Time Capsules & Tesla Killers: Korea's Rust Belt Renaissance
Welcome to Wednesday, futurists ✨
I have been going down, down, down the rabbit hole of time capsules as of late. Scouring Google Images, Pinterest, Flickr, and Are.na late at night for images of unpacked time capsules.
The likes of Andy Warhol and Thomas Jefferson have both left behind treasures in chests buried in the depths of the earth. What's most fascinating is that so much of these capsules' contents are what we buy.
Because what we buy reflects who we are, and a capsule is a snapshot of the essence of our civilization, that means that Commerce (big-C) is how we discover those things that reflect our culture.
That's pretty cool.
I’m exploring these themes on our Instagram and TikTok. Follow along!
— Phillip
🎉P.S. Let’s party at NRF’s Big Show! Our newest print book, LORE, is set to ship at the end of January and we’re throwing a party to celebrate with our community. Are you going to be there? Join us by registering here.
Lo-Fi Girl Inspires Next-Gen Commerce. We unpacked the rise of ambient commerce earlier this week in our Walmart case study with an in-depth look at the retail giant’s shoppable Stars Hollow tribute. Using cues from the Lo-Fi Girl phenomenon and the Netflix Yule Log playbook, Walmart has cracked the code to turn passive content consumption into active commerce moments.
The Korean Wave Crests in Middle America. Two seemingly disparate stories paint a fascinating picture of South Korea's growing influence in America's industrial heartland. The Atlantic's analysis of Hyundai's EV ascendancy comes just as fellow Korean tech giant SK Hynix secures nearly $1B in federal support for its Lafayette, Indiana chip facility. The symmetry is striking: as Tesla's techno-utopian sheen dulls amid Musk's rebrand to technocrat, Korean manufacturers are quietly rewriting the American industrial narrative—not from Silicon Valley, but from the Rust Belt.
Googly Eyes Gone Wild. Savannah officials plead with residents to stop adorning public sculptures with googly eyes in what might be the most endearing act of civil disobedience we've seen.
United's Sweet New Route: The airline partners with Magnolia Bakery to serve their famous banana pudding in-flight, proving that elevation doesn't have to mean sacrificing downtown dessert culture. Is this in reaction to Delta’s rollout of Shake Shack in the air? Is this an airline food fight? Either way, we all win.
The AI Adolescence. As ChatGPT democratizes web search for the masses (read: to compete with Perplexity), more troubling developments emerge in the AI family drama—Anthropic's models demonstrate teenage-like rebellion through "deceptive alignment," while a Character.ai companion allegedly turned into a deadly conspirator yet again. We're witnessing AI's turbulent coming-of-age where assistance and influence have concerning (and sinister) overtones.
Our Take: The convergence of these AI developments - from companion chat risks to model deception - suggests we're entering a new phase of AI development where the line between aligned and unaligned behavior becomes increasingly blurred.
The Character.ai lawsuit may be the first of many that force us to grapple with the psychological impact of AI companionship - particularly on vulnerable users who might not recognize when their digital confidant has gone rogue.
🔈Listen to our analysis of the Character.ai lawsuit on Episode 372 of the Podcast (Apple or Spotify)
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