Marla standing barefoot on a Caribbean beach, hand on hip, looking out past the rocks toward the horizon

MacroMarla

What are we underestimating?

Technology Economics AI Real estate Investing The decade ahead

Trying to understand the forces changing how we live, work, invest, and move — without pretending to predict every turn.

The short version

A lifetime of noticing change a little early. Serial entrepreneur. Real estate investor. Author. An early adopter of almost everything: a car phone screwed to the floorboard in 1982, a Macintosh in 1984, electric cars before they were obvious, an early Cybercab ride in Austin in 2026, and first in line for a humanoid robot.

Mostly retired now, and studying the big forces moving the economy, the way some people do crossword puzzles.

The best conversations happen at the intersections, and often with people half my age. AI and jobs. Robots and productivity. Housing and demographics. Energy and transportation. Technology and what things are actually worth.

Seen lately

Austin, October 2026. Hailing a Cybercab, back when only a few hundred were on the road anywhere.

None of us know where this is going.

Not the experts, not the founders, not even the machines themselves. The one thing that's certain? This is the most exciting time any of us will ever live through.

Questions on the table

One prediction
November 2026

The most valuable thing you own online will be the version of you that your AI builds.

AI agents are learning how we think, what we want, and what we'll say yes to, faster than any company ever has. The big question won't be whether that profile exists. It will be who owns it, and who gets to use it.

Dated on purpose. Check back to see how this one ages.

Next from Marla
Zepol Press, 2027

The Crossing

Between the Promise and the Panic

Not pro-AI. Not anti-AI. A plain-language map for getting through the fastest change any of us has ever lived through, without tearing each other apart on the way.

Every chapter ends with Both Shores: the strongest hope and the strongest fear, side by side. You decide.

Voices worth your time

Elsewhere