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When a SpaceX Super Heavy rocket launches at the Boca Chica launch site on the Texas Gulf Coast, car alarms wail, dogs bark for miles, and astronomers as far away as Puerto Rico have said they can see and hear the rocket as it takes flight. Witnesses have said it sounds like the loudest thing Ive ever heard, with sound waves whipping over your body; it feels like its almost pushing you back sometimes. At peak volume, its as loud as a gunshot, even though it’s 73 football fields away. Thats not the only impact on this coastal area on the southeast tip of Texas, according to local environmental groups. Birds, animals, and other wildlife have been damaged by nearby rocket launches, claims Mary Angela Branch, a board member of Save RGV, a nonprofit environmental justice group that has opposed efforts by SpaceX to expand and increase launches near important wetlands and protected parkland. SpaceX has previously denied the accuracy of these environmental claims. Boca Chica, Texas, October 17, 2021. [Photo: Mark Felix/Bloomberg/Getty Images] Its a dead zone now, said Branch, who has had a home in the area for nearly a decade. Its the saddest thing, since it was a very underappreciated area. Youd see herons, ducks, butterflies, birds, and egrets on the tidal flats. There is nothing there now, its just brown and dead. Another organization, Defenders of Wildlife, has chronicled habitat destruction from falling debris and wildfires. (The organization, which has sued the FAA and SpaceX, declined to comment for this story.) Advocates like Branch and local environmental groups fear damage could increase when Starbase becomes not just a company facility and launch sitebut its own town. Local votersa majority of whom work for SpaceXwill be voting on whether to incorporate Starbase, potentially turning the companys Texas base into its own municipality. Early voting has already begun, with election day on May 3. A New York Times analysis of the voting population found that most of the electorate are men with no voting history in Texas and an average age of 27. The proposal is expected to pass. The company has been quiet about the reasons it wants to create what amounts to a 1.5-square mile company town. Repeated attempts to contact SpaceX for this story were unsuccessful. But some local advocates like Branch suggest it might help the company increase its launch cadence and expand its footprint on the Gulf Coast. (The Boca Chica site launched rockets a handful of times last year.) Elon Musks work with DOGE and deregulation, as well as the potential for lucrative new contracts with the federal government, might give the company billions of dollars and an appetite for more launches and new facilities. Starbase launch facility under construction, October 17, 2021. [Photo: Mark Felix/Bloomberg/Getty Images] Theres an assumption that giving SpaceX control of a town would mean an expansion of the firm and its workforce, especially as the town grows. Municipalities have the right to annex property, which might be used to grow Starbase and add more land for housing and manufacturing. SpaceX had tried a land swap with a surrounding state park, but the company backed out of the negotiations without giving a reason. A Bloomberg reporter speculated that they may have found a different way to expand their operations. Cities can have zoning and other authority, but I haven’t thought through how this could impact the area, said Cyrus Reed, Legislative and Conservation Director for the Sierra Clubs Lone Star Chapter. In a letter sent to officials in Cameron County, which includes Starbase, facility manager Kathryn Lueders wrote that incorporation will streamline the processes required to build the amenities necessary to make the area a world-class place to livefor the hundreds already calling it home, as well as for prospective workers eager to help build humanitys future in space. The company is already building a $15 million retail complex and $100 million manufacturing and industrial site. Local advocates arent as excited. I don’t think SpaceX’s goal is to become a municipality to have stricter environmental regulations, Branch said. Currently, a law in front of the Texas legislature would grant municipalities the ability to close eaches for spaceship launches. The authority would likely only apply to SpaceX and their activities in Boca Chica. It was defeated the first time it came up for a vote in committee, but Branch said it could still be passed before the Legislature adjourns on June 2. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the Surfrider Foundation successfully opposed the bills passage before. These public officials are showing that they are bought and paid for by Elon Musk and SpaceX,” read a statement Josette Angelique Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, sent to The Texas Tribune. Branch said incorporation wont change regulatory oversight of launches, and it’s unlikely the new municipality would be able to write its own regulations. But shes worried about the likely increase in launches, regardless of whether or not the incorporation takes place: SpaceX has petitioned the FAA to increase its annual launch allowance from 10 to 25, and the agency has yet to rule. Expansion may not be as easy as simply winning the incorporation vote, said Neil Carman, the Sierra Clubs Texas Clean Air Program Director. The process would take about a year to be successfully chartered as a new city. But he said that, once complete, the process will likely help Starbase quickly approve new housing. Visitors walk around Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on October 12, 2024. [Photo: Sergio Flores/AFP/Getty Images] Its a move that also comes with a cost, Carman said. Cities are required to construct water utility plants and wastewater treatment plants, which will cost millions and require state approvals and permitting, and local neighbors in the county could delay the process. That could slow down Starbase expansion. But water infrastructure may also be an investment SpaceX eventually needs to make. According to Craig Nazor, a Sierra Club conservation chair, the companys launch-cooling system uses potable water imported from nearby Brownsville. It will need to expand to meet more frequent launches. Doing so may be easier with local government control. Building this and a sewer system will be an environmental challenge in the area, Nazor said. Controlling the road, once jurisdiction is established, coupled with the increase in launches, will also likely permit them to close the road at other times, as needed, when moving equipment to the launchpad, which uses the same road that provides access to the beach. Branch sees this incorporation vote as a larger effort by SpaceX and other companies to build more spaceports along undeveloped parts of the Texas coast. Shes worried more expansion, and a larger SpaceX foothold on the coast, will only lead to more environmental degradation. They want to privatize our beach, and close us off, Branch said.
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E-Commerce
While online shopping remains undeniably convenient, many are beginning to wonder: Is it still fun? According to a new study from Criteo, 75% of consumers now see online shopping as purely functional. For a growing number of shoppersparticularly younger ones fueling the revival of Americas shopping malls and returning to physical storesthe excitement of browsing online has started to fade. Nearly 80% of online shoppers described the experience as lonely. Theres no one in the fitting room to hype you up, no sales associate offering styles you wouldnt normally pick for yourself. Just endless scrolling, decision fatigue, and return labels. Often, it starts with tapping on an Instagram ad and ends with an Apple Pay purchase destined to sit in your closet with the tags still on, quietly outlasting the return window. As a result, 29% of shoppers now view online shopping as a chore. More than a third say they miss the joy of discovering something unexpected in a store. Another 78% report feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of options online. If youve ever browsed Temu, Shein, or TikTok Shopwith their flashy, chaotic interfaces and algorithm-fed feeds of crazy low pricesyoull likely relate. Only about half of consumers find online shopping to be relaxing or enjoyable. Today, we no longer go shoppingwe are always shoppingbut that hasnt made the experience more exciting. Instead, online retail has become a functional necessity, optimized for speed but stripped of surprise and spontaneity, says Marc Fischli, Criteo’s executive managing director. Our research shows that consumers crave the thrill of the unexpected, yet too often, discovery is being left to chance. Brands that dont reinject joy into the shopping journey risk fading into the background of a transactional, forgettable experience. AI could help personalize the online experience and recreate that feeling of stumbling upon something special. In fact, 43% of online shoppers said they wouldnt mind if retailers used their data to create more personalized experiences. Until then, the doomscrolling continues in search of that elusive dopamine hit.
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E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Every week, I talk to software agency founders who are burned out on routine. Theyve mastered the frameworks. Theyve scaled their teams. But what theyre really searching foroften quietly, sometimes urgentlyis purpose. And then something happens. I show them a project where their skills can help thousands of people access healthcare, education, or safety. Their posture changes. The questions sharpen. Wait, we can actually do that? Yes. By doing what they already do bestideate, build, solvebut on a problem that improves lives and even saves them. That moment is electric. The term that doesnt match the work? And yet, after more than a thousand tech-for-good matchesincluding over 100 AI-driven collaborationsI keep returning to one thing that still doesnt feel solved: a term. Pro bono. Its the term most often used to describe this work. But in tech, it rarely sparks that same excitement. It sounds like a gesture. A side project. Something small. Thats not the kind of work were seeing. At Tech To The Rescue, we facilitate projects where software teams build AI tools that process multilingual crisis data in real time to support emergency response; create AI chatbots to combat malnutrition in rural Ecuador; develop early-warning systems in conflict zones; or deploy tools that accelerate child abuse prevention or disease early detection. These arent feel-good sprints. Theyre high accountability, impact-critical buildssolving problems that are urgent, complex, and impossible to address with off-the-shelf solutions. From courtrooms to code: The pro bono paradox In the legal world, pro bono is institutionalized and respected. In tech, its fuzzy. Theres no standard or incentive. Too often, its misunderstood as junior level or one-off. Were not ready to throw the words out. But we are challenging it. In our world, “pro” already stands for professional. These are scoped, outcome-driven, expert-level projects. When we say pro bono, we mean fully committed tech partnershipsnot side gigs. Its time to reclaim the words. We call this “extreme matching.” We dont pair teams with nice ideaswe match them with necessary ones. This isn’t volunteering. It’s strategic problem solving. The collaboration gap: When technology isn’t the problem At our recent AI for Health Matching Day, we brought together experts across sectors. Professor Angela Aristidou at Stanfords Institute for Human-Centered AI and UCL School of Management said it plainly: The gap is not techits collaboration. It echoed something I hear often. Tech leaders often say, Wed helpif someone asked, and if we actually knew how. Nonprofits say: “We didnt think a company like that would take our call”or admit they dont know how to start. At the same event, Radhika Batra, MD, founder of Every Infant Matters, showed how AI diagnostics and mental health tools are saving livesbut only through deep partnerships. Her organization has helped over 700,000 children avoid blindness. Norberto de Andrade, founder of Polipro.AI and Metas former AI policy director, emphasized cross-sector collaboration, experimentation, and prototyping legislation as essential tools in designing a more humane and sensible system for us all. These arent just technology problems. Theyre narrative and systems problems. And the way we talk about this work shapes how seriously its taken. Beyond charity: The terminology trap limiting tech’s social impact In tech, language becomes culture: Agile. Open Source. DevOps. What we call something affects who shows up, how its funded, and what gets prioritized. Just like vibe codinga buzzy term for playful AI experimentationis trending on social media, maybe impact coding or purpose coding can describe something more vital: human-centered, real-world problem solving. Maybe it’s something we havent named yetbut urgently need to. What matters is that we start naming and understanding the work in ways that reflect its scale and transformative potential. From Google.orgs fellowship program to Salesforces 1-1-1 model , tech giants are implementing structured corporate giving frameworks. Meanwhile, smaller agencies and startups struggle to find similar models that fit their scale. Yet our internal data reveals something surprising: SMEs often commit proportionally more time, resources, and consistency to pro bono collaborations than larger companies do. Its a counterintuitive finding that challenges conventional wisdom about who drives the most meaningful impact. We now need the language, recognition, and infrastructure to match. Talent wants alignment At the same time, this momentum is being fueled by a new wave of talent demanding greater alignment between their work and their values. According to Randstads 2025 Workmonitor report, which surveyed over 26,000 workers across 35 markets globally, 29% have already quit a job because they didnt agree with their leaders viewpoints or stances. Nearly half (48%) said they would not take a job if the company didnt share their environmental or social values. And 43% have considered quitting because of their companys stance on political issues. Pro bono, high-skilled, social impact work is already happening. Its not small. Its not random. Its not charity. These are long-term, mission-critical partnerships that demand rigor and deliver real results. Whether we keep the term pro bono or evolve it into something new, one thing is clear: The story needs to changebecause the impact already has. And the companies that help rewrite it will define what tech-for-good truly means in the decade ahead. Jacek Siadkowski is the CEO and cofounder of Tech To The Rescue.
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E-Commerce
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