Back Online! Let's Rock 2026

It feels like I have not written anything for a long time. Today happens to be the first week since I came back from Switzerland. Thinking about it, last year I also wrote a piece after Lunar New Year: Back Online! Let’s Rock 2025. I realized that if I replace 2024 with 2025, and 2025 with 2026, most of that article still stands.

This time I was Going Offline for half a month again. Having such a period every year is really good. Many times, we travel not for a specific destination, but to experience the feeling of being on the road. It is a different kind of being on the road from chasing love or career.

The plane detouring around Ukrainian territory made me directly perceive the fact that there is still a battlefield below. My understanding of the world was no longer just simple news. During the 17-hour flight, I did not sleep much. Along the way I spent a lot of time catching up on information I had owed for a long time, constantly thinking about the individual, the team, the company, AI, and the future.

But while driving through several Nordic countries, I experienced nature with heavy snow and almost no human presence. I saw people in a mountaintop town wearing traditional performance clothes and gathering for a party. I saw the Alps covered in white snow. I communicated with locals who only understood French, each of us speaking our own language. I also saw how people in small towns live in a corner far away from AI. It turns out there are still many people who do not care about the development of AI. Europe’s development in AI over these years comes from many regulations on the surface, but this trip let me glimpse the roots behind those surface phenomena.

What I said last year:

I feel that these two years seem to stand at a point of epochal change. I still quite believe that AI can bring a lot of value to society and individuals. Today I read a newsletter saying that one-person unicorn companies may appear in the future. I think that is somewhat possible. In the past people said sailing against the current means you fall back if you do not advance. Now I feel that in the long river of the era, we are not going upstream; it is just that the current is getting faster and faster. If we keep moving at the same speed, then relatively speaking we are always moving backward. So the speed of change in this era itself gives invisible pressure to people who keep moving forward. It is a bit like the meaning in Alice in Wonderland: we have to run hard just to stay in place. I hope not to be left behind by the era.

Now many things have become objective facts. We are inside the transformation of the era. AI has brought many changes to individuals and society. Think about it: at that time last year, Claude Code had not even come out, let alone Codex overtaking from behind. Back then everyone was still discussing Cursor. Now everyone only talks about OpenClaw.

How many people have rapidly moved backward and disappeared from where they stood because they did not keep running forward, or did not run fast enough? I believe there are many. Some know it; some are still unconscious.

Now I firmly believe I have not been abandoned by the era. What I have is higher energy, stronger combat power, stronger cognition, and the courage and action to climb peaks.

The final paragraph from last year was also very classic:

In the AI era, everyone’s boundaries have expanded greatly. Things that were originally not very possible have become more possible. I firmly believe AI will definitely take me to a higher place.

Every sentence walked precisely into reality. What AI brings is the birth of super individuals. But now I also like to think from the reverse side. We have instead entered a FOMO plus internal-competition mode. Everyone is using every possible means to promote and hype, and using every possible means to Vibe all kinds of projects and products.

From the individual perspective, super individuals are indeed stronger, but they absolutely will not be more free. The foundation of becoming more free is that you have very powerful AI and others do not, or that you are very good at using this AI and others are not. In most cases, these are hard to hold. For 60 dollars, you can get the SOTA from the big three. As long as people keep reading, thinking, and using, it is hard for an especially large gap to appear. At the market level, some companies will definitely rush ahead, and other companies cannot afford not to run. The market inevitably enters a chaotic state. So sometimes it is not that you do not want to stop. It is that if you want to stay alive, you cannot stop.

In any case, 2025 was a great transformation both for the world and for me. I also believe this trend will continue in 2026. I have packed up again and set out again. Let’s Rock 2026!

At the very end: after countless peaks, we never know on which mountain we will stop. Before that, enjoy the scenery along the way with everything we have. ❤️