Severin Matusek

There are four trends accelerating the demand for curation.

Yet as Gavin Mueller writes in Breaking Things at Work , Luddism—born as a revolt by artisan weavers against their proletarianization by manufacturing capital—was far from “a simple technophobia.” The Luddite rebellion, he notes, “was not against machines in themselves, but against the industrial society... of which machines were the chief weapon.”

In Lanier’s telling, this digital landscape shifted once the success of Google’s ad program revealed that you could make a lot of money on user-generated creative output, which led to the rise of social-media companies such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Initially, these companies emphasized their simple, elegant-looking interfaces and their... See more

The anti-social century is the result of one such cascade, of chosen solitude, accelerated by digital-world progress and physical-world regress. But if one cascade brought us into an anti-social century, another can bring about a social century. New norms are possible; they’re being created all the time. Independent bookstores are booming—the... See more

AI-made material is itself a waste product: flimsy, shoddy, disposable, a single-use plastic of the mind.

For 90 days, I’d meet one new person every day. By the end of each conversation, I’d ask them to introduce me to at least one new person relevant to where I was trying to go. And then I did it. By the end of the summer, I had almost 100 new contacts. Every person is an open door, a potential opportunity, even if it’s not obvious at first. So many... See more

The takeaways? Consumers are redefining what value means to them, which is undoubtedly influencing how they shop. Discount and wholesale channels continue to attract consumers across age groups and income levels (for example, 80 percent of surveyed US Gen Zers report having shopped at a wholesaler in the previous month).29 Brands will need to... See more

NFTs offer digital commerce something the Internet lacks: scarcity and authenticity.