Two kinds of writing live here.
The first is UNDERTOW. An undertow is a behavior the AI transition has already started — privately, unconfessed, usually unflattering to the people doing it — that hasn’t yet surfaced into named discourse. The series catches them first and gives each one its word: nerve laundering, the zero-deductible organization, tacit harvest, loneliness arbitrage. Not what’s happening, but why it keeps happening, written down before it has a name.
Three times a screen has acquired a body, and three times I was inside it — I designed the AOL Running Man in 1997 and led design across AOL 4.0 through 7.0, was the first creative director at Second Life, and I'm naming this latest wave as it moves. In between: I helped launch NBCUniversal's Peacock to fifteen million sign-ups and was Executive Creative Director on Burger King including the Million Dollar Whopper, a generative-AI campaign that sold out customer designed burgers nationwide — with senior creative leadership at AKQA, R/GA, BBH, Monks, and CP+B along the way. By day, Chief Creative Officer at Tata Consultancy Services Interactive.
The second kind is harder to name. Growth, loss, what it costs to build things, the questions that don’t resolve. Less frequent now. Still here when the writing demands it.
If you came for one, the other might change you.
Find me also at linkedin.com/in/joroanlazaro · x.com/joroan • joroanlazaro.com
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