There may not be a more apt example of deliberately constructed ‘walled gardens’ than the dreaded ‘green text’ that an iPhone user receives from an Android user. For the iPhone ‘maxi’, it is a symbol of shame. For some, it’s just cause to remove the green bubble from the group chat or from the dating pool:

The reason for this ‘green text’ and other functional limitations for Android to iPhone comms is of course not due to a technological shortcoming (we’re talking about Apple here), but a successful marketing play that relies on tribalism.

It’s just another ‘brick in the wall’ that separates the Apple ecosystem and experience from others.

This is a wall that has been under construction for decades…remember those old MAC vs. PC ads?

And it’s one that Apple is determined to preserve at all costs despite Google’s recent public callouts — including an entire campaign to combat green bubble shame called "Get the Message." Apple legal documents revealed in 2021 that the company had axed an Android version of iMessage that was in the works explicitly because it was afraid users would leave the Apple cult for “greener” pastures:

"The #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage ... iMessage amounts to serious lock-in," said a former Apple employee in 2016.

Later in the exchange, Apple executive Phil Schiller replied. "Moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us," he said.

Within those walls, Apple makes its own rules. For the user, it comes with perks like security, privacy, and a curated ‘Apple’ experience. But it also comes with costs such as a 30% fee on any in-app transaction that makes Massachusetts look like a tax haven.

More than ever, ‘cross platform interoperability’ is becoming the norm. Applications are increasingly ‘platform agnostic.’ An entire generation is growing up on Fortnite where they can access their account and ‘drop-in’ on virtually any device, even playing with friends on different systems. But if the player wants to buy an in-game skin on their iPhone (Fortnite’s primary revenue generator), 30% of the $$ will go to Tim Cook (rather than Epic).

Walled gardens are a business model of Web2.0 — a relic that made sense for profit-driven companies of the recent past. Matthew Ball, author of The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything wrote about this phenomenon a year ago:

Technology companies, almost by definition, prefer that the market build on top of or through them than have new entrants build around or in competition with them. As a result, the same companies that emerged thanks to openness tend to reject these principles where they might undermine their strategic position.

The most important impediment (to the metaverse) today is Apple. Although no company has done more to propel the last 15 years of the internet, its policies are unlikely to produce the most prosperous overall ecosystem and do not lay a strong groundwork for the “next Internet.” Instead, Apple is inhibiting this future Internet. And it does so via tolls, controls, and technologies that not only deny what made and still makes the open web so powerful, but also prevents competition, and prioritize Apple’s own profits.

A year later, the writing is on the wall. Apple is receiving increasing pressure to drop what are claimed to be ‘monopolistic practices.’ One of the longest-running wars is between Epic’s Fortnite and Apple — which has included a variety of lawsuits and a remake of Apple’s iconic 1984 ad:

And while Epic has been fighting that fight for years, other fronts are opening. The Coinbase Wallet app was disabled on the iPhone last week because they are not down with Apple demanding 30% of gas fees required for sending crypto/NFTs to others — a move they compared to Apple wanting to take a cut for every email sent over the internet.

That same week, Elon Musk literally ‘declared war’ via meme + tweet over the 30% tax and claimed Apple threatened to remove Twitter from the App Store.

Tensions have cooled on that front after the two CEO’s met in-person to come to an understand and stop hostilities… almost like a peace talks between nation states.

Ofc, removing Twitter from the app store would have been mutually-assured destruction for all parties. Apple’s top executives would likely have been testifying on Capitol Hill for weeks following accusations of political bias. Which is to say nothing about the value of Twitter as a news source many Apple users rely on — one that keeps them scrolling.

Meanwhile, Twitter’s survival as a subscription service relies on staying in Apple and Google’s good graces. The App Store provides access to more than 1.5B devices, meaning it’s the #1 way for the world to get the Twitter app.

Other major players that have recently joined the ‘rebellion’ include Spotify and Meta who are having their profits cut into by the 30% fee (for audiobook and ad sales respectively) when apps are purchased on Apple’s platform.

The new internet is beginning to takes shape (metaverse anyone?) and will be defined by interoperability between platforms. This makes Apple’s 30% policy look indefensible. The walls set up 15 years ago are looking more and more like the Berlin Wall did in 1989, and both companies and consumers left out of the garden for too long are ready to take a hammer to it.

2/ Lost in Translation: Emoji Use Across Generations

Want to know the quickest way to expose yourself as a washed Millennial to your Gen Z co-workers? Drop any of the following into the group chat or company Slack:

From the transformation of ancient hieroglyphics into written text to the admittance of “gaslighting” into Merriam Webster, languages evolve alongside the cultures they represent, and it appears we’ve reached a fork in the road when it comes to inter-office emoji use. Watch out, because you could be accidentally triggering your younger colleagues:

'My last workplace had a WhatsApp chat for our team to send info to each other on and most of the people on there just replied with a thumbs up.

'I don't know why but it seemed a little bit hostile to me,'

— Anonymous woman.

Emoji use may have exploded in the 2010s, but in the their incorporation into Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Gchat, this pictorial language has become a part of workplace communication. Much like language itself, however, emojis have different meanings depending on context and the intent of the person using them. See: the passive-aggressive read of the simple: 👍 (to some, it reads closer to 🖕).

A 24-year-old on Reddit summed up the Gen Z argument, saying it is best “never used in any situation” as it is “hurtful.”

“No one my age in the office does it, but the Gen X people always do it. Took me a bit to adjust and get [it] out of my head that it means they're mad at me,' he added.

Case in point: that damning interview SBF gave to his “friend at Vox” Kelsey Piper.

These lost-in-translation moments represent the challenge (and learning opportunity) we all face communicating effectively in an age of hybrid and remote work. Is 😂. now painfully uncool? Was that 👍 meant to be passive aggressive? Or more a simple: “copy that.” Is this more of a 🙏 moment, a ✋, or a 🙌? Does that 🤧 mean: “That’s sick!” or is someone actually out with the flu?

A recent survey from Duolingo and Slack found that 74% of respondents have experienced a misunderstanding with an emoji. 25% still use the crying emoji to express tears of joy, while another 25% use it to express they were upset. There’s also the standard issue smiley:

@kellypozilIt stares into my soul. #corporatelife #microsoftteams

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At the same time, not using emojis at all can also be triggering. Have you ever gotten just an: “Okay” — sans period, exclamation point, or (even a corporate) smiley?

I’m thinking, ‘Are they mad at me? What’s going on? Are they having a bad day?’ Then I’ll see them and they’ll be like, ‘Hi Jonathan’ in the most upbeat tone. I feel like Gen Z and younger millennials have kind of adapted that just to make sure that they’re articulating everything they want [to] in the same tone that they would speak in.

— Jonathan Sweeney, 23-year-old production assistant at Spectrum

Learning your coworkers emoji voice has become like learning their donut preference on Free Donut Fridays — a shortcut to understanding their personalities. But regardless of whether your a thumbs-up truther or a proudly washed Millennial determined to continue responding with the laughing crying face, the number one rule of emoji etiquette is: read the room. A considered response is always appreciated. And please just don’t be one of those monsters that simply drops a: “k.”

3/ The “Stock Photography” Equivalent of Words

Introducing our first guest writer, ChatGPT. The latest and most impressive AI chat/writing assistant to enter the field. The internet is abuzz with different uses for the tool…some more practical than others:

We invited ChatGPT to take a crack at explaining itself — excerpted below, with our translations/ reactions:

The impact of ChatGPT on society could be significant. In the near future, it is likely that we will see the widespread adoption of chatbots and other forms of AI that are able to carry on natural, human-like conversations with users. This could revolutionize customer service and support, allowing businesses to provide more personalized and efficient service to their customers.

On a more personal level, it could also provide you with a million handy excuses for turning down an invitation you’ve been dreading:

In addition, ChatGPT could have broader applications in fields such as education and healthcare, where the ability to carry on natural conversations with AI could make it easier for people to access information and support.

In other words, it’s offering a slightly less infuriating experience than the one we’ve all become accustomed to when we are forced to battle the unsophisticated voice assistant that stands between us and the actual human being that could actually answer our question:

Perfect timing considering Amazon just announced that its voice assistant has been deemed a “colossal failure of imagination” and a “wasted opportunity” by insiders at the company. One that’s apparently cost Bezos $10B just this year.

Are we really blown away by ChatGPT’s defense of its own existence? Customer service robots, writers of bland social copy, and other form letter pencil pushers should be at least a little scared. As Ribbonfarm Studios Venkatesh Rao explains:

OpenAI’s ChatGPT, released as a research beta two days ago, has done to the standard high-school essay what cameras did to photorealistic painting and pocket calculators did to basic arithmetic.

The correct standard for judging an AI on writing is not beating the “best” humans … but achieving indistinguishability from mediocre humans.

To put it another way, we’ve gone from devising AI that can beat the best humans in the world at Go and Chess to something far more difficult: devising a more general use AI that can emulate us at our most mediocre. One that can churn out the same tired takes and half-baked thoughts you see everyday. What could be more human than that?

Richard Hughes Gibson, an associate professor of English at Wheaton College, is less concerned about robots coming for the jobs of writers and journalists and more concerned about AI’s effect “on short-circuiting the development of human writers.”

If high school students lean on tools like ChatGPT to draft their essays, how will they learn critical thinking and historical consciousness? Educators are now administering the Turing test in reverse: What are questions that only humans can answer well? What new kinds of thinking does this new style of writing make possible for us?

“Only one who writes lines can think logically, calculate, criticize, pursue knowledge, philosophize.” — Vilém Flusser

More likely than not, we’ll all need to adapt or risk being only as good as the most mediocre among us. Our high school teachers railed against Wikipedia and using the internet as a resource, but the savviest among us simply learned new media literacy — fact-checking, deep-Googling, and cross-referencing digital receipts all became legitimate forms of research. In our lifetime. Meanwhile, the laziest among us fell victim to fake news, social media echo chambers, and clickbait. It’s up to each of us to continue to be skeptical, thoughtful, and keep our heads on a swivel.

(To experiment with ChatGPT, visit chat.openai.com)

There’s never a dull moment in the world of crypto and web3. But rarely does it explode onto the mainstage like it has over the last few weeks. If you’ve been living under a rock, you can catch up on the FTX drama here. Probably a good idea as it’s happening just in time to be a main topic of discussion at Thanksgiving.

Last year, the big topic was the boom in crypto and NFTs. The price of ETH was over $4,400, BTC was over $58,000 and NFTs were flying off OpenSea’s shelves (on the way to $14B in volume for the year). One year later, those that spent the meal telling their relatives about the crypto revolution will be faced with a different set of questions and a different tone. Plug ‘crypto thanksgiving’ into Twitter (speaking of spicy Thanksgiving topics) and you’ll quickly see what I mean ☝🏼

Here’s the FTX TLDR. One of the largest crypto exchanges imploded in a spectacular fashion — costing VC, retail investors, and regular investors billions of dollars and capturing the attention of the mainstream for all the wrong reasons. It’s founder/CEO, crypto’s ‘Golden Boy’ Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was revealed to have not only no clothes, but a rather cynical view of the US regulatory system (and of humanity in general:).

Conspiracy theories and hot takes abound around what is being dubbed the worst fraud since Enron or Bernie Madoff with a flash crash comparable to the Lehman Brothers debacle that served as the kickoff to the 2008 Financial Crisis. For those under the scrutiny of their relatives at the dinner table on Thursday, this comparison to traditional finance is an important nuance. Because that’s really what this is: typical finance fuckery.

After prior crypto industry blow-ups (ie. the Mount Gox hack), crypto critics are generally out in full force at their loudest. Charged up on self-righteous validation (and maybe some schadenfreude). But after the FTX disaster, many of those traditional critics are now singing a different tune. There seems to be a new recognition that a centralized exchange (dealing in crypto) is not the same as a blockchain-based currency. In other words, this is just growing pains for an industry gaining mainstream legitimacy.

On the heels of the FTX meltdown, JP Morgan crypto analysts made a point to clarify that this crash (and those preceding it) were actually caused by centralized entities.

“Moreover, while the news of the collapse of FTX is empowering crypto skeptics, we would point out that all of the recent collapses in the crypto ecosystem have been from centralized players and not from decentralized protocols.”

They go further to suggest that this event may be a net benefit for institutional adoption of crypto assuming swift (and obviously needed) regulation is a consequence of the FTX disaster. JP Morgan Chase boss (and staunch crypto critic) Jamie Dimon, maintains that crypto is “worthless” (despite having a team dedicated to it on the payroll). (But ofc he does…he has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo).

The fact is, for those that don’t work directly in the web3 space, crypto is still just a speculative asset (one that has not fared well in the latest economic downturn). And SBF is the latest in a series of fraudsters selling snake oil that define the industry. It’s not a good look, but the finance industry isn’t exactly populated by people known for progressive ideals, innovation, and altruism).

But the change in sentiment from traditional finance industry experts like the JPMorgan Chase analysts tells another story. Their view that the FTX debacle is not an indictment on the fundamental technology or philosophy behind crypto, but a failure to properly use it (and more likely outright criminal activity) is a relatively new one.

Our largest financial institutions such as Bank of America and Fidelity (in addition to JPMorgan) seem to be taking a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach — and are now adopting the technology rather than battling it. Meaning regulation is slowly but surely coming.

In one of spaces darkest hours, there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Though you may want to hold on telling your relatives to ‘buy the dip’ (😂). You can just tell them to wait for the inevitable movie:

2/ Ticketmaster May Have Met it’s Match: 3.5B Angry Swifties

And now for some good news…BTS Army vs. QAnon. The #FreeBritney movement vs. conservatorship law. Pussy Riot vs. Putin. Whether it’s sinking a Trump Rally from afar, challenging California legislation, or generating $7.1M for relief efforts with UkraineDAO, by now, corporations, lawmakers, and other untrustworthy brokers should know better than to poke the bear that is Internet Fan Outrage.

The powers-that-be may want to write these movements off as conspiracy-theorist-herd-mentality, but it’s hard not to see this as a form of well-earned vigilante justice. A much-needed sliver of hope for what feels like the darkest days of the Internet. The revolution may not be televised, but it will be Tweeted (at least for now).

As we learn to live with the pandemic, millions of Americans have been excited to get back out there and check out the concerts, games, and stand-up sets they’ve been missing over the last 2.5 years. Only to be met with sticker shock at the cost of tickets.

Yes, the face value of these tickets has gone up considerably. But an even bigger problem is the get-out-of-jail-free-card free $$$ bucket labeled: transaction "fees," which can run up to "as high as 75% of the ticket price." Worse still are all of those who are increasingly being forced to buy tickets on the secondary market, where prices and fees are even higher.

Usually, the villain is a little harder to pinpoint. Not so in this case. The blame for this can all be laid at the feet of one company: Live Nation Entertainment. Judd Legum of Popular Information has a great breakdown of how Ticketmaster continues to get away with their PacMan-like appetite for getting a bigger and bigger piece of the proverbial pie.

“An already dominant market player merging with its only real competitor would seem like a red flag for antitrust officials. And there were other concerns. Specifically, the merged company could use Live Nation's relationship with hundreds of popular acts, from Miley Cyrus to U2, to pressure venues to use Ticketmaster's services.”

Just so you understand just how truly incestuous it all is:

“Live Nation Entertainment issues tickets (Ticketmaster), manages venues (Live Nation), and represents performers (Live Nation). Ticketmaster has retained more than 80% of the primary ticket market and jacked up fees. On its website, Ticketmaster emphasizes that its ticketing fees are split with "clients," which include the venues and promoters. But Ticketmaster's "clients" are often other entities owned by Live Nation Entertainment.”

Well, last week, Ticketmaster may have finally met its match when the much-hyped drop of TSwift’s Eras tour was riddled with bugs and overwhelming demand.

“Make no mistake: Ticketmaster deserves the scorn that it is currently receiving from Taylor Swift’s listenership, a population of such size and power that it probably merits a spot in the United Nations…the fiasco appears to present a tidy parable about what happens to institutional competence when a company holds what many lawmakers allege to be monopolistic power for more than a decade.”

— The Atlantic, How Taylor Swift Broke Ticketmaster

In other words, Ticketmaster got complacent after it got too big for its britches, and now it’s invoked the wrath of the Swifties and millions of Internet onlookers. 🍿

More and more, it’s on us as a collective to demand accountability from the capitalist institutions that would otherwise be content to just continue to pass the Monopoly $$$ back and forth between one another. (Just see the creator outcry when NFT marketplaces tried to move away from requiring traders to pay creator royalties.)

If Ticketmaster’s not scared, they’re even more out of touch than we thought.

3. More Human Than Human: How Design-Thinking is Helping Us Adapt Sci Fi Concepts into Useful IRL Tools

Black Mirror episodes are meant to be cautionary tales about the creeping effects of technology on society. And how technology for technology’s sake, without a second thought, can lead to some truly dystopian outcomes. It was not meant to be a playbook for us to follow…although some don’t seem to have gotten the memo.

All the way back in December 2011, Black Mirror’s first season featured an episode called The Entire History of You that featured a technology that allowed you to relive your memories ‘verbatim.’ Imagine: a blow-by-blow replay of everything you heard and saw on any given day.

Just over 10 years later, that technology is now on its way. Though as is the case with many sci-fi predictions — not in the exact form we expected it to, but with all the same potential for dystopian use cases.

Rewind.ai adds a new dimension to your computing experience: time. (So far, so good, right? Are you intrigued?) On top of that, add the ability to search: “anything you’ve seen, said, or heard.” (Hmmm…this is where the 🚩🚩🚩 start popping up).

It’s not hard to imagine the positive ways this technology could impact society. It’s definitely a worthwhile path to explore (never take notes during a meeting again, where did I see that new cafe I wanted to check out?). But there’s also a million implications that need to be thought through up-front. (Like for example, did your co-worker agree to have his dumb jokes immortalized forever in your mind palace? Probably not.)

“Possibly the only way to create a life-logging service like this is at the platform level. If Apple built a Rewind-like app into the Mac, you might be more likely to trust it. After all, you already trust the operating system with all your passwords, meetings, and after-lunch video-watching habits. But given the privacy concerns, it seems unlikely that Apple would go anywhere near such an idea.

This is a shame because Rewind looks well-designed and incredibly useful. The good thing is it’s available now (invite-only currently), so you can decide for yourself whether the tradeoffs are worth it.”

— Charlie Sorrel, Lifewire.

Luckily, in this case, they are taking feedback.

The advancement of technology as a virtue has generally served us well. We’re all glad to have electricity, running water, the ability to get from A to B without having to go on foot or by pack animal, after all. Even the Internet is a net positive — 4-Chan and doom-scrolling aside — because it opened up the wealth of the world’s knowledge to anyone with a dial-up connection. And gave all of us a platform for our voices to be heard.

But the pace of technological advancement is quickening, and if there’s anything the last 3 years have taught us, innovation for the sake of innovation is not always the answer. See: exhibit A, Amazon’s workforce organizing against the automation of everything. Exhibit B. Uber/ Lyft starting to charge riders more because they aren’t willing to pay their drivers enough. Or Exhibit C, Netflix suddenly including ads and becoming…just another cable company?

All these start-ups were built on one metric: subscriber growth. And now that growth is slowing, as it necessarily must (we’d need to get to procreating to ensure there’s more model Prime members), they are all reverting back to the old systems they were set up to “disrupt.”

If we don’t want to live in a Black Mirror episode, we need to take a more human approach to innovation by reminding ourselves: what do people actually want? Convenience is not the answer to everything. In fact, it often comes with unintended side effects that leave us more disconnected, anxious, and paranoid. Think about the last time you flipped out because your UberEats order didn’t get to you fast enough. Is it fair to blame the delivery guy? The restaurant?

If we’re going to do better than all those sci-fi cautionary tales, we need to all be a little bit more self-aware. To not innovate for the sake of innovation or leave it all up to the engineers. If the Rewind.ai story teaches us anything, it’s that it’s us — the end-users — who have to speak up and give feedback where we can, so that our future can be more human than our past.

One silver lining case study: teams at The Feminist Internet, a nonprofit founded to challenge the conventions of experience design, are working to find a less sexist solution to the established norm of “coy, submissive" AI interfaces — ie. Rosie the Robot, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri.

“In response to the troubling feminisation of voice assistants in the mainstream, there’s a growing number of designers in the digital realm working on projects that bring a more nuanced approach to the topic of gender and voice technology. What these projects have in common is an attempt to expand the notion of what our future could look, or rather, sound like, away from some vision of sexy cyborgs voiced by Scarlett Johansson, into more imaginative territory, where a digital voice might come to act more like a companion.”

— Madeleine Morley, Eye on Design

Your AI doesn’t need to coddle you. It’s not your mommy. What gives us hope is that it took a team of researchers, designers, and engineers together to demand better and offer up an alternative solution.

As we seek to define what future we all want to collectively live in, it’s important to remember how valuable this kind of cross-discipline collaboration is so that we’re not blindly chasing technology and dealing with whatever outcomes may come.

Otherwise, we’ll be leaving it up to these guys to save us all:

…And In Case You Missed It

• Bob (Robert Allen) Iger returns to Disney —replacing Bob (Robert Alan) Chapek…yes, really. Diversity in action.

• Azuki partners with Red Bull Racing to feature NFTs on vehicles

• JP Morgan trademarks crypto wallet product

• Nike launches .swoosh virtual goods platform and marketplace

• Adidas reveals phase 2 of ‘Into the Metaverse’ collection (virtual fashion line)

Elon’s takeover of Twitter has spawned a thousand takes, but chief among the noise was the outrage when it was announced that the platform would start charging star users somewhere between $96 and $240 a year to keep their blue checks.

“I’m probably the perfect target for this, use Twitter a ton, can afford $20/mo, not particularly anti-Elon, but my reaction is that I’ve generated a ton of valuable free content for Twitter over the years and they can go fuck themselves.”

— Nate Silver

To understand said outrage, you have to understand the Creator Economy underpinning the debate. There may not be a distinct date we can point to as the kickoff of the “Creator Economy,” but a key milestone came in 2007 with YouTube’s Partner Program — which allowed users to monetize their uploads with ads and keep 45% of the revenue generated. That initial concept for a relatively symbiotic relationship between creator and platform was groundbreaking. 45% may still seem like a ripoff to many, but it was at least a step forward from the glorified “tip jar” model of Web 1.0 where creators were mostly paid in exposure.

Partner programs created a monetization model the early internet was missing, and over the next 15 years, the Creator Economy blossomed into an estimated $100B+ industry — with over 50M people now considering themselves capital “C” Creators.

Bieber’s spectacular rise and fall (and born-again rise) is one of the original YouTube success stories, but unlike Bieber — who’s built enough of a following now that he can tour from town to town and sell out each venue to rabid fans — the average Creators are confined to just a few “stages.” Namely YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitch. Think of this platform model of distribution as a residency in Las Vegas. If your audience wants to see you, that’s where they have to go.

That’s because these web2 platforms own your profile and audience. And while they made it easier than ever to build an audience, once you’ve done the hard work of attracting eyeballs, your audience is theirs to monetize.

In that sense, none of these platforms are really free. You are the product whose attention is being bid upon by advertisers. It’s a key tenet of the web2 business model which has been optimizing how best to parcel off and sell your mindshare for well over a decade.

We’re at an inflection point, the public is wising up to these consequences and Creators are advocating for themselves — finding alternative solutions that harmonize with the philosophy underpinning web3 (even if they may not realize it):

It’s a phenomenon occurring across creative industries. For example, the subscription service you’re reading this on — Substack — has become a champion for journalists:

“We’re not into the idea of a handful of social networks utterly dominating the collective consciousness, but we’re very into the idea of millions of writers and creators having more control over the social internet, specifically in the form of their own spaces where they set the terms of engagement. That kind of dynamic represents the old promise of the internet, where power accrues to the people. That we have somehow reached the point where digital powers go exclusively to already-dominant aggregators, an almost irreversible rich-get-richer effect, is a perversion of all that was good about the early internet. This is not what we dialed up for.”

— Hamish McKenzie, “The problem isn’t that Elon Musk owns Twitter — it’s that you don’t”

By providing a platform to build an audience that excludes the web2 advertising model, their authors have reached a cumulative 500,000 paying subscribers.

The effect is also occurring in comedy. For years, comedians looking to make it big have been the background entertainment at bars, coffee shops, and clubs. The evening’s “free” entertainment for bad dates or awkward dinners. Now, comedians and podcasters that have cultivated fanbases are seeing success in breaking away from streaming platforms like Netflix. Instead, they are producing their own specials and selling them directly on their own websites or via channels like Moment:

None of these examples are blockchain-based, but the movement encapsulates the decentralized promise of web3. By adding an ownership layer to the internet, tomorrow’s platforms are already being built on web3 rails.

2/ Who’s Training Who? Hell is Other People

At this point, we’ve all witnessed how great AI has gotten at imitating the styles of artists. While this explosion of creative output may look novel, they are really just remixes. A collaboration between human creator and machine – pulling from a sample of specific curated datasets. None of them are perfect, but they are rapidly improving, and it’s not hard to imagine a world where AI is doing even more of the legwork. In a recent interview, Marc Andreessen mused on this exact potential future:

“If you have a computer that’s really good at writing Tweets… and it could be better at doing that then most people are… You can imagine a future internet where most of the interesting content is getting created by machines.”  

A bleak vision – one echoed by many onlookers:

When you think back on the dystopian visions of AI we’ve gotten through sci-fi, it almost never ends well. Why? Because the machine (being a machine) will always try to Occam’s Razor it’s way to a solution. “Emergent sentience offers an overly pragmatic solution for humanity” describes Skynet, Hal, VICKI…just to name a few.

A future in which we are just regurgitating what we’ve created in the last 30 or so years for the rest of eternity might be a scarier prospect than Ava from Ex Machina. Even worse, if the ‘seed’ dataset for this endless loop begins with the internet as it currently stands.

Create-by-numbers is the worst kind of creativity. A race to the bottom for lowest-common-denominator “content” with the broadest four-quadrant appeal. It’s why Netflix has invested so much money in safe bets like Love is Blind or the Ryan Murphy expanded universe. Does Monster or The Watcher really deserve more seasons alongside American Horror Story, American Crime Story, and all the rest? It’s all starting to feel like empty, repetitive titillation. A Lifetime-movie-ripped-from-the-headlines approach that’s very bread and circuses. Soma for an increasingly complacent subscriber base willing to watch anything you put in front of them.

But as we’ve been seeing with communities like dallery gallery and PromptHero, these same tools can be used to inspire rather than replace us — and concept artists, fashion and interior designers, and architects are already using them to concept. DALL-E allows us to visualize an idea in seconds so that we can decide if it’s worth expanding on. Sudowrite could spark a new take on a topic (even if we’d have eventually gotten there ourselves).

AI learns and listens from us. And produces what we ask it to. To avoid turning the internet into the horror sci-fi version of 50 First Dates, we should use it in a way that enhances our creativity rather than cannibalizes it for clicks.

3/ A24’s Masterclass on How to Internet

Last Friday, the Hollywood Reporter released a peek into the “Making of Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the highest-grossing A24 film of all time and the first independent film to break $100M since the pandemic. A huge achievement for what the industry has been calling: “the little studio that could.” A24 has been building a cult following over the last decade -- for both the ways in which they champion daring storytelling and their non-traditional approach to reaching niche audiences. Part absurdist art-project, part creative superteam, part distributor, they’ve rewritten the playbook on critical, commercial, and cultural impact -- and the interview offers a compelling peek into the alchemy of how the sausage is made: 

“There’s that scene in Apollo 13 where they throw the tools they have on the table and are like, ‘That’s what they’ve got up there, we’ve got to bring them home.’ That’s how we approach filmmaking: We have $14M, we have all this stuff, how are we going to squeeze it in and make a thing? I think that’s what leads to this emergent creativity that works for us.”

— producer Jonathan Wang

Here’s just a couple lessons from A24’s first decade:

LESSON 1: TRUST (+ INVEST IN) UNIQUE PERSPECTIVES.

From the outset, A24 positioned themselves as an “auteur distributor” -- with a bespoke approach for how people discovered their films. Rather than relying on the traditional studio method of producing one-hit tentpole films to finance the next, they set about creating culture through conversation. By shifting the goalposts, they established a “house style” that’s high-design and high-concept — but always focused on a singular perspective.

It’s the reason why Michelle Yeoh signed on to EEAAO. Originally, the directors had envisioned Jackie Chan as the star and Yeoh in a supporting role as his put-upon wife, but they quickly realized centering the story around a character most people would ignore on the street would make it hit a lot harder:

“What I need is to be challenged, to have directors look at me in a different way. Over the years, my [characters] have been strong, held together. So when I read the script, I was like, ‘Whoa, what?’ ”

— Michelle Yeoh

LESSON 2: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE + ALWAYS LEAVE THEM WANTING MORE.

Every A24 release is tailored to a specific audience — rather than the blanket “18-34 year olds” most studios target. Roughly 95% of the marketing budget is spent online -- using analytics to get titles trending in order to trigger that sense of discovery that compels fans to pass on the message…and go to a theater to check out how that wild clip/ image they just saw could possibly make sense in the context of the film.

Constantly inspired by and in dialogue with online culture, the studio catfished brogrammers at SXSW with a Tinder bot profile of Ava (above), posted an image of the Spring Breakers cast in the style of Da Vinci’s Last Supper that reached 174M people, and invested in making one woman’s epic Tweet thread about a night-out-gone-wrong into a feature film (Zola). This advanced Internet literacy led to the creation of a an ownable aesthetic that you know when you see— which brings us to our next lesson:

LESSON 3: MAKE MEMES, NOT MARKETING.

From Marcel the Shell With Shoes On reporting live from the Westminster Dog Show, to creating an Etsy store for Hereditary’s Charlie, to launching A Ghost Store to prepare passersby for the afterlife, the ultimate goal of any A24 release is to deepen immersion in the realities and themes of it’s films.

But it’s not stunts for the sake of stunts. This is the same studio that chose to release Room by rolling out the film slowly across the country to ensure word-of-mouth preceded the film’s difficult subject matter, and the Everything Everywhere All at Once team got a full 11 months rather than the expected 5 to cut together their complex multiverse narrative — and there’s no doubt that extra time paid off:

“The version of the movie that we would have had to send to Toronto would have been fun, but a mess. The smallest tweaks in a movie this complicated have huge ripple effects. Because we had changed a scene in act one, the last scene of the movie wouldn’t work all of a sudden. A whole universe we cut was setting up this entire arc later in the film. How do we get that now? It took some creative problem-solving in the editing and some rewriting.”

— editor Paul Rogers

LESSON 4: COLLABS BRIDGE THE IN-FILM UNIVERSE AND THE IRL WORLD,

Rather than relying on brand sponsorships, A24 reimagined merch in the form of limited-edition IYKYK cult esoterica. Collaborating on drops with credible streetwear names like Online Ceramics, Brain Dead, and design studio Joya bumped up the “cult factor” of each item exponentially.

The vibe is very much: “literate, but not pretentious.” Each item, from the Hereditary Fire T-shirt, to a candle in the shape of the butt-plug inspired by Everything Everywhere All At Once — is beautifully-designed but very much “in on the joke.” If the resale value of some of A24’s most sought-after merch is any indication (nearly $1000 for that iced-out Furby from Uncut Gems), people will spend a lot of $$$ to appear cultured but not like they’re trying too hard. The aesthetic has become an aspirational lifestyle — to the point where many looking for love on dating apps describe their interests as simply: “A24.”

So what is the alchemy of A24? The magic formula for cultural, critical, and financial success? Producer of EEAAO Justin Wang sums it up the best:

“Empowerment with resourcefulness. We were like, ‘It has to be this for 25% of it, but the other 75%, go crazy.’ That leads to a certain flourishing on set, because you feel supported and loved for your craft.”

Stranger Things is popular in part because of the nostalgia punch it packs. Like the wonder of entering a mall for the first time:

Ah, the 80s. Simpler times. In the American imagination, the mall represented Good Daddy Capitalism. A safe place for teenagers to roam, unsupervised. To discover and experiment with new identities away from the watchful eyes of parents, teachers, and other authority figures. Your parents might still see you as a kid, but at the mall, who was going to stop you from getting that sick Hot Topic chain wallet? It was a one-stop shop for everything you could want, and a social hangout to boot. The place where many of us were free to find ourselves.

Of course, the rise of the mall came with consequences — as local makers that were truly tapped into subcultures saw their stores shuttered to make way for identical Foot Lockers, Urban Outfitters, and Spencer’s outposts for the sake of corporate efficiency.

Now in the year of our Lord 2022, the reign of the mall is over. Many now sit eerily empty, if not abandoned altogether. The Internet has replaced it as the place for teens to discover what’s cool/ what’s not/ and what works for them, and Good Daddy Capitalism has revealed himself to be Bad Daddy Capitalism — as e-commerce one-upped the concept of one-stop-shopping with the instant gratification of add-to-cart and two-day shipping.

Thanks to the mainstreaming of social media and gaming, we’ve all gotten accustomed to the concept of digital goods and online handles. Like the malls of yesteryear, who you were IRL didn’t have to be who you were online. Finstas, PFPs, skins and avatars have given all of us a new avenue to try on a new persona on for size.

Gamers know these incremental purchases by another name — microtransactions, or DLC. They were designed to supplement the game you already paid for without altering the core experience: some offered to shave down on grind time, or promised to deliver additional “episodes” of story after the main campaign was over. Others were purely cosmetic. Overall, they are probably (definitely) a net negative for the person buying the game because:

It represented the piecemealing of [ experience], the splitting up of the usual full package into discrete chunks. It would enable companies to push out half-baked titles and hope they could salvage them post-launch.

- Ivan Hernandez, Polygon.

But hate ‘em or tolerate ‘em, skins scratched that “experimentation with identity” itch — in the same way one visit to the mall once paved the way for your grunge/ prep/ streetwear phase. There's always been a fine line between fandom, subculture, and identity — but now, it's more fragmented than ever. Alt-aesthetics are building increasingly specific niches as our identities expand beyond the limits of our DNA, and the commodification of these aesthetics has only just begun.

Now, for just a few bucks, you could now show off your aesthetic to a global community.

Entire new economies were hastily erected, and the gaming industry morphed to accommodate them. Cynical, yes. But also lucrative — as over $60B was spent on online microtransactions in 2021. Some consider these cosmetic “upgrades” a necessary evil. Games cost thousands of man hours to produce and the industry already has a huge problem with “crunch culture.” The proceeds from DLC/ skins/ and microtransactions literally keep developers invested in maintaining the worlds they create. Epic Games’ Fortnite is the most successful to date. It’s spawned a new “juvenile social peer pressure…where the kid with knockoff sneakers was comparable to the no-skin.”

“These market-oriented free-to-play live service games at their worst are fast fashion, disposable corporate visions meant to sap income from a revolving door of users…[The problem was] when these games shut down, their items go with them. A Shein piece might wear out after a few uses; a live-service game takes your purchases to the grave.”

You can’t take it with you…but what if you could? As the metaverse develops and more venues crop up to express your identit(ies), surely, that skin you bought should be able to journey with you from platform to platform. Sandbox to sandbox. But that’s the problem:

There’s currently no way for us to maintain our digital selves—and the assets we own—across these platforms. But the Metaverse does exist. It’s just that, instead of living inside those worlds, we live them through a looking glass that we can’t cross quite yet.

— Jesus Diaz, Fast Company.

Now, the man who coined the concept of the “metaverse” with the seminal sci-fi novel Snow Crash is working on just that. Neil Stephenson’s company, LAMINA1 is building an interoperable digital economy meant to serve as a base layer for the metaverse.

Rather than being stuck in a walled garden built by Epic Games, Meta, or Apple, consumers who purchase skins built on Lamina1’s infrastructure will be able to take them from one platform/ world to another. And there’s another perk:

“[Peter] Vessenes—who is the company’s CEO and chief cryptographer—says that right now, it takes too much effort for independent developers to build up these persistent digital worlds and monetize them. Lamina1 wants to provide all the necessary underlying technologies to indie developers. These, they hope, will be the ones creating the “cool programs” you will like to live in.”

If Lamina1 succeeds, indie developers won’t have to prioritize monetization first, and the subcultures that give rise to all the alt-aesthetics Bad Daddy Capitalism then commodifies will be able to keep the Internet as weird as it always has been.

2/ Hardwear for the Wearable Internet

If profile picture collections were the Trojan Horse of web3 — an innocuous way for normies to test the waters — we may now be approaching the next stage of adoption, as IRL fashion attempts to bridge the gap from the other direction.

At its simplest, tying physical items to the blockchain solves a number of problems for fashion houses around authentication, validation and counterfeiting. It may look like Gucci, feel like Gucci, even smell like Gucci…but if it’s chip insert is not part of the official NFT collection on the blockchain, then it’s a fake.

But that’s just the beginning. Wearable fashion can extend who you are online into the physical world. Companies like Spatial Labs are already experimenting with phygital applications in their aptly named Hardwear line.

Founder Iddris Sandu, who refers to himself as an “Architectural Technologist,” explains his vision for Hardwear by comparing the launch of the brand to the watershed moment of the 2007 Apple iPhone Keynote:

It's the classic form vs. function debate. Just in a new guise. Apple built an empire by proposing a new design philosophy: why not both? By making devices that were as beautiful and intuitive as they were useful, Apple introduced the general public to the concept of personal computing, mp3 players, and smartphones. For the first time, non-nerds could get a handle on the transformative potential of technology, and the "creative class" could start using Apple software like Garage Band, Keynote, Final Draft, and Final Cut in their day-jobs as musicians, designers, writers, and editors. 

Spatial Labs (whose backers include Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners) believes wearables could do the same for web3. Creators who tap into the Hardwear ecosystem can upload ‘digital extras’ to the chip inserts in order to buy and sell phygital goods with personalized utility. For example, Drake could theoretically buy a Hardwear hoodie “upload a Dropbox file of an unreleased album exclusively into the chip, and then [resell] it on LNQ’s marketplace.” The only person who can listen to that mixtape? The owner of the hoodie.

“[Hardwear] gives us the ability to make the items we have sentimental because you can customize each one. Now, the supply and demand of the product is no longer pegged to its scarcity, but a user’s unique experience.”

— Iddris Sandu

Coming at it from the opposite angle (digital-first), NFT brand Azuki recently launched an open-source token standard called the PBT (Physical Backed Token) that’s “scan-to-own.” If you are physically in possession of the the item (hopefully via gift or sale), you can scan the chip insert to establish digital provenance as well.

Azuki, like many NFT projects, has done physical merch drops gated by ownership of the token. That is, a physical experience tied to the digital — but now they see the opportunity to tie a digital experience to the physical with the PBT. An advance that unlocks the ability to send their community on ‘quests’ and potentially upgrade their IRL gear in parallel with the ongoing storyline that’s being shaped digitally. The goal? “A new generation of storytelling and experiences” that continues to blur the lines.

3/ TSwift Schools Everybody on “How to Metaverse”

The definition of a word is shaped by social consensus, and as society evolves, often the meanings of words do as well. “Woke,” for example, took on a brand-new definition in the 2010s, and we’ve seen sentiment shift as it’s been used and misappropriated in the decade since.

‘Metaverse’ has become the latest buzzword to receive the same treatment. When Neal Stephenson first coined in the concept of “a vast, immersive virtual world” or “the 3D Internet” he envisioned virtual reality goggles as the primary point of access. For many early adopters/ purists, that technology is the primary (and maybe only) tenet of the definition. It’s also the critique of many ‘metaverse’ skeptics. They’re not wrong that no one wants to spend their lives living in a video game. Especially the way it exists now — with all the graphical dimension of a PS2:

One thing that everyone does seem to agree on is that it’s being built. And Mark Zuckerberg has, for many, become the (unfortunate) spokesman for the movement.

With the highly-publicized rebrand of Facebook and pivot towards VR, Zuck is taking the ‘if you build it, they will come' approach. But as of now, the stadium is empty. Consumers need a reason to be there other than it simply existing, and Meta hasn’t yet given them that reason (though ofc it’s still early days). If the metaverse is built but no one experiences it…is it a metaverse?

Someone who has gotten the social/experiential part right? Another polarizing personality: Taylor Swift.

For the release of her latest album, Midnights, TSwift’s nailed the interactive and immersive virtual experience part down:

“Over the past several weeks, Swift has presided over a meticulous online rollout: Ahead of the album’s drop, she launched ‘Midnights Mayhem With Me,’ a TikTok video series wherein she released the 13 track names one by one via bingo. This week, she went as far as to release a full launch schedule for fans via Instagram that detailed exactly what would happen at which times and where online—including a “special very chaotic surprise” at 3 a.m. ET last night.

— Caroline Mimbs Nyce, The Atlantic.

During that promised 3 a.m. surprise, Spotify crashed from the influx of Swifties. There’s no doubt that if TSwift ever build a 3D virtual world, it would be packed.

The final definition of metaverse will continue to evolve, and probably will never be — well, definitive — but if the metaverse is simply the next iteration of online connectedness, it should reflect how people are connecting today. And on that point, TSwift’s schooling us all.

Writer/ futurist/ game developer/ and consultant Wagner James Au said it best:

“People building metaverse platforms, most of them think it’s a technology question. But it’s really a community and culture question.” 

- Wagner James Au, Why the Metaverse Matters.

…And In Case You Missed It

• Cash App enables Bitcoin Lightning transfers for its 40M users

• JP Morgan is exploring blockchain uses for digital identity

• Ethereum smart contracts are aiding in the battle against cancer

• Newly purchased Twitter is working on a crypto wallet

  • And Binance invested $500M into the sale and is exploring how web3 could help rid Twitter of its bots problem

It’s Fall 2022 and travel is back with a vengeance, but the return of travel comes with a price: CHAOS. Chaos to the tune of interminable waits, confusingly contradictory rules about masking and vaccines, piles of lost luggage, and the general mayhem of learning to coexist around people again.

Global tourism is more accessible now than ever before, though of course limited during the pandemic. And while travelers are back on the road (and proudly posting), you may be noticing that they all seem to be going to the same places, for the same reasons.

“[Positano] provided the backdrop for Diane Lane’s whirlwind romance in Under the Tuscan Sun. Twenty years later, the town has become synonymous with the grandest of influencer travelscapes, clogging Instagram with photos of beautiful people on boats, staring back in wonder at the skyline behind them. It is also the most unpleasant place I have ever been. This has little to do with the town itself, which has been home to resorts and villas for the European elite since the Roman Empire but contains only small traces of its ancient past; as our tour guide explained, ‘there is no history here, it is just for relaxing and for pictures.’ Fewer than 4,000 people live in Positano, and tourists outnumber them three-to-one.”

— Rebecca Jennings, “The Instagram capital of the world is a terrible place to be,” Vox, 2022.

Instagram has changed how we see the world in more ways than one. Contributing to thousands of listicles, city guides, and recommendations all claiming to offer the inside scoop on the most ‘grammable destinations in the world. But it’s also contributed to the let-down of let-downs once you actually make it to said destination and realize: everyone else has got the same idea. Often, the come-down leaves you with an experience that is all style, no substance.

It’s a depressing view on travel that Michelle Choi, founder of 3.O Labs is trying to address. Choi worked with the team charged with preserving historic Lobkowicz Palace in Prague to launch Non-Fungible Castle, an NFT exhibition and auction. The event saw NFTs displayed next to 500-year-old paintings — with the goal of “broaden[ing] accessibility to cultural heritage” — and perhaps more importantly — raising enough $$$ to cover urgent restoration projects around the property.”

Motivated by this successful proof-of-concept, Choi and 3.O Labs are now busily curating metaverse tourism experiences globally — including at “a castle in Germany, which will be followed by a villa in India and then possibly a museum in Ghana.”

And with #LearnOnTikTok having emerged as one of the most popular hashtags on the app, with more than 412 billion views — it’s interesting to think through the many possible ways web3 might be used to enhance our relationship with cultural destinations and objects.

“Travel will be augmented as a teaching tool. In the past, tourism meant visiting a place. Photos were 2D, but 3D travel then emerged with virtual headsets. 4D time experimentation is now possible. Now, we can mesh different time periods. There’s a teaching angle.”

— Michelle Choi, 3.O Labs

Beyond fundraising, projects like Non-Fungible Castle and Monuverse have found believers — both in those interested in preserving global monuments and in the caretakers of these historic estates.

Caretakers such as Priyadarshini Raje Scindia, whose family owns Jai Vilas Palace, a 200-year-old palace-turned-museum in Madhya Pradesh, India — a location that has a complicated past with colonialism that hasn’t fully been explored:

“I disagree with my family history. We have rooms of research documents in the palace. Now is the right time and the right platform to correct history [and] tell the real story of my clan, the Maharatas. Retelling the story told by the British, which sounds like a Game of Thrones book — dark and barbaric. We fought for independence from all exterior forces, yet it was made out that we were fighting Indians in India. It is a historic fact that the Maharatas were the rulers of India, post the Mughals. And their narrative and value system are even more essential to study and understand today. I would like to use the platform to change the narrative through art, culture and history.”

— Priyadarshini Raje Scindia

Scindia is planning an NFT collection produced by local artists to fund a metaverse experience after COVID-19 shut her museum for 2 years.

If history is written by the victors, the creation of DAOs for historical preservation is a chance to correct the oversight and downright whitewashing some of the “established” accounts represent. Giving the community — both local and global — a stake in correcting the accepted narrative, and helping to preserve the locations and objects that cannot be replaced.

2/ Crossing the Chasm: Papers, Please Meets PFPs

Web3’s cake day is up for debate, but the decentralized infrastructure serving as the foundation for a new internet is closer to a teen than an adult. And while the growing pains have been rough, Web3 is finally maturing and “crossing the chasm.”

Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm is a guide for marketers on bringing ‘high-tech products’ to the mainstream, and while web3 doesn’t have a CMO, we’re seeing some natural parallels in its development.

Right now, web3 as a demographic is very much in the ‘early adopter’ phase. A select subset of could be summed up as libertarian-leaning ‘crypto bros’ and speculators. But we’re quickly approaching the ‘chasm’ that Moore refers to. That is, the gap between those early adopters and the early majority.

Just look at South Korea, for example. We’ve already covered how advanced the gen pop is there when it comes to blurring the lines between virtual reality and reality reality thanks to the K-Pop Industrial Complex and the Hallyu Wave sweeping the global entertainment industry. Their citizenry is far more tech-forward —due to the state providing broadband connections to everyone as far back as 2010.

Now the government is looking to blockchain technology to replace state-issued identity cards in a very ‘web3’ way. Allowing citizens to maintain ownership of their identity.

The plan would also see the government adopt a decentralized identity system, meaning the government will not have access to information stored on phones, including the digital ID being used, how they’re used and where.

— Suh Bo Ram, Director-General of Korea’s Digital Government Bureau

Close neighbor Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party recently released a ‘Web3.0 Whitepaper’ outlining recommendations for catching up to countries it perceives as ahead in the “fierce global competition targeting the new digital economic frontier.”

Among them, the United States. The US has expressed a determination to lead in the space and has issued an executive order asking all government agencies to come up with a digital strategy. Separately at the same time, individual states like Wyoming are exploring how blockchain could improve elections.

All this work is not making mainstream news in a time when the the media has shifted its focus to more pressing concerns like the crumbling economy, inflation, elections, and oh yeah….the looming threat of nuclear war. But the web3 rails are being laid even while no one is watching.

The latest NFT/crypto crash is often compared to the Dot Com bubble which saw the vast majority of new internet companies fail. But those that survived became the Amazons, Googles, and Apples of the world. And those states that build towards a better vision despite the market conditions will see themselves better positioned on the other side.

While slower moving, innovative companies and institutions are beginning to roll out their own web3 strategies. These are already onboarding millions of unwitting (and in the case of Redditors…straight-up hostile) consumers to the space.

Reddit’s NFT avatar launch was probably the biggest ‘onboarding’ moment to date and led to the creation of nearly 3M wallets on the Polygon blockchain. NFT guru Giancarlo puts it very succinctly: “Reddit gave away NFTs to people that hated NFTs. They made money and now they like NFTs.”

At the same time, companies like Moonpay are making web3 far more accessible. The creation of a wallet and purchase of NFTs can occur with just a credit card — making it feel like a familiar e-commerce experience — and eliminating the anxieties of those who still perceive the space as rife with scams.

The demographics of web3 are about to change dramatically. In fact, as it “crosses the chasm,” the web3 “demographic” may cease to exist altogether. We certainly don’t refer to “the internet” as a demographic. According to a new study by Horizon Media, 91% of 18–25-year-olds say there's no such thing as 'mainstream' pop culture. For kids today, subcultures are the new demographics — and what is the Internet if not a motley universe of loosely-connected subcultures?

3/ How AI is Changing the Inspiration —> Production Cycle

Inspiration can come from anywhere. It’s a topic we’ve explored (at length) in ISSUE 002 of our DEEP OBJECTS series, but for further proof, just check out the posthumous collection of Masters of the Universe collectibles that dropped last week, c/o the late-great Virgil Alboh — an homage to the toys that shaped him as a youth.

Cala, a NY-based start-up that bills itself as “the first operating system for fashion,” announced Thursday that it would be supercharging it’s end-to-end offering with AI design powered by DALL-E. Users of Cala’s AI tools can generate new designs from text descriptions or simply upload a reference image to produce variations on the original.

As machine-learning upends creativity by exponentially multiplying the “inputs” that go into the process, how will the final “output” — or production cycle — be affected? Are we facing a future where fast-fashion trend cycles just hyper-accelerate our already growing addiction for chasing the “new and next?” Or is the democratization of fashion a wake-up call for all of us as a community to make more considered, and by extension — more responsible — choices by involving those who will ultimately wear the final threads earlier on?

Traditional fashion houses are established as top-down for a reason. There’s something to be said for having a singular voice and clarity of vision. If there is one person making all the key decisions, you operate from one voice. But the thing is, traditional fashion houses also have a small army at their disposal to translate ideas into final products:

Abloh had plenty of company in relying on a team to turn his concepts into clothing. Miuccia Prada doesn’t sketch and instead has a staff that translates her ideas. At Dior, Raf Simons would prepare files with images and inspiration to be used as the basis for sketches produced by his team. Rei Kawakubo has said she doesn’t sketch and that her design is “done mostly by words and imagination.”

— Marc Bain, “AI Is Designing Clothes Now,” Business of Fashion.

And it’s that intuitive form of design — by words or reference images — that Cala aims to replicate with AI. Even for those of us who don’t have a world-class team at our back.

Of course, the biggest hurdle for this model is that it doesn’t offer the same kind of instant gratification we’ve all become accustomed to thanks to our “2-day shipping” Amazon Prime conditioning. It will still take time to produce and ship the goods. Although Cala is streamlining that too.

The platform links users with a network of partner factories that can manufacture the clothes they design as well as a logistics network to handle shipping. From start-to-finish it will take about 120 days from the time a user submits a design for production to the time they receive the finished product for cut-and-sew items.

But of course the extra time the platform should save during the creation phase allows designers to involve the community: gauging interest in colorways, styles, and sizing so as not to over-produce and generate waste. AI can let brands easily conjure up whole collections and use the images to determine demand before deciding which pieces to manufacture. Operating this way could allow brands to reduce waste and save money by only producing what they know they can sell. Rather than guessing wrong and consigning the extras to a landfill. Hopefully, this new method of gauging demand will reduce the culture of obsolescence brands like SHEIN have created.

It’s one of the first signposts of a new democratic take on design. One that runs in opposition to the dictatorships of the traditional studio. A more circular, system for an increasingly connected world.

…And In Case You Missed It

• Rimowa x RTFKT collaborate on a new release

• L’Oréal and Meta launch metaverse startup accelerator

• The International Popo have entered the metaverse (Interpol)

• Toys R Us is dropping an NFT collection on the Solana blockchain

• WB creates a Lord of the Rings creates a 'living web3 movie experience’ tied to NFTS

• Just in time for Halloween: DALL-E Spookily Reimagines Classic Paintings

• 20 years of Trending Google Searches, Visualized

• What will AI do to branding?

We live in the golden age of online art piracy. Platforms like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon are rife with “print-on-demand” scams cashing in on the estates of artists like Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Andy Warhol (all of which stopped authenticating works in 2012). Any painting, poster, or print you purchase online these days comes shrouded with the possibility that it might be as “limited-edition,” “vintage,” or “original” as it claims. That plausible deniability allows buyers and sellers alike to maintain the fantasy that they could truly win the lottery. Maybe you really can score a Basquiat for $189.99 because some mysterious collector left them “in storage” then conveniently “died in 2013.” You’ve seen Pawn Stars, right?

This Schrödinger’s cat style game of Real / Fake Russian Roulette that dominates the discourse around technology and art today makes last week’s Supreme Court hearing over Andy Warhol’s Prince series a matter of monumental importance for artists’ everywhere.

The story begins in 1981. Lynn Goldsmith, veteran photographer of rock stars (whose work can be found on over 100 album covers) had been commissioned by Newsweek to take a series of portraits of up-and-coming artist Prince. In studio, Goldsmith accentuated the musician’s androgyny and vulnerability with purple eyeshadow and lip gloss, then adjusted the lighting so that the final shot captured tiny pinpricks of light in his eyes. Ultimately, Newsweek opted to run the story with images captured at a Prince concert rather than the studio shots, so Goldsmith held on to the photos for future publication or licensing.

Just 3 years later, Prince had become a global phenomenon and Vanity Fair reached out to Andy Warhol to create an illustration for a feature on the musician. One of Goldsmith’s black-and-white photos was put forward by the magazine as a reference, and the photographer was paid $400 in licensing fees along with the promise that the image would only be used in this one issue of Vanity Fair. There’s no evidence Warhol himself was aware of the licensing agreement, but he went on to produce 16 silk-screens — which he copyrighted. One of which ran with the article:

When Prince died in 2016, Condé Nast ran a tribute and paid the Warhol Foundation $10,250 to run the original illustration on the cover. Goldsmith received no payment or credit, causing her to eventually sue the Foundation. Her claim? That Warhol infringed on her copyright and the Foundation owes her potentially millions in unpaid licensing fees and royalties.

As riveting as copyright laws are, this lawsuit over how much or how little Andy Warhol “transformed” Goldsmith’s original photographs may change how courts look at art going forward.

The Biden administration, which has come down on Goldsmith’s side, argued in legal filings that Warhol’s silkscreens shouldn’t be treated differently from books that are creatively adapted into movies. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the art world has turned out in support of the Warhol Foundation — which has generously helped fund conceptual artists like Barbara Kruger for years.

Warhol’s legacy — particularly the many artists, filmmakers, musicians, and literati he inspired through the Factory — is viewed by many as the paradigm of “transformative fair use” in visual art. Sampling, collage, reproduction, and homage have been a cornerstone of the creation of art of all different types of mediums for years — and artists are understandably touchy at the prospect of being forced to put these concepts into black-or-white boxes.

“If Andy Warhol’s work is no longer considered fair use, it could send a chilling message for rising and current artists whose work rely on pre-existing materials and works of art.”

— Cathay Smith, professor @ the University of Montana’s Blewett School of Law

In Kruger’s work for example, referential sampling as a vehicle for social commentary is the point:

It remains to be seen where the judges will come down on the issue, which will mark the first time the highest court in the United States delivers an opinion on what is and is not a work of art since 1994 — when it established that parodies can qualify for fair use protections. The ramifications of that ruling are still being felt today in everything from South Park and SNL to hip-hop — and this landmark case could be the next watershed moment.

2/ Zuck May Have the Last Laugh

If you’re reading this, you’re probably at least a semi-futurist. At F T R Lens, we’re obsessed with new technology and its potential impacts on society and culture. So we actually have something very much in common with both an internet supervillain and walking meme:

Mark Zuckerberg does himself no favors in the PR department, and his decision to go all-in on the metaverse has not been received well by Wall Street. Meta’s recent releases have been less than exciting and the stock has taken a nose dive (down >62% on the year). Though that may change as I force my family and friends to buy the Meta Quest so we can play Among Us in VR (now you can lie with your arms!):

Whatever you think of it’s fearless leader, Meta is truly taking a long-term view of the ‘metaverse’ and building some incredible hardware to make that future a reality while Apple’s Tim Cook and Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel bet big on augmenting reality. It’s a battle of philosophies and ideas — Apple’s “walled garden” vs. Zuck and Tim Sweeney of Epic Games’ “interoperable worlds.”

Zuckerberg believes that the medium through which we experience the metaverse will not be a phone or computer — but a headset (eventually glasses) allowing for Mixed Reality experiences — and some of the technology demonstrated at Meta Connect 2022 (that I begrudgingly had to watch on Facebook) was truly compelling.

‘Anchoring technology’ will allow designers to build virtual objects or add virtual effects in a physical environment.

And allow for a much cooler desktop setup (it’s Minority Report - adjacent):

And interfacing with the device will get far more efficient. AI assistants will work in the background adapting to your movements and customizing how you actually engage with the tech. Eventually, the smallest of movements such as clenching a knuckle could deliver instructions to the device. Definitely an improvement over QWERTY.

Finally, Avatars still look goofy af but are seeing steady improvement. The ability to make eye contact and facial expressions really do add a level of presence that cannot exist on Zooms. Meta may be the butt of the joke now, but if the metaverse manifests as they predict, Zuckerberg will have the last (odd) laugh.

3/ From Extralegal to Legit: Taming the Web3 Wild West

Web3 is often and fittingly referred to as the Wild West. It’s the frontier of the internet — largely self-regulated by visionaries, opportunists, and madmen who buck against the “establishment” way of doing things.

But here’s the thing: in reality, living in the Wild West sucked. You had to watch your back at all times because outlaws, freak accidents, and the elements were liable to cause you to drop dead at a moment’s notice. Which is to say nothing of the general lack of running water, sanitation, and electricity.

If the Web3 is in it’s “Wild West” phase, expect it to be over soon. Web3 only really made it onto the radar of our lawmakers in 2021 when they brought executives from across the industry to explain the technology’s potential.

Since then, there has been Biden’s Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets. And now, the SEC is probing Yuga Labs (creator of Bored Apes Yacht Club) over their NFT sales and whether they are securities.

Yuga Labs may at one point have been operating at the edge of the law, but they’ve been preparing to go ‘legit’ for a long time. And while the SEC finally getting its hands dirty has freaked out the NFT world at large (not the first time)… This is actually a near ideal scenario to begin taming the Wild West in a way that protects investors without handicapping a budding tech revolution.

As we opined in the last edition, this is a huge step in the right direction of building trust with communities outside of the core crypto bro audience — many of whom still see NFTs as a money-laundering scheme (see: the latest EU draft bill).

Yuga Labs is the leader in the space and have been preparing for this moment. If anyone is prepared to go to battle (or work) with the SEC, it’s them.

The next step in taming the West? Elections. Since that 2021 Congressional Hearing, candidates and incumbents have realized that the crypto/web3 space will be voting, and an informed stance on the future of digital assets will be necessary to earn them.

Whether a candidate has a clue or not, they will now find themselves and their “crypto sentiment scores… based on publicly available statements” on Coinbase for their 103,000,000 users to see. And soon, those 103M will have the opportunity to donate right in the app:

In short order, the Wild West wasn’t so wild. And now railroads are being laid in web3 — meaning more people can start building and setting down roots. Civilization is coming (and that’s a good thing).

…And In Case You Missed It

• F1 is prepping to enter the metaverse and filed eight trademark applications for “F1” related to NFT, metaverse and crypto

• Google continues leaning into crypto making Ethereum address now searchable and allowing users to pay with crypto for cloud services

• CNN officially rugs its web3 audience with a Press Release

• The White House releases an AI Bill of Rights

Remember when the Internet was supposed to free us? In the past few weeks, the promise of web2 social/ streaming platforms to “create community, connections, and opportunity” has been slowly exposed for the empty-calorie marketing spin it is.

Last week, we covered the exodus some music fans are making away from streaming platforms. Then Vanity Fair released a state-of-the-entertainment-industry which reported that everyone in Hollywood is “totally drained and burned out” thanks to the accumulated effects of Netflix’s first-ever subscriber drop this year and the fallout from the WB/ HBO/ (and rumored NBC Universal) merger. Following that, Amazon-owned Twitch very publicly lost the battle for its soul when it announced it was changing it’s revenue-share model with creator “partners” from 70/30 to 50/50. Then finally, this week brought the release of a WIRED exposé detailing the stark reality of how Spotify is using playlists to create a stranglehold over the music industry — repackaging the historic inequities of a notoriously dirty business behind friendly Swedish branding.

We won’t re-litigate the ways in which Spotify has transformed music into *bland background muzak* — but when we last got into it, we didn’t dig too deep into the real nefarious purpose behind all those ~chill vibes~.

Those conveniently prepackaged #moods (Feelin’ Myself, BBE, my life is a movie)? All being used to collect data about your taste, preferences, location — which the company is re-packaging to brands to sell ads. Rise N’ Grind time? How about a nutritious McDonald’s breakfast? In Beast Mode? Stay hydrated with Cody’s Cooldown!

Of course, a little exploitation has always been a part of the equation when the interests of technology, business, and creativity clash. The difference is, a lot of creativity used to come from artists actively trying to circumvent the systems exploiting them. (see: the entire evolution of the artist formerly known as Prince or the many fuck-you singles released by artists successfully emancipating themselves like 2019’s “Free Uzi”). Now in the age of “streambait” playlists, experimentation no longer pays.

Playlists reinforce biases that have always been around in the industry. In order to game the algorithm, male artists are favored over female, American over any other country of origin, earworm-y hooks and sick drops over true originality. The institution of radio certainly isn’t without its sins, but local stations used to introduce a lot of regional flavor into the ecosystem by breaking new talent. With Spotify as the monolithic tastemaker, these voices are disappearing. Soon, all we may be left with are Drake clones.

“A music culture dependent on playlists is dependent on Spotify, whereas a music culture dependent on albums is dependent on record labels.”

— Liz Pelly, music journalist and commentator

Any good dealer knows, the first taste is free, and now that Spotify has the userbase and the data, its accumulating influence in the industry that was once shared by radio DJs, record labels, management teams, and journalists. And its stranglehold shows no sign of loosening:

Goldman Sachs has predicted the streaming market will exceed $37B by 2030. Currently, Spotify controls just over a third of the market. The rest is dominated by Big Tech: Apple (with 19%), Amazon (15%), Tencent (the benevolent Chinese overlords behind TikTok — in joint venture with Spotify: 11%), and Google (6%).

Hopefully, web3 offers an alternative that more directly and transparently builds relationships between artists and fans — just like we all dreamed back in the day.

2/ The Fine Line Between Real/ Fake

You may have caught the debut of Make-A-Video, Meta’s AI Video Generator, which advances the trippy, reality-bending images produced by MidJourney, DALL-E, and the like into high-quality video clips. All with the same intuitive text prompt or insert-input-here interface. The technology itself is not yet available for public use, but a white paper study on the research has been published, and Meta did share some mind-boggling samples:

The program builds on the work begun last year as Make-a-Scene, an image generator by Meta AI that offers greater compositional control for images based on prompts, and is the next step in expanding Meta’s ethos:

“It’s not enough for an AI system to just generate content” [Users should be able to] shape and control the content a system generates.”

— Meta AI

But given Facebook’s track record with creating echo chambers of disinformation, some observers were rightfully anxious. Meta’s solve? “A watermark [will be applied] to all content created from Make-A-Video to ensure viewers know the video was generated with AI.”

It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come since the “Deep Tom Cruise” TikTok account first posted in February 2022, quickly going viral and startling scrollers with just how convincing it was as a dupe:

@deeptomcruiseSports!

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Deepfakes have existed for longer than that, but this was one of the first mega-viral moments that woke the public up to its potential. The account calls itself out as ‘parody,’ absolving it of legal ramifications for the use of Tom Cruise’s likeness. It’s a tactic the creators of South Park Trey Parker and Matt Stone have also relied on:

In the case of South Park, the disclaimer was never really necessary. Even when clipped and posted elsewhere on the internet, no one thought Kanye West was really freaking out over a ‘fish sticks’ joke. While not malicious, the “Deep Tom Cruise” videos are everywhere — accumulating millions of views on the main account alone, (and often reposted without the ‘parody’ context).

“A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on”

— one of those sayings that’s ironically attributed to everyone from Mark Twain, to Winston Churchill, to nameless ‘Chinese proverb.’

There are likely plenty of people that still believe these videos are actually Tom Cruise. Now, imagine this technology being used with deceptive intentions. (Like the army of scammers masquerading as men with perfectly-symmetrical faces on Hinge).

The alarming ease at which these videos can now be created has immense implications for our perceived reality, but we’ll hold that #deepthought 🤔💭 for another day.

Less dystopian but still mind boggling, is the potential this technology has to further homogenize film and TV. Bruce Willis’ team had to come out and deny the allegation that the actor was considering selling his ‘digital likeness’ to deepfake company DeepCake — just one headline that hints at a possible future where our favorite stars never have to retire.

No one wants a new Die Hard with an increasingly aged Bruce Willis, but what if he hadn’t aged since the first? What if Sean Connery could just carry on playing James Bond forever? In an industry already saturated with franchises, sequels, and remakes, do we need to keep seeing the same actors too?

3/ Recruiting for the Web3 Movement

The utopia espoused by web3 enthusiasts is one that better aligns incentives with its users. (Ideally) allowing creators to bypass the middleman and connect directly with their consumers, and in doing so, excising the influence of advertising that makes the user ‘the product’ in web2.

That’s the narrative among web3 advocates at least (of which I am one!), and the sooner we get there, the better! But it’s important to take off the ‘maxi’ hat and exit the bubble occasionally.

Let’s begin with the foundational building block of web3 — blockchain. In the case of $$$, blockchain is our best way of manifesting what was always a decentralized system of cash in your pocket into the digital realm.

“Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised. Money is more open-minded than language, state laws, cultural codes, religious beliefs, and social habits. Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age, or sexual orientation. Thanks to money, even people who don’t know each other and don’t trust each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively.

— Yuval Noah Harari

With Yuval’s take in mind, it’s easy to see why web3 makes sense for money and why centralization should be fought. Now, consider a web3 version of Twitter. Such as the one Jack Dorsey is encouraging Elon Musk to create. Twitter for sure has it’s problems, but putting every message on the blockchain doesn’t necessarily solve them. And we’ve already seen what a fully uncensored internet look like with 4chan.

This is not to say we shouldn’t try it! Preserving freedom of speech as a bedrock principle of the Internet is a cause worth rallying around — and a big reason why you should be paying attention to the Netchoice v. Paxton ruling in Texas.

But rather than being a ‘web3 maxi’ trying to reinvent every institution, we should be thinking about how web3 can complement them, and how, to Yuval’s point, we should be working to build trust in web3 with more communities.

Take the music space, for example, web3 could offer artists ways around the traditional label/ distribution/ promo route — empowering artists by arming them with leverage before they get to the negotiating table. (Stay tuned for more on this in the coming weeks!)

Like new technologies before it, web3 is changing the game and forcing incumbents to rethink their strategies rather than abusing their power or taking it for granted. In general, it shifts the balance of power towards decentralization, but not everything needs to be fully decentralized — what’s more important is building trust with more communities. Educating, onboarding, and co-creating so that more voices can be included and represented. It’s the only way to ensure this new version of the Internet is truly different from the last one.

…And In Case You Missed It

• OpenSea has officially dropped anchor on Optimism! 🌊🔴✨

• BTS Tamagotchi: for those who’ve always dreamed of having to feed the 26-year old man in their pocket

• In Paris, Loewe made IRL 'MINECRAFT' clothes

• Also @ PFW: Balmain revealed plays for a dedicated Web3 hub

• Hugo Boss + Imaginary Ones unveiled an NFT collection of 1,001 3D animations

• Cool Cats Group secures strategic investment from Animoca Brands, building on gaming partnership

While sci-fi new and old warns of AI becoming conscious, the general public is just now becoming conscious of what AI really is (hint: not The Terminator).

Recently, a variety of AI content generation platforms like DALL-E have become available to the public. And have exploded in popularity. They are allowing millions to actually engage with AI for the first time, moving it from a mysterious sci-fi concept to this season’s must-have toy.

The broader understanding of what many of these AI tools are actually built on (massive datasets scraped from the public internet) is putting a new lens on the ethical questions surrounding them.

The questions are no longer… Is the AI sentient or can it suffer? But…am I in the dataset? Is that OK? And the tools have gone mainstream so fast that we never had time to properly grapple with those questions.

The Weird DALL-E Mini Generations Twitter account already has over 1.1M followers and crowd sources funny ‘prompts’ such as Darth Vader being a good father (harmless fun):

But also shows real people with prompts like Samuel L. Jackson is elected as the new pope (slightly less okay 🤔):

While Samuel L. probably wouldn’t be offended by this, there are already examples of malicious use, depicting real people in compromising situations. And there are plenty of potentially harmful accidents as well — including one individual who realized private medical images were included.

Luckily, this is being worked on. If you’re curious whether you (or your work) has been included in a dataset, you can visit HaveIBeenTrained.com to search the 5.8B images used to train these image generators.

Across the board, processes are being set up for the take down of specific imagery when requested. Protocols to censor malicious or potentially copyright-infringing use of these tools are already in place and being improved.

But the question remains: should I opt out? If there is ever a chance for a tool like this to be truly inclusive, it needs a large dataset — in the same way Google only works because it’s an index of the vast array of data at its disposal. So if we choose to opt out, are we just helping to reinforce the biases that come from a smaller dataset? AI are already known for a not-great track record when it comes to inclusivity/ representation. Can you imagine how bad DALL-E’s output would be if it only had access to stock photos of smiling white people against inoffensive backdrops?

Accessible technology this powerful and disruptive to norms is going to take some time to figure out, but it’s one of the first great philosophical questions web3 faces.

2/ The Paradox of Choice: Why Fans are Quitting Spotify to Save Their Love of Music

A couple months back, we looked into the minor miracle of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” beating out BTK and Drake to become the most popular song in the world. At the time, it was held up as a feel-good story. One that seemed to indicate a shift in our ever-evolving relationship with music.

Now that we live in the world in which the vast catalogue of all music ever created has been uploaded onto platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube, anyone anywhere can discover the greatest hits at any time. From any time in history. That’s certainly still true, but the sheer amount of options available is also causing a new generation of music fans to choose analog over streaming. All for their love of music.

Feel-good stories like the rediscovery of Kate Bush or the sudden resurgence in popularity of Gerry Rafferty’s “Right Down the Line” after it was featured on an episode of Euphoria are symptoms of a much bigger shift.

A spot on a Spotify’s New Music or Rap Caviar Playlist is now coveted as much as a place on MTV’s TRL or Power 106 FM was back in the day. There’s also the closed ecosystem of TikTok — which spawns not one-hit wonders but earworm-y hooks and “chill vibes” which are then remixed endlessly on YouTube.

“Streaming encourages a kind of decontextualised discovery. It’s a world where albums are less important than single tracks, where you’re encouraged to focus not on the artist, but the song; where music is served up with any accompanying visuals relegated to a tiny corner of the screen; where historical context, image, subcultural capital – all the other stuff that was once part of the package – no longer really matters.” - Alexis Petridis, The Guardian

And it’s playing out in our daily lives, as more and more music fans log off of streaming services for good. As one fan describes:

“I decided that having music be this tool to [create] an experience instead of an experience itself was not something I was into.”

In other words, the ritualistic choices we once put thought into as we were building our mix CDs, digging through crates in the record store, or loading up our iPods for a long road trip is a feeling many of us are now chasing.

“Taking the extra step to load it on to my phone, or the extra step to flip over the tape, or put the CD on in the car, it feels like something that I’m doing, rather than something I’m receiving. And that sense of agency makes me a more dedicated and involved listener than the kind of passive listening-without-listening that streaming was making me do.”

For many, that sense of DIY discovery is an art worth preserving. After all, it’s often through collecting band tees, scouring liner notes, and putting up posters on our walls that we often find out a little bit more about ourselves. In a world of infinite options, taste that is shaped by personal experience rather than taste that’s programmed is worth the effort.

3/ More than an Collectible: NFTs as a Passport, Achievement, Loyalty Card, VIP Access…

It’s officially spooky season 👻👻👻! You’ve found your way to Universal Studio’s Horror Nights and collected 6 out of the 7 badges for surviving their haunted houses. But the 7th is by far the scariest and it involves clowns😱. Will you put on a brave face to get that last badge?

Some gaff at 6-figure sales of images of apes in ennui. Those same naysayers may soon find themselves unwitting owners of NFTs as the use of the technology expands beyond Bored Apes.

Universal Studios is just one of many major companies bringing NFT technology to bear in order to amplify a consumer experience. During their annual Horror Nights event that sees millions test their courage in haunted houses, visitors are able to find and scan QR codes to earn NFTs. If they find all 7, they get a bonus reward and can prove their valor with these blockchain based achievements to anyone that asks.

Thanks to companies like Moonpay that are working to improve the consumer experience in crypto, visitors won’t have to do anything in advance. No need to find a cringe YouTube video to explain blockchain, how to open up a crypto wallet, fill it with ETH, then connect to a minting site 😫. They’ll just need to point their phone camera at the QR code and provide an email address. Moonpay does the rest.

As the consumer experience with this technology inevitably improves, the applications for it are wide ranging (and already in motion). Just a few examples:

256-year-old institution Christie’s is going fully on-chain with new exclusive ethereum NFT Marketplace: Christie’s 3.0.

In Buenos Aires, 8,750 marathon runners will receive digital versions of their medals immutably recorded on the blockchain. Not only will they be certify their finishing times, they will also serve as an access pass to Adidas' AdiClub loyalty program.

Starbucks is adding a NFT rewards (rebranded as digital stamps) to one of the largest loyalty programs in the world to facilitate “access to experiences and ownership that was not possible before.”

And recently, experiential powerhouse Disney (ever heard of it?) is bolsters its legal team with NFT expertise with the intention of creating both a theme park metaverse and allowing real-world visitors to their theme parks to “generate and project personalized 3D effects onto nearby physical spaces, such as walls and other objects.” Meaning soon, a lot of the park’s environments will be able to react specifically to you. 🤯 Which, given Disney’s track record of already experimenting with a diet version of Westworld with an immersive Star Wars theme park that costs $6000/ stay — could be absolutely huge.

Soon, whether you’re going for a run, running from a monster, buying art, or just getting a coffee, NFTs may be involved and are probably improving the experience.

(DALL-E prompt: marathon runner running from a scary monster with coffee. spooky.)

…And In Case You Missed It

• Snoop Dogg launches CC0 song via NFT: “Use the song how ya want”

• OpenSea adds support for a third blockchain, Arbitrum

• Walmart enters the metaverse with Roblox experience

• Apple will allows apps to sell NFTs (but will take a 30% cut)

• The New England Patriots purchase the patriots.eth ENS Domain for 75ETH

• Coca-Cola inspires ‘Dreamland’ metaverse clothing line

For the majority of its existence, moviemaking required serious infrastructure and capital: expensive cameras, recording equipment, sets. It made sense then that the industry would coalesce in one place: Hollywood.

For generations, Hollywood has been the home of cinema and ground zero for America’s cultural influence on the world, but as is the case across industries, broader access and greater fluency to technology is having a profound impact on centralization. The same goes for storytelling, and Hollywood’s power is waning.

An entire generation has taught itself how to shoot, edit, graphically augment, and develop an audience for their content via TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat. The cost of both training and production continues to drop, while the tools continue to improve. The rise of game engines in film production will further lower the cost and complexity of filmmaking, while unlocking new opportunities for filmmakers.

- Matthew Ball, What China, Marvel, and Avatar Tell Us About the Future of Blockbuster Franchises

This rise in film-making fluency is creating more opportunities for other cultural perspectives to find the spotlight on the world stage. The current Korean-wave we're experiencing is just one long-overdue outcome of that— from Parasite, to Squid Game, to the dominance of BTK on the global charts — and the country’s widespread early adoption of technology plays a huge part.

Broadband was delivered to all Korean households as early as 2010. Now a decade on, the Korean public is way ahead when it comes to the blurring of virtual and physical realities. Evidence of this is clear in the way the behemoth K-pop industrial complex manages talent and creates franchises and universes. 

[Studios are] designed as an inside-out place, with every room a stage set for press conferences, fan chats and livestreams. [Boy bands] are in near-permanent contact with their fan community through a digital metaverse. Even before the pandemic, [studios were ] creating online concerts for its groups involving VR and holograms.

For more collectivist societies like Korea and most of East Asia, Hollywood values of capitalism and individualism are not necessarily priorities, and the American monopoly on massive scale storytelling has, in many ways, peaked. (It was K-pop fans who came together to shut down a Trump rally in 2020, after all, while #FreeBritney was just catching on.)

In his essay, Matthew Ball dissects why 2009’s Avatar massively outperformed 2019’s Avengers: Endgame on the international stage:

The film’s “protagonist humans” are classic Western archetypes such as the taciturn soldier and the driven scientist. The villains are archetypes as well, but they are also particularly close to foreign caricatures of evil Americans: the tough-as-nails, violence-prone colonel and pillage-the-earth corporate executive.

You know what that sounds a lot like? The "VIPs" revealed in Squid Game as the ones funding and reveling in the spectacle of the Game.

It's fitting that cutting commentary on class and capitalism like Squid Game and Parasite are coming from cultures outside of the American hegemony.

Hollywood isn't the only movie industry in the world. China has the largest movie market on the globe, while Japan and Korea have been releasing critically-acclaimed and massively popular films for years. Bollywood is a whole industry in and of itself. As we’re seeing across industries, technological innovation and increased access to it is leading to decentralization. While we may continue telling the same 7 stories, expect to see many more variations of them reflecting more diverse perspectives.

2. The MoMA is Selling Picassos to Buy NFTs

Did one of the world’s iconic art museums turn into a ‘degen NFT trader’? It’s one of the stranger headlines in a year full of them, but there is good reason for it.

The museum plans to sell $70 million worth of the collection gathered by the founder of the CBS broadcasting network… The collection includes Pablo Picasso’s 1919 "Guitar on a Table" as well as works by Renoir and Rodin.

The museum has been keeping tabs on the rise of digital art, made more popular by the rise of NFTs and the ability to prove provenance of digital assets. And after significant declines in IRL attendance even after the pandemic, the museum decided to diversify in order to extend its digital reach.

Inclusion of these digital assets in real galleries is on the table too. New NFT galleries like SuperRare’s in SoHo have proven that people will leave the house to view collections of digital art as the line blurs between the physical and digital.

These galleries are incredibly flexible in what they display as there’s no need to transport or take care of physical pieces. It makes it easy to do a ‘Collector Takeover’ such as their June 20th event that featured digital arts patron: Cozomo de’ Medici. According to Perkins, more than 300 visitors came through the gallery for the show.

And while you can view his collection here anytime you want, there’s definitely something to viewing it in an expertly-curated physical space that museums like MoMA should be able to tap into.

3. The Hunt for Virality is Making Fashion Boring (and Wasteful)

TikTok’s success comes from giving its users a taste of virality— that fleeting 15 minutes (or seconds) of fame. Its model promotes ever-changing trends for its userbase to keep up with. From songs and dances to visual filters, engaging with the latest is how to be seen. Unfortunately, everyone seems to be chasing the same thing and being ‘novel’ isn’t a winning strategy.

When it comes to style, TikTok has been slowly removing ‘personality’ from the equation. Chasing virality based on the latest trend ultimately makes everyone dress the same. On the platform, there is no incentive to stand out from the crowd because individuality doesn’t get you ‘likes’.

Style on TikTok has evolved into a series of peer-pressured dress-up sessions that have people jumping in and out of aesthetics, trends, and identities to fit the latest craze.

This could have a detrimental effect beyond the destruction of personal style. Faster trend cycles are increasing textile waste as clothes go out of style faster. In fact, traditional fashion brands that operate on a seasonal cycle can’t even keep up.

Microtrends are a ripe money opportunity for fast-fashion brands who can produce clothes and have them in stores within three weeks.

The rise in popularity of brands, like Shein, has also contributed to this. Shein is known to offer 700 to 1000 new styles daily, making them the fastest of the fast-fashion brands. As a result, Shein is considered one of the least sustainable fashion brands in the business. It is near impossible to mass produce at that level and have it come at no environmental costs.

In response to this hyper-accelerated cycle of fast fashion, innovators in the space like FINESSE are tapping into the potential of A.I. and online communities to generate designs. Followers of the brand get to vote on which ‘fits ultimately make the cut for production — in the aim of creating a more sustainable and more inclusive business model (sizes range from XS to 3X). The ability to plan for more considered drops with an already-engaged community could be revolutionary for an industry built on chasing hype.

…And In Case You Missed It

• AI Allows Dead Woman to Talk to People Who Showed Up at Her Funeral

• Colorado now accepts crypto for tax payments via Pay Pal

• Tom Brady’s NFT platform, Autograph, partners with the PGA

• Cool Cats find their new CEO (formerly Disney)

Let’s be honest, NFT (Non-Fungible Token) isn’t the sexiest name for a unique, blockchain-based digital asset. But it is still ‘technically correct’.

NFTs were never supposed to be a ‘consumer facing name’ and weren’t exactly focus grouped by the crypto enthusiasts that first began experimenting with them. Their extreme rise in popularity (and in some cases notoriety) was largely unexpected.

And while not many were not surprised by the inevitable “bubble” bursting, the future use-cases for this technology became obvious.

Now, the largest companies in the world are beginning to implement NFTs, but that’s not what they are calling them.

Months ago, Meta began allowing users to authenticate and display their ‘Digital Collectibles’ on their Facebook and Instagram profiles.

And now, Starbucks is implementing ‘Journey Stamps’ into their loyalty program with over 25M million members. Participants in the Starbucks Odyssey experience will be able to:

“…engage in Starbucks Odyssey ‘journeys,’ a series of activities, such as playing interactive games or taking on fun challenges to deepen their knowledge of coffee and Starbucks. Members will be rewarded for completing journeys with a digital collectable ‘journey stamp’ (NFT).”

“NFT” has already become a loaded term. For some, just hearing ‘NFT’ is triggering for a variety of often unfounded reasons — with associations ranging from environmental destruction to total scam. But soon, these same people may become unwitting owners of NFTs themselves as they collect ‘Journey Stamps’ to enhance their coffee experience.

2. Ethereum Done Merged

The biggest event in crypto went off without a hitch officially making Ethereum a ‘Proof-of-Stake’ blockchain and reducing it’s electricity usage by over 99% (and global electricity 0.02%).

That massive reduction in environmental impact is expected to make Ethereum much more palatable for adoption by many ESG oriented companies and institutional investors.

The moment of the ‘Merge’ was live-streamed and over 250,000 streamers tuned in around 2AM EST to witness a historic moment in crypto. And the actual merging of the Ethereum blockchain with the parallel running Beacon Chain, in-real time and without a moment of downtime, is an impressive technical feat of coordination that even Budweiser recognized.

3. Ghost of AI Past 👻

Artificial Intelligence will be involved in almost every aspect of our lives in the coming years and it’s estimated that 90% of online content will be ‘synthetically generated’ by 2026. With the right ‘inputs’, AI tools can work wonders.

DALL-E can create beautiful images, Sudowrite can finish an essay for you, and chatbots can pass the Turing Test (tricking humans into believing that they are chatting with a real person).

These chatbots largely run on OpenAI’s GPT-3 software, the latest in language generation software. Chatbots can be ‘customized’ with inputs like quotes so that their messages can represent a character like Spock from Star Trek, or even real people (living or passed).

One grieving man did just that with his late fiancé —inputting memories and quotes before starting a conversation with the resurrected “Jessica.”

More recently, the concept was in explored in Rick and Morty. In the latest episode, Rick programs his late wife as an AI to always be ‘one room away’ — able to talk to him around the house as a form of comfort. As expected, it proves to be too much, and Rick has to flee that universe to a new one.

The entire concept is spooky, but could there be applications for AI for the bereaved? It’s certainly not the first time that the living have tried to get in touch with the dead as a form of therapy…

4. Coinbase Enters the Political Arena

With 2022 and 2023 being the years of ‘crypto regulation’, Coinbase is making moves to ensure favorable policy is considered.

Coinbase’s 103M users will be able to access profiles showcasing the attitudes of their representatives as it relates to crypto policy — and soon, users will be able to donate directly to their campaigns (with crypto of course!).

The scale of Coinbase’s userbase —one that is presumably already ‘invested in’ and ‘for’ crypto — will not go unignored by potential representatives. If this platform is effective in generating political action and donations, expect those running for election to lean into it.

…And In Case You Missed It

• Doodles NFT project raised $54M at a $704M valuation

• 370 news words added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary including ‘metaverse’

• Ford files 19 ‘metaverse’ trademark applications

• NBA partners with Sorare on an NFT powered Fantasy Basketball game

• Abra launches the first US Regulated ‘Crypto Bank’

Over the last few months, several AI Image Generation tools have captured the public’s attention as accessible tools like Midjourney and DALL-E allow users to enter basic prompts to generate fascinating images like the below: (Times Square New York but in the 1500s as painted by Raphael).

While output from the likes of DALL-E, Midjourney, and most recently Stable Diffusion are no doubt impressive, they raise questions about the nature of creativity. Some artists even see these “tools” as an existential threat, especially as AI generated art begins taking home awards (like at the Colorado State Fair). The winning piece, Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, “took home the blue ribbon in the fair’s contest for emerging digital artists.”

And even if the worst fears of artists (that they’ll be fully replaced by AI) are overblown, there are still concerns around the datasets the AI tools use to produce the art. For example, Stable Diffusion’s dataset — which was legally scraped from the open internet —contains millions of artistic works. Is it ethical for those pieces to be reduced to data points used in the creation of new art?

In the quest for data, the image set used to train Stable Diffusion includes millions of pieces of art gathered from living artists without consultation with the artists, which raises profound ethical questions about authorship and copyright. Scraping the data appears lawful by US legal precedent, but one could argue that the law might be lagging behind rapidly evolving technology that upends previous assumptions about how public data might be utilized.

In the meantime, it won’t stop experimentation as projects like Deep Objects see AI as an exciting complement to the creative process:

2. PUMA Revives ‘Black Station’ as a Virtual World

Two weeks after selling out their first NFT collection, PUMA has opened up phase 2 of their metaverse rollout with a revamped legacy concept in Black Station.

"Twenty years ago, Black Station was PUMA's home for our most innovative designs in fashion," said Adam Petrick, PUMA's Chief Brand Officer. "Given the boundaries we are pushing from a product design and digital standpoint, we found it fitting to bring Black Station back as a new portal for digital exploration across fashion, sport performance, our heritage classics, and innovation."

Black Station can be accessed via internet browser (Blackstation.PUMA.com) allowing anyone with an internet connection to enter PUMA’s first metaverse experience which is a reveal for the exclusive NFRNO and Fasteroid shoes. These limited collections (2,000 each) are the first PUMA products to be conceptualized digitally-first and represent an experiment in product design philosophy.

The second activation in Black Station will be tied to the Futrograde Fashion Show occurring in New York tomorrow night which will pull elements of Black Station into the show and vice versa.

3. Are You Ready for the First Day of ‘Metaversity’?

COVID and the subsequent lockdowns have been cited by many as accelerator for trends in Work and Learn from Home. The ‘kick-start’ propelled Zoom to all time highs as it became synonymous with video conferencing.

Zuckerberg doesn’t think that seeing your peers’ faces on a screen, unable to make true eye contact, is at all a replacement for being in person. Developments in VR allow for a sense of ‘presence’ with others, in addition to allowing for some cool learning environments.

Now, Meta has launched its $150M Immersive Learning project with ten universities (some of which were fully online already).

The University of Maryland Global Campus is one of them. The online-only school—which enrolls more than 45,000 undergraduates—doesn’t have any physical classrooms or student life spaces. Meta has sent the school dozens of headsets, free of charge. A selection of students in its introductory biology and astronomy courses—two of the five pilot courses this fall—will use them.

While this program is free, it won’t be forever.

"Meta has big plans to turn the metaverse—where the digital campuses ultimately live—into a money-making machine. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the company hopes to have at least one billion users in the space in the next decade."

4. Blurred Lines: A Metaverse Reality Show

A new web series will attempt to channel the ‘The Real World, but in the metaverse. The R3al Metaverse brings NFT based characters from top projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club, Cool Cats, and Doodles together in a classic ‘90s reality TV format…simply living together.

Beyond the lack of human characters, the series has some other key differences from its predecessor. For one, it will take place largely through channels like TikTok.

The parent company, Invisible Universe, establishes its characters on social media first, with plans to extend them into books, movies, games, toys, NFTs, and more.

“We think that the next Woody and Buzz will be introduced to you on TikTok instead of on the big screen,” Biggio told Decrypt.

And in web3 fashion, fans will have the opportunity to impact the storylines themselves via ownership of an associated NFT collection. In fact, your NFT could make a cameo.

The R3al Metaverse is just the latest attempt on the part of web3 creators to disrupt traditional distribution models within the world of entertainment. From the Deadheads series, to Dan Harmon x FOX's Krapopolis, to Mila Kunis-backed Stoner Cats, many of these projects have buy-in from established Hollywood talent, but questions still remain -- such as: what happens when rights to a character is lost? See: Seth Green's stalled The White Tavern project (which was meant to featureBored Ape #8398 as the lead character until the NFT was lost in a phishing scam.)

In the end, however, perhaps the only question that matters is whether or not the quality of these shows is worth the hype. There’s already a glut of content as it is.

Check out the trailer for The R3al Metaverse here:

…And In Case You Missed It

• ‘The Merge’ has a date and time: September 14th around 8am ET

• PUMA’s Futrograde Fashion Show will take place tomorrow night

• Andressen Horowitz establishes ‘Can’t Be Evil Copyright’ template for NFT projects

• Gucci campaign taps Stanley Kubrick films for aesthetic inspiration, an ode “to cinema and to one of its brightest maestros”

• The FIFA 2022 World Cup will have a lot of NFTs

For web3 advocates, tickets have always been an obvious use case and an opportunity to onboard millions to the space. NFTs allow digital tickets to feel and operate like physical ones and can have additional layers of utility beyond that.

Owners would have the ability to hold on to the ticket after the event as a ‘keepsake’, displaying it in their digital wallet (in the same way as a physical ticket). And event operators can identify those holders down the line and reward them.

While Gmoney is not an event (actually a person!). He has exemplified how this model can work. He carries a card with an NFC chip that generates a POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol NFT) for those he connects IRL. It is essentially a digital autograph with added utility.

And those that held onto Gmoney’s POAP were rewarded with access to the initial Adidas Into the Metaverse drop.

Eventually, someone’s collection could say a lot about them. Who they’ve met… what they like to do.

“The same way that people will save ticket stubs from something of sentimental value, over time, these will be representative of that person,” creating a social graph that, similar to a long-term Instagram account, becomes more valuable over time. The difference, proponents say, is that it’s “a little more private than having one’s picture taken”, as Farrell says — without sacrificing the bragging rights to those who speak the Web3 language.

Now, one of the biggest players in the web2 ticketing space has caught on. Ticketmaster has partnered with Dapper Labs who previously helped onboard sports leagues like the NBA to web3 (Top Shot). They have integrated digital wallet functionality into its marketplace and will allow event organizers to issue NFTs and POAPs.

If only a small percentage of the 480,000,000 tickets they distribute annually include an NFT or POAP component, then the prophecy of the ‘Great Onboarding’ may indeed turn out true.

2. Forging the Physical from the Digital

Nike and RTFKT are continuing to explore the relationship between digital and physical apparel. Now, CloneX holders (RTFKT’s 3D avatar collection) can ‘mint’ NFTs tied to a full physical apparel collection based on the CloneX aesthetic.

The t-shirts, hoodies, pants, socks, and hats have ‘traits’ that are matched to the CloneX that minted them: Human, Robot, Demon, Angel, Reptile, Undead, and Alien.

And similar to it’s earlier hoodie collection, each piece of physical apparel will include NFC chips that verify the associated NFT and add a layer of ‘history’ to the item.

This not only keeps track of provenance but also can give the physical items an IRL story — Was this garment worn to the Super Bowl? Was it once owned by Drake? — which might reflect a change in value.

And of course, you can use those same items in the metaverse:

3. Can you Copyright the Entire Internet?

Popular consumer AI tools like DALL-E and Midjourney leverage complex machine learning algorithms and the entire internet as a dataset to generate images based on a prompt. Using them is easy… not so different from a Google Search. They are powerful tools that will clearly see increased use across a variety of creative industries.

As these tools and others gain adoption, they pose a fascinating conundrum in the world of Intellectual Property as the output produced often pulls in some combination copyrighted material.

And now there is even discussion around the prompts themselves being copyrighted:

It’s incredibly early days in the world of consumer AI content generation, but already we’re seeing it challenge traditional systems.

4. In Defense of Zuck

While Zuckerberg remains a popular internet punching bag, he is (literally) putting his money where his mouth is to the tune of $10,000,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros, but where is that money actually being spent? Certainly something more sophisticated than the Horizon Worlds selfie he was clowned for a couple weeks back.

In a recent interview with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg made clear that his ambitions for Meta are based in creating the next ‘social centric’ computing platform that prioritizes a feeling of ‘presence’. The $10B he has invested into ‘the metaverse’ are largely going towards the hardware to realize that vision.

And in October, the public will get the next iteration of it. The Meta Quest Pro will go for a whopping $1,500 and offer the latest and greatest in both AR and VR tech. On feeling more ‘presence’, the tech includes eye/face tracking so that you can make eye contact with your online buddies (something video calls notably lack).

At that price point (and physical size), the streets won’t be packed with people wearing ‘metaverse goggles’ anytime soon. But Zuck promises that the hardware will cheapen (and shrink) as the technology and efficiencies improve.

And while Zuckerberg has much to be criticized for, there is an obvious earnestness in his hopes for this technology.

…And In Case You Missed It

• Warner Records partners with Probably Nothing to launch a web3 record label

• Leading DAO, Friends with Benefits hosts first IRL event

• OpenSea will side with Vitalik’s chain after the merge (and won’t support forks)

• Sony Japan is building the largest virtual talent and development project in history

The inherently democratizing nature of Web3 is an interesting force in the Fashion industry which is traditionally difficult to access. Still, the industry continues to be a first mover in the world of Web3. This year’s New York Fashion Week will showcase a number of activations that lean into Web3 and allow more access.

The Keys to NYFW NFT collection allows anyone with a web3 wallet the ability to participate in NYFW.

Upon purchasing the Keys to NYFW (available from Keys.NYFW.com), customers can select either the “IRL NYFW Experience” button to attend a physical event, or the “Designer Keepsake” option to obtain a limited-edition physical product from the brand. Payments are available via ETH, Afterpay (which partnered on the experience), or credit card.

And PUMA’s Futrograde show on 9/13 will be a coordinated virtual experience allowing viewers from around the world to be a part of the show.

Alongside the show, Puma will reveal a digital experience that integrates interactive components to engage a global audience and further establish Puma in the Web3 space after several collaborative projects in the first half of the year.

It’s likely that more people than ever before will be able to experience at least some version of this year’s New York Fashion Week.

2. The Interoperable Metaverse Begins to Form

Ernest Cline’s vision in Ready Player One is built on the foundation for what many believe ‘the metaverse’ could one day look like. That is, a multitude of immersive experiences that players can freely move between, bringing their consistent identity (avatar) to each.

Many metaverse platforms are promising this, but actual progress towards that vision is starting to be made. Leading the way is The Sandbox (a popular decentralized metaverse platform). They have built 140,000 avatars tied directly to NFTs of the top projects such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and Cool Cats.

Essentially, The Sandbox created avatars that match the traits of a given NFT. Once a player proves they own that NFT, the avatar is unlocked for them to play.

As more platforms adopt this functionality, the same player will be able to maintain consistent identity across the metaverse.

And the momentum continues as interoperable avatar platform, Ready Player Me, raises $56M in Series B.

3. Bored Apes Attend the VMAs

Music continues to embrace (or be invaded) by the ‘metaverse’. At last night’s 2022 VMA’s, two of the biggest names in the both the music industry and Bored Ape Yacht Club community performed ‘live’ from The Otherside Metaverse.

The performance received reactions across the board that were generally divided down the line of ‘NFT fan’ or ‘NFT hater’.

Either way, it was not the only ‘metaverse first’ of the night. BLACKPINK took home the very first ‘Metaverse Performance of the Year’ award for their concert in PUBG Mobile:

And the competition was steep, including Justin Bieber, BTS, Charlie XCX and Twenty One Pilots.

4. Turns Out AI Influencers Aren’t Entirely Risk-Free

And in an update from last week’s FTR Newsletter, we now have seen the backlash an AI influencer can cause:

A.I. Rapper FN Meka was dropped by Capitol Music Group after being called out by activist group, Industry Blackout who described the project as a:

“direct insult to the Black community and our culture” by being an “amalgamation of gross stereotypes [and] appropriative mannerisms that derive from Black artists, complete with slurs infused in lyrics.”

CMG had signed FN Meka and who released a single called Florida Water. Similar to actual influencers, brands will need to do their research into the cultural context an AI influencer is debuting into and what actually drives them before making a signing.

…And In Case You Missed It

• The PUMA Nitro Pass sells out

• The NFT Band Kingship partners with M&Ms

• Spotify launches NFT functionality, allowing creators to showcase their collections

• Binance and Mastercard partner to allow 90M vendors in Argentina to be paid in crypto

• Anthony Hopkins gets in the NFT game

Meet Rozy. On the surface, young, hip and boasting almost 150,000 followers on Instagram. But upon further inspection, you’ll notice that she is not quite what she seems and that the phone in her hand is not what generated the image above.

Rozy is a CGI generated human and was created by the South Korean company, Sidus-X. She comes complete with a backstory, AI generated responses to her fans’ comments, and over $1.5M in profits from her brand deals (this year alone).

The "virtual human" industry is booming, and with it a whole new economy in which the influencers of the future are never-aging, scandal-free and digitally flawless -- sparking alarm among some in a country already obsessed with unobtainable beauty standards.

For a brand, influencers are powerful tools to generate awareness, but more importantly trust in their products. A review from a trusted influencer can go a long way. But influencers can be a double edged sword if they say or do something controversial. Not a problem with Rozy.

Rozy’s success story is just one of many and an indicator of more to come. There’s already a ‘Top Virtual Influencers’ list who’s accounts command millions of followers.

2. Digital Fashion, But IRL

Following his collaboration with Adidas, Gmoney is launching his own luxury brand with a heavy focus ‘crypto culture’. The clothing comes with digital twin NFTs and a complex, gamified system for acquisition.

9dcc describes itself as the first-ever crypto-native luxury house and lifestyle platform. Their first product is an NFC-connected black T-shirt.

In traditional luxury, the price tag is the prohibiting factor. That may be the case with 9dcc, but there is an added layer to acquisition. You must purchase a series of NFTs to claim the garment which will feature AR connected NFC chips for IRL flexing.

3. Solana Leaves the Metaverse?

While the rest of the world goes digital, Solana is going brick and mortar with a physical store called ‘Solana Spaces’ in New York City and Miami.

With the recently announced ‘Web3 phone’ to be released in 2023, this store will function like an Apple store. It will be a place for product, but also an experience. There will be informational sessions and web3 onboarding.

The hope is that it will expose a new segment to the metaverse / web3. And of course, everything can be purchased with SOL.

4. PUMA Enters the NFT Game

While, PUMA has worked with our friends at Catblox to drop a capsule collection, this is their first solo foray into the NFT space.

4,000 ‘Nitro Tokens’ were claimed at their Black Station website on Sunday. Those NFTs will be used for the Nitro Pass mint which will provide access to an upcoming metaverse experience and split into ‘2 designs’.

The Nitro Tokens are available on the secondary market and holding a value of around .13 ETH ($200).

PUMA has been tight lipped about the experience, but we’re pretty sure it’s going to be cool 😇.

…And In Case You Missed It

• Dapper Labs brings the NBA Topshot concept to the NFL

• Mark Zuckerberg gets absolutely roasted by his own Chat Bot

• Bored Ape Yacht Club hits 1M followers on Twitter

• Muse to release the first fully ‘NFT Album’

• And FTR launches Deep Objects

Paris Hilton. Pamela Anderson. G-Eazy. Winnie Harlow. Luis Guzmán. No, this is not a pop culture fever dream. It’s the frankly wild cast of a new NFT-gated slasher flick produced by Ashley Benson and co-created with filmmakers Jimmy Giannopoulos and Diomedes Raul Bermudez.

Those willing to shell out $263 for one of 10K limited-edition NFTs will be granted exclusive access to stream “this generation's cult-erotic-slasher-flick,” but this dream team has broader aspirations:

By way of blockchain technology and NFT distribution, 18 & Over will disrupt the film industry for the benefit of all independent filmmakers, fan communities, and major studios alike. Experience fan engagement like never before and embrace the future of film.

Check out the trailer — and collect your characters here.

2. How to Train Your AI

Millennial readers likely remember an AIM Buddy named SmarterChild, a sophisticated chatbot for the time (2006!). Apparently the chatbot was the victim of serious cyberbullying as millions of teens hurled insults across the early internet.

16 years later SmarterChild is offline, and the effort to create an AI powered online assistant continues. But those (probably) same millennials aren’t making it easy. In 2016, Microsoft released ‘Tay’ onto Twitter.

Unlike SmarterChild who could only deliver pre-programmed responses and perform simple search queries, Tay could ‘learn’ from conversation. Unfortunately the conversations on Twitter can be ‘toxic’. Less than 24 hours later, Tay had certainly learned from them and had to be turned off.

The latest effort to harness the internet for chat (while maintaining civilized conversation) comes from Meta’s ‘Blenderbot 3’ built on previous LLM software (Large Language Model).

These AIs are trained off on massive amounts of general internet data. It’s distressing, though not surprising, that they seem to ultimately reflect the worst of humanity’s tendencies.

Blenderbot’s training goes beyond a largescale scan of the internet though. Strikingly, users must sign off on terms and conditions to even begin a chat that states:

“I understand this bot is for research and entertainment only, and that is likely to make untrue or offensive statements. If this happens, I pledge to report these issues to help improve future research. Furthermore, I agree not to intentionally trigger the bot to make offensive statements.”

You can help guide Blenderbot’s development into a more civil AI Assistant by opening up a chat here: blenderbot.ai/

3. AR Contact Lenses Could be the Real Deal

For Augmented Reality to reach it’s full potential, it must have the ability to be ‘always on’. Right now, AR use feels a bit gimmicky because you can really only use them via your phone’s camera app. And no one wants to wear AR glasses (yet at least).

But what if they were contact lenses? Gigadgets is working on this:

4. Teens Report They Are “Never Not” Online

Speaking of ‘always on’. A new poll from Pew Research Center shows that half of American teens say that are never not online. 35% say that they use at least one social media platform almost constantly.

YouTube has a stranglehold on the market as 95% of teens check out their latest video recommendations every day. Coming in second is TikTok which is opened by 67% of teens every day.

If the internet teaches our AI Chatbots to be racist, what could it do to our youth?

These internet companies are thinking about that and are implementing Parental Controls to to both monitor and curb social media use.

…And In Case You Missed It

• A collision of manicured manors with the raw counterculture energy: The Art of Burning Man at Chatsworth

• The US cracks down on Tornado Cash and sanctions the first smart contract

• Spotify is breaking free from Ticketmaster and Eventbrite to sell tickets direct to fans

• And are brands ‘metawashing’?

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. In the 1960s, the US Military created a ‘resource sharing network’ connecting mainframe computers across the country and allowing universities, government agencies, and defense entities to communicate directly. This was the first integration of the internet as we know it.

Many claim that ‘the metaverse’ is simply the next iteration of the internet. Well, the military is working on that too. And while The Otherside may be a headline grabber, STE is making far more progress than most realizes.

They have been hard at work developing a ‘metaverse’ well before the term went mainstream. Development on the STE (Synthetic Training Environment) actually started back in 2017.

What is it? We’ll let the US Army speak for itself: Synthetic Training Environment is an emerging capability that will converge current live, virtual, constructive and gaming environments into a single simulation training environment.

Their ‘metaverse’ is a cloud-based 1:1 digital twin of Earth allowing access to accurate 3D simulations of any part of the globe for the purposes of virtual training and mission rehearsals.

And to top it off, it is interoperable… Allowing many different softwares to leverage it. It could be used for purposes well beyond military training in the future.

2. ‘Metaverse’ Concerts Becomes a Category

In April of 2020, Travis Scott set both the gaming and music world on fire with his foray into the metaverse. His 9 minute set in Fortnite was wildly popular and earned him over $20M via ‘skins’ sales (essentially virtual merchandise).

The precedent set by Travis Scott was enough to inspire dozens more virtual performances spanning well beyond Fortnite as a platform.

And just over a year later, ‘Best Metaverse Performance’, has been established as an awards category in the upcoming MTV VMAs. The competition is already stiff and the ‘metaverse venues’ are varied.

Fortnite, PUBG Mobile, Minecraft, Roblox, and Wave are all represented and have hosted major acts like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber.

And as these virtual worlds continue to gain adoption and larger userbases, expect the competition for this award to get steeper!

3. The Merge (Coming Sept ‘22!)

The Merge is coming and will be one of the biggest events in crypto’s history. There’s a lot going on with it, so here’s the TLDR:

Like Bitcoin, Ethereum’s consensus mechanism is based on Proof of Work which secures a blockchain network via energy expenditure.

The Merge will transition Ethereum off Proof of Work (PoW) and onto a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism which secures a blockchain network via users locking up capital.

The net result… Post-Merge, Ethereum will consume ~99.95% less energy than its current usage. 

It will also reduce the amount the network has to ‘pay’ for security, adding less ETH to the ecosystem (i.e. number go up).

So what exactly is The Merge? Here’s the anology that The Ethereum Foundation uses:

“The community has built a new engine and a hardened hull. After significant testing, it’s almost time to hot-swap the new engine for the old mid-flight. This will merge the new, more efficient engine into the existing ship.”

Basically there is a second blockchain that has been running parallel to Ethereum since 2020, but using PoS instead of PoW. On the date of The Merge, they will… well… merge. And the main Ethereum blockchain will be PoS.

There are ‘resistors’. Some believe PoS is flawed, and others have hefty investments in Ethereum’s Proof of Work system that they don’t want to see become worthless. Some of these people have banded together to create yet another Ethereum blockchain that continues to operate on Proof of Work.

Similar ‘rebellions’ have happened in the past with both Ethereum and Bitcoin. Those chains (Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic) are still running, but have far less users and value than the main ones. Only time will tell.

…And In Case You Missed It

• Black Rock provides clients Bitcoin exposure via Coinbase

• The MLS signs a digital ambassador (Bored Ape #6045)

• Someone purchased NFTs.com for $15M (remains anonymous)

• Meta begins rolling out ‘digital collectibles’ on Instagram and Facebook to 100 countries

• Tiffany & Co launches NFTiff collection of jeweled Cryptopunks (250 sold out for 30ETH each!)

The nostalgia triggered by music is unlike any other art form. The right track can transport the listener back to a previously experienced reality — whether it’s an entire stadium belting out your college fight song or the pure joy of a campfire singalong.

For those who grew up playing video games, those soundtracks stir up the same nostalgia — but for completely imaginary moments:

• The slow crescendo of strings will bring you right back to exploring the wilderness of Morrowind.

• This transfixing choral arrangement evokes seeing the ring in Halo for the first time.

• The haunting vocals of Sea Power’s “Want to Be Free” from that final boat ride in Disco Elysium will always be enough to raise the hair at the back of your neck.

• And of course, the staccato, electronic beeps of Mario will bring many a Millennial back to the second row of their family car, Gameboy in hand.

“The concept of dynamic music – or music that changes to your environment or actions – is unique to games. As players, we have come to rely on music to tell us we’re in danger, to react when we draw our swords, and tell us to calm down when the coast is clear. It is our soundtrack, no one else’s.” - Louise Blain, Sound of Gaming presenter.

As the gaming industry has matured, the ‘albums’ associated with iconic games have become holy grail collectors’ items, with die-hard fans tracking down old school vinyl records in order to relive those imaginary moments — so much so that now there are labels like Data Discs specializing in producing these highly-coveted OSTs . For the smaller indie game, these albums can be another revenue stream to support bootstrapping creators while offering a small but passionate fanbase one more touchpoint to keep them coming back to the worlds they love.

2. William Blake’s Nightmares Walk Again

Apple opened it’s new London flagship last week with the launch of “United Visions,” an augmented reality experience that focuses on bringing to life the monstrous figures of poet and painter William Blake's The Ghost of a Flea (1819-20). Artist duo Tin&Ed worked with hip-hop producer Just Blaze and the Getty Museum to bring the much-sampled, much-referenced artist’s work to life — complete with hypnotic soundtrack.

The Getty, which holds 1 of 3 surviving examples of Blake’s Satan Exulting over Eve is scheduled to open it’s Blake exhibition autumn 2023 — an evolution of Tate Britain's 2019 retrospective — which digitally “graffitied” and animated Blake’s demonic figures to walk the London streets he once frequented. Now with AR, Just Blaze hopes to continue the tradition. He described his own introduction to Blake's work— a story in a Spiderman comic —and said he hoped that United Visions would provide a similar introduction for a new generation. As hardware and software improve, there’s no telling what old masters and mad geniuses might be resurrected and rediscovered.

3. Miami is for HODLRs

Winter may have come for NFTs in the rest of the world, but in Miami, spring has sprung. The city has rebranded itself as the “crypto-capital” of the world — positioning itself as a hotbed for blockchain innovation. Mayor Francis X. Suarez shared plans Thursday to release 5,000 Ethereum NFTs later this year. The NFTs will be designed by 56 different Miami artists “representing the city’s 56 square mile area” — a collection that celebrates the diversity of the local art and charity scene.

Time USA will help define the city’s NFT strategy as well as execute the project, while Mastercard will offer Miami NFT holders exclusive benefits like special event access at restaurants and private cultural tours of the city. A first-of-its-kind foray into a yet-untapped utility — NFT as city guidebook.

4. Cult & Rain + Superplastic Launch Parties Offer a Glimpse into Parallel Realities

If there’s one thing a party is good for, it’s for bringing people together and converting skeptics into believers — with the help of some social lubrication, of course.

In London last week, Cult & Rain unveiled the latest stage of its Web3 roadmap with an installation and party at Outernet on London’s Tottenham Court Road — a new hub devoted exclusively to immersive experiences. Guests included a range of VIP token holders, fashion industry execs and potential investors, all curious how a metaverse event could be translated to physical space.

The launch event featured parties occurring simultaneously in Cultr World and in London. A live DJ streamed from Vegas to both destinations while avatars visiting Cultr World beneath a galaxy sky were broadcast on 360-degree screens around the event. Luxury sneaker prototypes were available to try on via AR and wristbands with QR codes that granted POAPs (proof of attendance protocols, which act as commemorative digital badges).

Meanwhile, across the pond in NY, Superplastic launched its first physical retail space on New York’s Prince Street. The store features physical products, character holographs; and rewards token holders with a VIP room, including token-gated perks and products. Teasers for future collaborations are sprinkled throughout the space as Easter eggs. Founder Paul Budnitz hops that the experiential space can unlock that coveted loyalty loop among NFT holders: the ability to access special products, fashion tickets or concert tickets may be coming just down the line.

…And In Case You Missed It

• Chipotle continues leaning into crypto-culture even during the downturn with their ‘Buy the Dip’ campaign

• If you’ve been jonesing for the laptop harness Nathan Fielder’s been rocking on The Rehearsal

• Minecraft leaves NFT Worlds and other blockchain platforms out to dry

• A succinct history of NFTs from @NFTbark

The year is 2004, and you’re getting ready for day 1 of Middle School. Everyone remembers the stress that comes with that day. You wanted to look your best and make a good impression. That’s why you went with a Led Zeppelin hoodie.
A classic… can’t miss.

The year is 2032, and you’re getting your 6th grader ready for day 1 Middle School. The Led Zeppelin hoodie isn’t going to cut it. Your 6th grader dons the NFT-powered hoodie that lets anyone with an AR set (i.e. everyone) see the wings of his favorite gaming avatar sprout out of his back. Times have changed.

RTFKT is working on this reality. Their latest digital/physical product, the Nike Genesis hoodie includes an NFC (near field communication) chip that can be tracked by AR devices, allowing them to see your virtual wings.

And on the ‘blank check’ Nike wrote them… RTFKT co-founder, Steven Vasilev says, "With Nike, RTFKT is laying the groundwork of what a digital fashion play looks like when backed by a major heritage (meaning Web2) brand… (We are) conscious of staying true to the fast-moving, quirky ethos that attracted its fiercely loyal community in the first place.” And Nike is giving them signoff to do just that.

Ultimately, this specific play is a bet on AR tech going mainstream. A normal person won’t pay $250 for a hoodie with digital wings if they can’t show them off.

But imagine walking through a crowded hallway, AR glasses on. This below scene will look a little different in a decade:

2. Visual Search: A New Threshold to the Internet?

In 2012, a lawsuit was filed against Google to cancel it’s trademark. The claim argued that the term ‘google’ had become synonymous with the act of ‘searching the internet’. The legal term, ‘genericide’ refers to when a trademark stops identifying the origin of products and starts becoming a general term. Similar to how ‘jumping on Zoom’ can refer to Meets, WebEx, or Teams (🤮).

But could “Google it” be on its way out of the world lexicon? Recently, SVP Prabhakar Raghavan of Google’s Knowledge & Information org suggested as much. Increasingly, younger generations are finding answers to their “Google It'“ questions on Instagram and TikTok. The visual nature of the platforms are much better for travel/food/ lifestyle recommendations.

And while, understanding keywords and how to efficiently land on the right webpage is half the job for any consultant… younger generations don’t seem to even think in ‘keywords’ anymore.

The internet is changing and the competition to deliver answers is getting steeper, whether an explicit question was asked or not. In fact, companies like Pinterest are working on how to proactively ask you questions first.

Naveen Gavini, SVP of Product at Pinterest, thinks it should be a collaborative process compares to getting a haircut from the same barber for decades.

“I don’t need to tell him when I walk in how I want my haircut because he knows me. But it started with that first conversation: It was an explicit conversation, like, ‘Hey, so how do you generally like your hair cut?’”

Pinterest is working on how best to ask those explicit questions so they can deliver better answers without you having to ask. They key is to do it transparently and making clear why the user will benefit from answering. No one wants to feel like they are being spied on.

Don’t count Google out though. AI is being integrated into search to analyze video content (including TikTok and Instagram). It can even direct you to a specific timestamp in a video. Still, TikTok may have you covered, even on the highway. ⬇️

3. Soundcloud Introduces “Fan-Powered Royalties”

Soundcloud has been a longtime supporter of independent artists and helped propel more than one to stardom (Post Malone for one). Last year, they introduced a ‘artist friendly’ revenue model that transparently pays out artists based on the % of time any given listeners dedicates to their music.

Now Soundcloud has a label. They recently partnered with Warner Music Group allowing artists under their umbrella to leverage the same ‘Fan Powered Royalty’ model.

The model has proven better than Spotify’s ‘pro-rata’ model in paying artists for their success.

In one of the first studies of FPR in action, entertainment research firm MIDiA analyzed FPR data from 118,000 SoundCloud musicians, finding that 56% of artists earned more under FPR than pro-rata models; but those who earned less under FPR were often larger artists with over 100,000 listeners.

And adding more music to the FPR ecosystem could see it become more mainstream, giving budding artists more leverage in negotiating with labels.

Seems to be a trend… More to come!

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The phenomenon of ‘going viral’ on social media has been taken to a whole new level with the popularization of TikTok. In the right conditions, a catchy clip can see a level virality never before possible (see the story of Old Town Road)… And it’s deeply affecting the business of music, specifically how labels find and sign new artists.

Recently, Vox released an investigation that examines what happens after a song goes viral on TikTok. The net result? Artists that have proven success on TikTok have more leverage over labels than ever. And they are using it to maintain control of their catalogues.

At the same time, labels are finding ways to re-monetize those older masters that they do have full ownership over. Mega-popular shows on streaming platforms like Netflix have proven to be effective in resurrecting older hits and labels are leaning in. This was most recently exemplified in Stranger Things which featured Metallica’s Master of Puppets during a key scene. It’s now surging up the charts almost 40 years after it debuted.

3. More than a PFP: Snap is bringing NFTs to 3D Space

Some NFTs like Catblox’s latest capsule collection are AR compatible allowing users to show off their 3D NFTs in any environment via your camera app.

Snap plans to integrate this functionality, allowing users to showcase their AR compatible NFTs as 3D objects IRL and share them with the world.

This gives NFT owners one more way to flex their favorite NFTs via social media without changing their online identity.

And while Meta plans to take a nearly 50% cut of profits from creators on it’s platform, Snap will take none (at least at first). Their focus remains on driving creators to the platform and facilitating content creation.

3. Worldbuilding Experts Embrace Web3

Polygon, a L2 Blockchain and Ethereum solution, continues to gain momentum with some of the largest brands in the world. After partnering with Meta to launch NFTs on Instagram and Facebook, it was recently chosen by Disney for it’s 2022 Accelerator program.

The Accelerator program provides guidance from Disney’s senior leadership in an effort to spur innovative companies forward. There is a clear emphasis on web3 signaling Disney’s interest in the space.

And of course this move is more likely pragmatic then charitable as one of the largest IP companies in the world looks to better understand how blockchain, AR, and VR will affect IP distribution and monetization going forward.

4. Extraterrestrial Inspiration

Humans have long looked to the stars for guidance and inspiration, building ever more complex structures to achieve a better view of the infinite.

The earliest archaeological artifacts found in ancient Mesopotamia evidenced purposeful stargazing. And some of the largest ancient structures like the structures at Chichen Iza - on the other side of the world - were constructed for the same reason.

More recently, the Hubble Telescope was launched into orbit by cooperating nations. Clear of the atmosphere, it gave humanity our deepest view yet and a better understanding of the origins of our universe.

On July 12th, 2022, humanity received a new set of stirring imagery from the James Webb Telescope which can observe 14 billion year old celestial objects as they were ‘shortly’ after the Big Bang.

The James Webb Telescope is fueled up for 20 years. What creativity will be spurred by the primordial visions it delivers?

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Refereeing requires an intimate understanding of the rules, strong observational skills, a sense of justice… and an ability to tune out your harshest critics.

And in a sport where duping the refs has increasingly become a point of parity among top players and teams, they need all the help they can get.

FIFA has announced it will implement AI-powered camera to help judge offsides calls at the 2022 World Cup. They will leverage positional sensors and tracking cameras to monitor the locations of players (and 29 different points on their bodies!).

The system will alert a ‘ref control room’ off the field who will validate whether a player was indeed offsides. This tech should give the fans one less gripe with the stripes and allow the refs to focus on figuring out if this deserves a red card:

2. A New Angle In: Retail as an Entry Point to Web3

While some are working out how to add a physical/retail component to their web3/virtual experiences, others are trying to do the opposite. Salvatore Ferragamo is giving customized-on-the-spot NFTs to IRL customers that purchase physical goods at its concept store in Soho.

The NFTs, bought alongside physical goods, are customized in-store via an immersive experience. Customers step into a mirrored booth displaying digital artwork that can be altered by touch. They are then minted on the Ethereum blockchain and delivered to the recipient’s wallet.

The in-store customization experience is a ‘web3’ experiment, but also one in product personalization and on-demand manufacturing as Ferragamo uses similar touch screen tech allowing for the customization of 6R3ENE sneakers, made-to-order. The digital products just arrive faster.

4. Who Could Have Seen it Coming?

We still don’t know exactly what the ‘metaverse’ will look like as it matures (or if it will even be called the ‘metaverse’). Many were only exposed to the broader term in the last year as Facebook rebranded to ‘Meta’.

Those topics that fall under the ‘metaverse’ umbrella (virtual worlds, avatars and identity, web3, etc.) are not new ones. Popular culture has delivered more than one prescient piece that explored the very same topics, though the visuals may not have look exactly like our current vision. Below are just a few:

• While looked back on as ‘hokey’, the 1982 film Tron was the first to leverage significant CGI and explored concepts like digital worlds, AI, and identity online as Jeff Bridges’ character entered the virtual and battled an omniscient AI.

• Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel, Snow Crash coined the term metaverse and envisioned a ‘successor’ to the internet that was fully 3D.

• And most recently, Ready Player One took on the beefy topic of decentralization and control in a virtual environment that a failing IRL world had come to rely on. It also has the best depiction interoperability… allowing you to bring your ‘skins’ into any virtual environment!

  

4. A New Library of Alexandria

As the Internet matures, the future it will deliver is difficult to fully conceive. At the same time, our past is becoming as accessible as ever thanks to Histography.io.

Matan Stauber’s algorithm identifies and extrapolates historical events from pages added to Wikipedia and automatically places them on a interactive timeline starting at the Big Bang. Now we have the ability to sift through mountains of historical data points, placed in context and sorted by categories (like wars, music, and more). It’s downright cool.

Hopefully, we can avoid burning this library down. It should be a little more difficult at least.

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