Art Dorko: The Future Aesthetic
Welcome to Friday, futurists.
Yesterday was a historic day at Future Commerce. Over 150 futurists gathered to cast larger VISIONS of the future of commerce at UCLA’s Nimoy Theater.
“I just shed tears over a video made by AI,” said Michael Miraflor in response to the closing keynote with Walter Woodman of shy kids, the Toronto-based creative collective among the first to create short films using OpenAI’s video platform, Sora. “I don’t know how to feel about that.”
Feelings—hope, fear, joy, and provocation—were central to all sessions at VISIONS as the conversations danced between the promise of AI-as-companion and AI-as-competition.
But the talk of the town was researcher Emily Segal’s “Brands After Vibes” presentation—and her subsequent provocations on a following panel—which led to a rapturous discussion by attendees and co-presenters throughout the rest of the event.
“VISIONS changed my brain chemistry,” tweeted one attendee. All nine of our sessions will be available across various mediums in the coming weeks. A written recap and photography will land next week, but video access will be exclusive to Plus Members.
The first content drop will be on Friday, October 18th. Become a
— Phillip
P.S. It’s a spooky szn on the podcast. Haunted dolls for sale on eBay and a spectre on aisle 5? Ghastly apparitions of capitalism are here in our October edition of the Future Commerce Podcast. Listen to “Spooky Commerce” now on Apple or Spotify.
An “ADA Exemption” for Online Retailers? A federal judge in New York has ruled that online-only retailers cannot face claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as their websites are not considered public accommodations. The ruling is the latest in a handful of legal victories for eCommerce retailers who argue that the barriers to entry for eCommerce are becoming insurmountable.
Everlane Welcomes New CEO: Alfred Chang, formerly of Fear of God and Pacsun, is taking the reins at Everlane as CEO. The veteran executive brings deep experience from high-end fashion and youth-driven brands and is expected to help reposition Everlane after a tumultuous leadership year and declining cultural importance.
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“The Future Should Look Like the Future”. At a live event titled “We, Robot,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk showed off the Robotaxi concept, a self-driving autonomous vehicle intended to compete with already-operational Waymo; as well as a demo of Optimus, the humanoid robot in development by Tesla.
But the real surprise of the evening was a first look at the RoboVan, an “art deco train-inspired” high-capacity passenger vehicle. The Robovan is poised to serve Tesla’s upcoming autonomous ride-hailing platform, the Tesla Network, which will cater to both purpose-built self-driving vehicles and privately owned Teslas.
Our Take: In our opening keynote to the VISIONS Summit events this year we’ve explored the concept of the Multiplayer Brand, and how boring homogeneity leads to breakout overcorrections in design and experience. We hypothesize that users, consumers, and laypersons now have the tools to create these breakout experiences.
But perhaps we’re still experiencing the last gasps of the old monocultural model. Cybertruck and Robovan are over corrective designs that will doubtless impact mobility design. Speaking live at the event, Musk said the “future should look like the future,” which is a brilliant thesis statement for this type of speculative design. Scifi and fantasy production design imagined worlds without consequences or affordances for real-world factors like accessibility, legibility, durability.
Uh Oh? Maybe? This week Jim Cramer endorsed Shopify, praising its management for a “terrific” job in navigating challenging times. Some have called this out as a reason to worry, especially considering Shopify is trading at historic P/E ratios when compared with other tech stocks (Our Future Commerce analysis of Shopify’s GMV performance is over here).
The worry stems from an online meme — The Inverse Cramer Index — a concept that emerged from the notion that Jim Cramer's stock picks are often contraindicators. The idea gained traction in financial circles, where some investors believed betting against Cramer's recommendations could be profitable.
This sentiment led to the creation of the Inverse Cramer Tracker ETF (SJIM), which specifically shorted stocks Cramer recommended on his CNBC show Mad Money or his social media. Though the fund was dissolved after the historic performance of the “Magnificent Seven” stocks between 2021 and the present, the concept remains.
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