bond the roadway mixture without needing the heat required during the traditional asphalt laying process, which can hit 300 degrees Fahrenheit. This opens up new opportunities for the road construction industry. On-site crews dont need to cart gas canisters or additional gear to heat up the asphalt, so they can travel more lightly. In addition, since heat isnt needed in the application process, they can work longer into the cold months of the year, expanding when they can repair and resurface roads and parking lots. This also means that the factories that make the asphalt mix dont need to use heat as well. Wong added that while the BioAsphalt is about 15% to 20% more expensive to make, by weight, due to the different materials, its engineered to require a thinner layer when applied. So it actually ends up being slightly cheaper when energy savings and reduced material volume are factored in. Wong hopes to scale up quickly. BioAsphalt doesnt need to be heated with traditional furnaces, but it can be made in the same factory settings as traditional asphaltmeaning that existing infrastructure can make the mix without needing to spend money on powering industrial furnaces. Verde is working with Ergon Asphalt & Emulsions, one of the largest liquid asphalt producers in North America, on arranging distribution and licensing the proprietary process to other producers. Wong hopes to ramp up production substantially in the next year and eventually capture 10% of the market. Roadways, of course, arent just sources of pollution themselves. But they can be considered fossil fuel infrastructure because they support the use of cars and trucks burning gasoline and diesel fuel. In response, Wong says that he feels Verde’s product offers a practical way to immediately reduce emissions that go into roadway repair and expansion. Were providing an immediate solution to the day-to-day needs for our very robust and mature road network, Wong says.
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