How Lego’s Smart Brick works - The Vergecast Recap

Podcast: The Vergecast

Published: 2026-01-13

Duration: 1 hr 12 min

Guests: Sean Hollister, Casey Newton

Summary

The Lego Smart Brick, a major innovation revealed at CES, integrates technology with traditional Lego play, sparking debate about its impact on creativity. Meanwhile, Casey Newton shares insights on personal productivity systems and the potential of AI tools.

What Happened

At CES, the Lego Smart Brick emerged as a groundbreaking innovation, combining traditional Lego play with modern technology. Sean Hollister details that the Smart Brick resembles a typical 2x4 Lego piece but contains a custom ASIC chip and uses NFC tiles to perform various tasks. This technology allows it to connect via a Bluetooth mesh network, understanding the orientation and position of surrounding bricks. While the Smart Brick isn't user-programmable yet, it raises questions about whether it will enhance or limit creativity.

Lego's challenge lies in balancing creativity with functionality, as the Smart Brick can interact with traditional bricks using a color sensor, enhancing play without incurring extra costs. The controversy mirrors past debates Lego faced over specialized elements versus traditional bricks. Despite concerns, Lego continues to explore the potential for future programmable features.

Casey Newton, from Platformer, shifts the conversation towards productivity, describing his system that integrates journaling and task management using the app Capacities. He emphasizes the importance of clearing his mind each morning by documenting thoughts and tasks, drawing inspiration from Julia Cameron's 'The Artist's Way'.

Newton's productivity approach involves tagging articles and ideas to track ongoing tech narratives, employing a spaced repetition system to periodically revisit information. He highlights the utility of AI tools in making connections between disparate pieces of information, which he finds invaluable for idea generation.

Newton also delves into his experience with AI in web development, constructing a website with various features using AI tools without writing code. This experience underscores the accessibility and efficiency AI brings to technical tasks, even for those without a technical background.

Finally, the episode touches on the longevity of e-readers, with newer models offering incremental improvements like higher screen resolution and USB-C ports. Despite these advancements, if an older e-reader still functions well, there's little need to upgrade, highlighting their durability.

Key Insights

• The Lego Smart Brick integrates a custom ASIC chip and NFC tiles, allowing it to connect via a Bluetooth mesh network to understand the orientation and position of surrounding bricks.
• The Smart Brick uses a color sensor to interact with traditional Lego bricks, enhancing play without adding extra costs, while raising questions about its impact on creativity.
• AI tools enable non-technical users to construct websites with various features without writing code, demonstrating AI's role in increasing accessibility and efficiency in web development.
• Newer e-reader models offer improvements like higher screen resolution and USB-C ports, but their durability means there's little need to upgrade if an older model still functions well.