We're at unique point in history where the things that we are building are going to significantly impact our social, political, economical, and personal lives. ↗
If I designed a computer with 200 chips, I tried to design it with 150. And then I would try to design it with 100. I just tried to find every trick I could in life to design things real tiny. ↗
My background is in hardware design. I found hardware work to be a welcome change from thousands of hours of programming and that led to the designs you mentioned. ↗