About
I'm Will Worth; a software developer, musician and father, from Devon in England, but based in Spain. This site isn't really about me.
Two things have happened in the last few years that I don't think people have fully absorbed. The first is well-known: AI has collapsed the cost of building things. A motivated person can now ship in hours what used to take teams and months.
The second is less discussed: the cost of research has also collapsed. You can investigate hearing aid markets, or rare disease diagnosis pathways, or desalination deployment failures in an afternoon. The artifact of that investigation — the map of where things are stuck and why — has standalone value.
When both building and researching become cheap, the bottleneck shifts. It's no longer “can we do this?” It's “what's worth doing?”
Part of what I think is worth doing is figuring out what's worth doing.
That sounds circular, but it's the correct response to the new economics. When execution is cheap, the scarce resource is direction. Mapping the territory — identifying where problems are stuck and what might unstick them — is real work, not procrastination.
The test is whether this leads anywhere. Some investigations will surface things I can work on myself — small, unglamorous, local. Others will identify opportunities I can't pursue but someone else might. Both are worth sharing. I'm not just here to pontificate about what the world needs. I'm looking for ways to actually help.
The point is: more people can help now. The barriers to contribution have shifted in ways that haven't been fully recognised. This site is where I explore what that means — I call the investigations Avenues. Reconnaissance before commitment. Some may lead to projects. Many won't. The maps are useful either way.
I'm fortunate enough to be past survival mode — far enough up the pyramid to spend time thinking about meaning and purpose. That's a privilege, not a credential. It means I'm one of the people who can now help in ways that weren't possible before. Part of what I want to do is help others climb the same ladder, so they can stop worrying about getting by and start asking what they actually want to do. The delusional question is one I take seriously.
If you're thinking about similar problems, or you see something I've gotten wrong, I want to hear from you.
Current focus
- Landfill robotics — urban mining as newly tractable
- Desalination — why small-scale deployment keeps failing
- Researching: rare disease diagnosis, hearing aid access