[00:00:00] Phillip: Welcome back to Future Commerce Podcast, at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Phillip.

[00:00:03] Brian: I'm Brian.

[00:00:04] Phillip: I'm pretty sure that you've heard about it once or twice, but I just want to take a moment, just here at the top of the show, to mention we do have our brand new zine. If you haven't picked it up just yet, we still have a few copies left. There's only 500 of these. I know I've threatened before. We're not going to reprint these. Do you know what a pain in the rear it is to drag these around the country? 500 of these. It's called Strata, and it's the 10 aesthetics of commerce, the things that are moving markets right now. If you ever wondered why in the heck people would buy Sydney Sweeney's bathwater, wonder no more. We've got the answer. It's here. 80 pages. Full color. I'm dropping it on my keyboard. This is futurecommerce.com/strata, and these are a hit everywhere we're taking them. We were at Shoptalk with it. We're at Possible later this month, and we have a launch party at Possible. So if you're around at Possible, futurecommerce.com/events, and sign up for that event, we'd love to have you. Strata, it's the 10 aesthetics of commerce, and we'll explain what's happening in the world of commerce. You know? And I think we're just in an aesthetic revolution, Brian.

[00:01:08] Brian: Yeah, it is. And talk about aesthetic revolution, we've got someone here with us today who actually has done real research into what's coming next, and has done this now for several years. We have Gillian Katz from Hannah Grey with us today to talk about an upcoming Cultural Vibrations report that they put out every year, and I am so excited to have you. Welcome, Gillian.

[00:01:38] Gillian: Thank you both so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

[00:01:41] Phillip: Obviously, we talk about culture and commerce. There's a moment in every culture shift where, I feel like we're in the midst of a big one right now. And maybe it's felt like it's coming for a little while. It's definitely here right now. But as we're sort of in the middle of this culture shift, maybe if you know what to look for, you see it before almost anyone else does. That's Hannah Grey's job, right? But you don't maybe always see it in the data, but you see it bear out in other areas of life. And I think that's kind of what you made a career out of finding in your moments. So tell us a little bit about what the new Cultural Vibrations is all about, and tell us why you're here and what you've done specifically to kind of bring you to this point.

[00:02:24] Gillian: Yeah, definitely. So maybe it's also helpful to sort of give a little background on Hannah Grey also, and why Cultural Vibrations is an initiative that we as a firm sort of continue to support. We're an early stage venture firm. We're actively deploying capital into pre-seed and seed stage companies that are truly redefining the everyday experience, both for everyday consumers and also for consumers as a piece of the enterprise story. People who are employees, who are leaders, who are managers, who are utilizing new technology to do their jobs better, more efficiently, for cheaper, more innovative, etcetera. And so Cultural Vibrations is our thought leadership platform, in a sense, to sort of help distill when we are living in the future, which is sort of what being an early stage investor is, where are we looking for signal, and how are we sort of understanding not just where companies are coming from, but really how they're going to get their feet in the ground and really stand up a scalable motion to go to market and really be that cultural driver of change.

[00:03:31] Brian: We've been big fans of Cultural Vibrations now for a while, and we've covered it on the podcast and the newsletter and other ways. And this report, you've released it multiple times. Last year, we saw some really interesting trends in there, things like the cozy web, commerce as coup, which I think is right up our alley, the AI dilemma and the illusion of control, which also plays into some of our themes for this year, which is related to control, autonomy, and sovereignty, and how —

[00:04:06] Phillip: Yeah.

[00:04:06] Brian: — consumers want to take control of their lives, but also have certain things that they don't have to deal with. And so, tell us a little bit about how you've seen some of that play out this past year, and then we can get into this coming report.

[00:04:22] Gillian: Yeah, I think we've really followed the trend of, like, how does AI help people without hurting them, if that's... And I think some of the stories in this journal really sort of get to that core of not just this really fear-ridden perception of AI, which is this autonomous entity that's running without control. I think of the machine wars in Dune, this sort of futuristic world of this thing we're all afraid of happening, yet we're sort of inching towards. That's really not, I think, where we've seen the last year continue to reach. What this journal has really crystallized on is that humans and AI are going to have a very symbiotic relationship. And that it really takes two to tango in terms of putting these initiatives to work. It still requires human advocacy, human control, human rules and regulations, things that I think will actually be really important in sort of mitigating the fear of that inevitable robotic future. There really is task-based work. And then there's really the human element that is what defines the frameworks that these tools and systems are being trained to sort of execute against.

[00:05:41] Phillip: Yeah, we will link to it. So the easiest way always is to just go click in the show notes, and we'll have a really easy link down there. And plus, I always like to achieve the credit with a nice little UTM link. But we'd love for you guys to go get a copy of that for yourselves. You know, you kind of set it up there, Brian. You'd contributed a bit to this year's, but Gillian, give us a little bit of the insight into how this year came together.

[00:06:14] Gillian: Yeah, I think sometimes it feels really like a concerted piecing together and sewing the thread throughout the journal, and then sometimes it's reading the pieces as they come in and sort of figuring out what the theme is. And I would say this year is a little bit of both, the top-down and bottom-up approach to figuring out who are the contributors that we're really excited to have be a part of the journal, and what are they thinking about? And some of it just sort of crystallized around that really human element of where do we belong in all of this? It isn't just a solely technological future. Yes, we all sort of see this, the writing on the walls, of Pandora's box is open and AI isn't going anywhere. But it's really up to us as people to define and figure out what that role looks like. And so I think that's been on people's minds, and it was really exciting to sort of see that come to life through the pieces that are in the journal. And then the other thing we did that I'm really excited about is work with a surveying agency called Okay Human, and the name was sort of apropos to the emerging theme. But instead of running a quantitative study, we decided to run a qualitative one. And through that, we really got over 100 insights from different participants who they sourced interviews with around their real-world understanding and the future anticipation around AI. And these are folks who are from everywhere, from tech-native Gen Z, who are using AI every day in their education or in their employer.

[00:07:51] Gillian: And then there are folks who say, I'm not using AI and I'm afraid of it and I live in rural Kentucky and this just doesn't apply to me. And so it's really interesting, the sort of sentiment that we got across, that was that regardless of where people sat on that adoption spectrum or on that excitement spectrum, they all believed singularly that AI was going to be a transformative technology. So I think that was really validating in the data that we were able to sort of parse through, but their understanding of where and how AI belongs in their lives was really dramatically different and varied. And so I think that was sort of the three threads that we then sort of tied and wove within the rest of the journal of, we contribute pieces that are written by folks like you, Brian, and Matt Klein, who's our futurist in residence. But we also have pieces that we write using our own Vibrations OS system that are on theses that we're developing and areas that we might look to invest against sort of in the future. And that sort of was nicely tied into some of these human sentiments coming from this Okay Human survey. So there's sort of a few different lenses that we take. Some are very enterprise-driven, some are very consumer-driven, but ultimately as a firm, I think we really focus on that everyday experience, and there's something very human in that.

[00:09:22] Phillip: Do you feel like there is a... My algorithm, I'll admit my algorithm has a particular, you know, positive bent toward AI and generally all the opportunity that may come from it. That's my algorithm. I will tell you, that's not...

[00:09:43] Brian: Mine does not.

[00:09:43] Phillip: Tell you, that's not Brian's. It's definitely not my teenagers, right? Interesting. I'm curious what your, you know, what does the qualitative insight give you? You said it varies from region to region. Is there an overall outcome and overall take that Cultural Vibrations landed on, that you feel like there is a vector or a direction that you feel like the study has borne out?

[00:10:11] Gillian: Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that was the most fascinating to me, and it's funny talking about culture, I was actually an anthropology major in college and I never thought that that would be useful, but here we are. So I geek out on studies and ethnographies and all of that kind of stuff. But it's interesting because some of the real tensions in the survey are obviously the most interesting and layered and nuanced sort of places to dig into. And one of them was that there are areas in people's lives that they feel that AI, if when asked, where does AI not belong, they had very clear answers. And then when prompted again with a similar question, but slightly reworded, they were willing to take that back. And so a lot of it was more nuanced, not on area, but on role. So for example, in the workplace, AI shouldn't be your manager, but it can be your assistant, which feels like sort of it's in conflict in that you can manage it, but it can't manage you. Same with in your relationship, AI can be your relationship therapist, but it can't be your partner. And so there's sort of this influence of what are the human traits and skills that human-to-human interaction require that AI really can't replace? And so no one wants to be managed by a machine, but they're okay to put control over one. And the same thing with a relationship. It's not like we're Her, you shouldn't be dating your AI per se, if you're dating a... and want to sort of work through tension or issues, an AI can be a really helpful thought partner in that experience. And so it was these really interesting, there's a domain and then there's a role within it. And there were very few domains that people felt were off-limits for AI holistically. It was really just how you slice and dice the role within them. Even when asked about healthcare and other things, people weren't opposed to AI being involved in the experience. They just didn't want there to not be a human either.

[00:12:28] Phillip: There's something so interesting. You said you have a background in anthropology. I find that fascinating, because my understanding would be that, maybe classically, that you have this concept that you're going into studying culture without imposing your own frame on it first. And I find it really fascinating that you're in the discipline of VC where maybe you have to walk into a room with a formed thesis. So I feel like you have a... you're maybe holding a little tension there, and I'm curious how that plays out in your career and here, especially if there's something interesting in that duality when you come to a study like this. And then the other thing is, isn't there sort of a classical problem where the observer changes the nature of what they're observing?

[00:13:23] Brian: Yes.

[00:13:24] Phillip: And I'm curious, does that apply here? Right? Is a cultural signal, once it gets named and tracked, it starts to behave differently?

[00:13:34] Gillian: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really interesting point. I also think there's something in that around once the cultural signal gets named and demonstrated and pointed out and validated, is it worth investing against anyway? Are we too late? I've done work in the past with a more quantitative surveying shop that really crystallized some of that work around, where are the adoption curves? Where are we in them today? Where will we be in eighteen months or a couple of years, to sort of determine where on the early stage venture timeline do we sit, and what does the horizon look like in terms of, is this something that's plateaued? Is it growing? Is it shrinking? Where is sort of the market trending? Which is sort of another really interesting way to slice and dice those exact sort of... the cultural moments and where they will be or where they're anticipated to come from. But I do think that's an interesting point around how are we subjective versus objective in viewing these exact sort of trends, for lack of a better word, but also the inflection points of when a trend becomes mainstream. I think to the point earlier of your differing algorithms, some things are just based on the bubble in which you're in and how you learn to see the world through that lens, versus if you traded phones for a little while, one, your algorithms would change, but two, you would probably see the world in a very different and empathetic way. So I don't know, I try to meet founders with strong opinions loosely held, if that makes sense.

[00:15:23] Phillip: In...

[00:15:23] Gillian: ...understanding what I think I should be looking for, but then also being really open to being proven completely wrong by someone who's an expert in their field. The beauty of being a generalist is I'm really never the smartest person in the room. So speaking to someone who's worked in cybersecurity for forty years, they probably know better than I do what the CISO at a Fortune 50 company cares about, is willing to pay for, is willing to underwrite in terms of risk, when I'm sitting here thinking about it from an anthropological standpoint or a cultural standpoint or a traditional innovation standpoint.

[00:16:03] Phillip: There's one other thought that I have that I think, when you're... because I know that Brian has a contribution here. I think we'll also kind of get into some of the other finer details. But I also think about, just in the macro, you are in the qualitative and not the quantitative here. Clifford Geertz had talked about the difference between, like, a twitch and a wink. And you have this sometimes misinterpretation of the same physical movement, and you maybe misattribute one to another where it's highly dependent on context. Right? And so I'm just curious, having consumed Cultural Vibrations myself in the past, I feel like you're extraordinarily good at this. But for those who haven't, how are you separating the twitches and the winks? What makes it uniquely interesting? Is it the curation of who's contributing? I'm just curious your point of view on how you're getting the alpha and how you're looking at the early stage investment thesis, and how you apply that to this curation of the market and trends, early trend spotting?

[00:17:17] Gillian: Yeah, I mean, I think some of it is finding a diversity of opinion, and that can look like a lot of different things. This edition of Vibrations has a fair amount of, I would say, cultural strategists or folks who live in this world daily. And then compared to operators, people who have spent time more in seat in an enterprise or who are looking at things from a more tactical approach. So some of that we actually have started, and I don't know if you guys have noticed this, implementing at the end of some of our more recent journals, thoughts on optimism.

[00:18:01] Phillip: And we...

[00:18:01] Gillian: And we pull those from folks across industries, often who are sitting more on the operator side within companies, to sort of get a pulse on what are they excited about? Some of the content, especially as it pertains to AI and autonomousness and all of these sort of big buzzwords, it can feel a little dark and a little heavy. Mentally it sort of can be taxing to wrap your head around all of this future stuff. And I think what's great about closing on a really optimistic note is that this technology is transformative, and most of that will be for the best. And I think the people who are building with it and building it every day can really feel that power and are excited. And I think that excitement is really what continues to drive our work, is like talking to an entrepreneur who's really enthusiastic about what they're building, that energy goes a really long way in lighting us up and getting us excited about their future worldview. Because ultimately, the vision of the company at this stage that we invest in is going to change immensely. It's really up to that founder to bring us into their world and to continue to be gritty and excited and want to sort of build the world that they wish existed. I remember when I was an operator, that was the most empowering thing to me, to come to work every day to help someone manifest destiny and build the betterment that they wish that they had the chance to have when they were sort of going through a hard time. Entrepreneurs are, I mean, they're so inspiring and truly so effusive. And that's why founder-led sales is the best strategy. That's why venture crystallizes around the folks who are narrative-driven, who are telling their story, who are bringing you into that world, because it is really just storytelling.

[00:19:53] Brian: My gosh, I have so many things that I want to say right now, like across all the things that you've said here. I actually want to come back to something you said, which was you went with a more narrative-driven approach to your research, qualitative rather than quantitative. And it reminded me of something that I've been thinking about and probably will write an article on coming up here, like how is this playing out across this organizational structure and how businesses are formed. And that is Goodhart's law. And that is, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Mhmm. And I actually think that applies potentially to language too, where the moment you sort of define something based off of, like, a trend, it becomes a viewpoint. It becomes... yeah, it becomes static. And actually, the moment you name it, it becomes something else. Yeah. Because language evolves, at least in America. I just read Will Mandus' article about how, like, sort of languages, like a formed language and dictionaries, are actually a relatively modern idea. And how the English and the way that they ran the formation of their language was through sort of the history of a word and its usage in the past.

[00:21:15] Brian: Whereas Webster kind of created the dictionary in a way that was fluid, and it was all about, like, he wanted to create an American language, so he had to use the language in the way that was relevant to Americans. And so it was all about its usage rather than history. So one of the pieces in here is called "Make Language Dangerous Again." Yeah. And I do wonder, like, as, you know, we talk about context, which, you know, language immediately changes upon context, like nothing is ever the same in any given moment. That's a phenomenological viewpoint, at least. That with context windows shrinking and things being less applicable from any given moment, where the possible feels more real than present reality, what does "Make Language Dangerous Again" mean, and how do we, like, what does that play into, like, that's the second-to-last piece before you get into optimism. How does that play into this larger narrative about humans and AI?

[00:22:25] Gillian: Yeah. I mean, as you were saying this, I was like, that's so apropos. We have a piece exactly about this in the journal. You're reading my mind. And I can quote from the article. Ben Jenkins, who wrote the piece, is actually the co-founder of Okay Human, the agency that ran our qualitative study. So he sort of lives and breathes this language and this understanding and this human willingness to sort of speak freely. They have a really amazing methodology that captures people when they're feeling like sharing, which is when you want to talk to people, not when they're sitting in a two-sided mirror room feeling under the spotlight, the Mad Men days. But he writes, "The linguistic founder effect is where a new platform or culture births new linguistic patterns, which are adopted by those wanting to share in its success." And I think that his article is really about the tension of creativity and technology, and how this sort of techno effect has made everyone speak the same language when there's really, you mean so many different things. But even I feel like the idea of adding "maxing" to everything is really taking over right now. You mean for —

[00:23:45] Brian: The Jestermaxxing?

[00:23:47] Gillian: Looksmaxing. It's really this idea, I think, that we're maxing ourselves to a very specific set of criteria, and we're using a word that sort of meets that understanding across a spectrum of applications. So it sort of takes away the use of the words that have more weighty feeling because it's just becoming this every day. And so I think the nice thing of vibrations, and actually why I love the term, I can't take any credit for having come up with it as the theme of every journal, just by nature of naming, that a vibration can be this little resounding thing that sort of lingers, or it can grow, or it can go away. And I think his piece really speaks to almost that vibration of language, of the trend of something, and does it stick, does it go away? And how do we sort of understand turning things from something that maybe used to have meaning into this vernacular that is almost devoid of it.

[00:24:47] Brian: Well, especially in this age of AI, like, where actually AI is giving us the words. It's now trapped in the language. We're not even speaking our own thoughts. We're speaking the thoughts that are thought for us. And we've entered this language game with computers now, where it used to be that we had to enter into their world through the, you know, through C++ and, you know, the... I'm just like, the languages that were built to interact with the world of the machine. But now, yeah, the world of the machine has language for us that's based off of us as the models for that. And so what does that mean now that computers can sort of enter into our mind? I think of, like, Cluely and what they were trying to do, yeah, and, like, put words in the mouth, and how that fits into what you talked about before. What is the role of, quote-unquote, the machine or AI or whatever you want to call it? And in terms of, like, actually empowering, is it to give things to us? And then, like, does it make it easier? And then you brought up the sort of conflict between being managed by AI or having AI be managed by us. But actually, what if it has nothing to do with management whatsoever? Same with relationships. Like, it starts to redesign, redefine, and make people rethink what being managed actually even means. If something is your assistant, perhaps it's actually managing you more than you're managing it.

[00:26:16] Phillip: Have you ever met an actual executive, Brian? They are managed by their assistants. Exactly. I digress. Yes. Gillian, you can answer one of the many questions there.

[00:26:24] Brian: Yeah. Sorry. That was just questions and thoughts.

[00:26:26] Gillian: No. I mean, it is fascinating. It's certainly retraining the way that we converse with it, right, as a system. We have learned the right way to talk to AI, to get it to understand us, right? And I think the biggest frustration is when it doesn't get you. But it has also, in the same vein, learned how to talk to us so that we like it. It's nice to us. It sugarcoats things. It only gives positive feedback. It's apologetic. It's exactly like the way you wish every person interacted. But if you did actually have that experience time and time again, you would be so frustrated by the lack of anything coming back to you that it would sort of make that humanity inhuman. That exact tension. Exactly. And so it's funny, I've heard people say, I switched from ChatGPT to Claude because it was meaner to me. It was more honest. We all have that sort of tendency to want feedback. And I think what's interesting is that AI sort of has the same propensity to be told, actually, I wanted it this way, or, reread this document, you didn't get that right. Oh, you're right, I'm so sorry, it says to me all the time. I'll say, that person didn't work at Google. They're like, you're right, I don't know where that came from. So it's that sort of narrative of wanting to get it right, but also acknowledging that it's wrong. There were some really interesting insights from the qualitative survey as well about that. And it was something I hadn't thought about at all, but really made me rethink. We give people the benefit of the doubt, but we expect 100% accuracy from AI, or at least I do. And I think what came out of the survey was like, I am happy to sort of fact-check my AI in the same way I am anything that a person tells me. No one is 100% accurate. Why are we putting that on a machine when we don't put it on people? Like, what is this, where is the standard coming from that we're holding this to?

[00:28:36] Brian: Well, I think this is really important. I can see why you included my piece now, because, yeah, my piece is all about interacting with reality and being able to discern what's real and what's not real. Yeah. And so what do we do to do that? Well, I think one of the things that, you know, Matt was trying to set up is, like, this world that we're living in now is so... what was called dashboard culture, and where he defined this dashboard culture where everything's just based on the metrics, right? And speaking of Goodhart's law, it seems like the metric has become the goal for everyone. Yeah. And so what does it mean for us to, like, interact with reality and know how can we make things that are good, and also not be tossed by the wave of whatever, like, memetic trend people are on, or whatever path some algorithm has led us down, how are we able to, as businesses and individuals, be able to navigate against, like, a world that's being driven completely by a metric that may or may not be based on anything real?

[00:29:47] Gillian: Yeah. I mean, it's funny. Your piece funnily aligned with another fun fact about myself. In addition to being an anthropology major, I'm actually a certified sommelier.

[00:30:00] Brian: Get out. Yeah.

[00:30:01] Phillip: This is the perfect example.

[00:30:02] Gillian: For me.

[00:30:03] Brian: We gotta hang out. You're in New York, right? Awesome. I want to come out next.

[00:30:08] Gillian: We're coming over. It's funny, in thinking about sort of the frameworks that you learn to understand wine. It's exactly as you talked about it in your article, you're creating a mental model to then experience something new and be able to put it in a box, right? A master sommelier is faced with a brown bag covering a blind bottle of wine, and they have a specific framework of questions, the deductive tasting method, to fully put that blind bottle into a box of, I think it is from this region, from this year, these grapes, and put a bow on it. And the metric, to your point, Brian, of success is, did you get it right? Was all of that information correct? And so there is sort of that accuracy component, but your ability to pattern-match is only as good as your memory catalog, the experience that you can map it to. So I think what's interesting is that as people are curious and experiencing new things, they have to be able to sort of attach meaning to those things to be able to put them in those boxes. We all put everything in boxes. That's, like, what's in our minds. And so I think what's really interesting is that AI is, like, opening the aperture for people to be curious and to ask different questions, but it's also sort of closing the aperture on the output, right? Like, instead of showing you, like, a video about something which you might find if you were looking on YouTube, and it's nuanced and there's dimension, it's really just giving you back, like, the same voice, the same delivery. And there's probably something to that not necessarily creating the same catalog in your mind.

[00:31:59] Brian: Totally. And I think being able to develop those phantasms, it requires a direct interaction with reality, something that in the trivium is called a percept. It's in classical education, I should say. And, like, you know, there's percepts, concepts, and there's phantasms. And we almost all live in the world of concepts, except for we also live in this world of phantasms, these mental models that we create, and we're being fed things from a machine and from the internet and from these images and pictures and language that are creating these incepted phantasms that may or may not actually reflect our own. Like, what happens when we come into direct contact with that actual thing? And so, like, my thing is, like, it, you know, it swims like a duck and it quacks like a duck, you know, and it looks like a duck, but it doesn't smell like a duck, it's not a duck. Because, yeah, I think that that's the thing that we're losing in this process of letting our tools take over and extend what we're capable of. We're losing the process, we're losing the ability to create our own phantasm, for just letting other things incept what that reality looks like, and then we're never going to be able to validate what's real.

[00:33:25] Gillian: Yeah. I mean, I think of this, and I'm obviously a student of the liberal arts, I think it becomes in many ways more important to learn how to think and think critically than it is to be able to do. And so, yes, I could have a million internships, or I could have studied business in undergrad and gone into accounting or something very skills-based, there's strategy, there's thinking, but it's frameworks. And I think what I love and what I hope will sort of remain important in society is really that way of thinking that the liberal arts education teaches you. Take a sociology class, take an economics class, understand human behavior from a multitude of lenses to be able to make those informed opinions when you do encounter something new. I remember even taking a library science class probably in middle school, and we learned how to read things on the internet as a quality source. I don't know if this is ringing —

[00:34:22] Brian: Oh, yeah, I remember that. No way. It's, like, have no Wikipedia.

[00:34:27] Phillip: It haunts me.

[00:34:29] Gillian: Is it cited? Who is it written by? And the internet, everything has a look, you can sort of get a sense of, like, is this legitimate? Is it reputable? I feel like there was a whole criterium that they taught us in middle school. But because the frameworks that we're seeing AI in visually are all sort of the same, it looks like, to your point, it might look legit, it might sound legit, but there's no source to validate the information within there. And so there sort of is that critical thinking of, like, you're telling me that there's a hundred million people in the state of Massachusetts. I don't know that I buy it, or whatever that fact or sort of sentiment might be that it's populating. It just looks like it's right and it sounds like it's right.

[00:35:20] Brian: Exactly. Phillip, sorry, I monologued on you there.

[00:35:24] Phillip: No, I mean, I did it myself for a little while there. I know that we spent a lot of time sort of talking about the, you know, the... I'd say it's the framework of, you know, how you would arrive at a report or a journal like this. We've talked a little bit about the content of last year's. We talked a little bit about the content of this year's. Brian, what is in your piece? I'm really interested in how it ties into our predictions from the beginning of the year in the age of autonomy, and coming into how everybody has this sovereignty angle, and then how, you know, companies like Hannah Grey are investing in companies now that have ten-year time horizons, you know, in long-term investment theses. Because what you just talked about in your piece is quite soft and quite esoteric and quite theoretical. But what is in your piece that is... everyone always wants the tactical. How do you think that that plays out in this area of AI? Because you were talking about how, well, does the AI... how does the AI communicate with us? Well, I feel like I'm on Claude Code every day. I'm talking to Claude Code every day. It's quite not natural language every day. It gets a little bit better every day. The language games that we're playing every day actually tend to adapt more towards me every day. I'm having this perfect mirror that reflects back to me every day. I'm just curious if there's people out there who made it this far, and they're like, well, what does this all actually mean? I want to be the surrogate for that.

[00:36:51] Brian: Yeah. I think there's the element of, like, we used to say book-smart, and maybe that's what saying someone is terminally online is now. I think that somebody who's a hundred percent dedicated to digital information is playing solely in the world of concepts, and they're not getting out there into the real world and feeling and touching and experiencing and understanding things as they really are. And so my viewpoint would be I'm not against engaging with toolset. Toolset and the world's changed. I mean, I haven't brought up Marshall McLuhan yet, but I know I am. Yeah. You know, he talks about how —

[00:37:31] Phillip: You mean the days-since counter would always be at zero.

[00:37:34] Brian: Wait, wait. Yeah. Yes. It's true. Every time we podcast and every time we talk.

[00:37:38] Phillip: That's good, though. Yeah.

[00:37:40] Brian: He talks about how, you know, we're in a total environment now. Every time we release a new technology, it creates a total environment that we're all part of. There's no escape from that. There's no way to say, oh, let's go back, let's put it back in the box, that we... we're now engaged in transformation. You said something early, Gillian, as well, about frontier, or... I didn't say frontiers. You said you're out in the future. The future is a frontier. The new technologies are frontier. And frontier, according to Cloyn, is where identity is formed. And every time we launch a new technology, we create a new identity, which is why it feels so painful for so many people. We actually are being transformed as humans and the way that we operate and interact with each other, and the way that we use technology, the way we extend our senses, to get into Eric McLuhan's work and about how extension of senses messes with our sense of what is real. And so I think that the key here is, if we get so far from base reality and we allow ourselves to be so wholly owned by technology, a specific one specific technology, we're going to lose out on the benefits of who we are as humans and businesses through this other medium. So this is why, Phillip, it's actually so powerful that we launch publishing in Future Commerce, because that is a form of technology.

[00:39:04] Brian: It is still a legitimate form of technology that changes how people absorb and operate in the world. It's different than digital media. Reading a book, it operates on you differently. And so as businesses go to market, I think that they need to be thinking about the mediums that they're playing in. And I wrote about this a while back, like, this is probably a few years ago now. I said, any business that's solely digitally native and doesn't have an in-person component to what they do, a brand that's selling something, is actually going to be in big trouble. If they don't have a more physical engagement, because there are different things that you pick up when you're engaged in person. And so I guess we're going to have to be well-rounded people. Yes, use the technology you have available to you to do things. But if you only use AI to go build your business, you're going to lose the discernment that's required to actually use AI well in the first place. And so I think that that's the key here. I think I said touch grass, but no, touch it all. Like, we need to be engaged with reality and understand how much one piece of technology is taking over our businesses and our persons, ourselves as people.

[00:40:28] Gillian: Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with what you said, Brian. And I think there are a couple pieces to that in terms of the tactical outputs of what a venture firm actually does with something like Cultural Vibrations. I think one is that we invest in sort of the second and third level effects of some of these sentiments. So we have a company in the portfolio called Mixus. The name is mixing us, as AI and humans. And it's all about human-in-the-loop technology, specifically thinking about how to build trust. What does trust-layered AI look like? And how does the human component manifest that trust in high-stakes industries like law and finance and regulatory, where you can't really get something wrong, you can't really send the AI out to do the job without making sure that what they're sending and doing is accurate and correct and on par with what you as the trained human would do. So I think there's some sort of real outputs there. And then the second is areas that we're eager to explore. And I think some of them come directly from conversations or pieces or submissions from the journal itself. One, I feel very lucky to have interviewed my former professor Scott Anthony on his new book called Epic Disruptions, which is basically 11 case studies of industries that have been disrupted in the past.

[00:41:53] Gillian: Technologies, thinking of, like, gunpowder, for example, as a technology, all the way through to McDonald's. And so he sort of talked about, and thinking ahead of, what's the next disruption, or how is AI disrupting, or how will AI be disrupted both in the enterprise context and just as a technology in general, he sort of said it reminds him of when the first car came out and there were no roads, there were no signs, there were no driver's licenses. It was a danger to human health to have people on the road because there were no regulations. And so he sort of alluded to the fact that that's sort of what we're doing right now. It's like, we're all embracing this technology, but we haven't really put it in a box, and that the box is actually a good thing to build. And so some of it is, like, oh, that's really interesting, we should probably think about some of the governance and the regulatory opportunities that this sort of free-for-all has sort of opened us up to. So some of it is really, like, what are the experts saying from a business-building standpoint, the HBS case study way of thinking about innovation. And then some of it is really the technologically driven means of innovation and what are the possibilities of where the two intersect?

[00:43:19] Phillip: I remember a couple of years ago, Brian, we were deep into sort of the futurism movement, the futurism art movement. I was, I don't know, kind of dragged you along with it. And it just reminds me of the scene in Gatsby, in poor old Myrtle. But anyway, I digress. I love that, you know, rooting it back to, Gillian, how you might frame it, how you might think about the opportunities that arise from this environment. What is the human impact? What does the human behavior result in? And how does that become a commercial opportunity in a way that can benefit people, in a way that —

[00:44:05] Brian: Yeah.

[00:44:05] Phillip: — others can make the world a better place through? I think that that's really... I mean, that is the job to be done, but it's also a really interesting way to think about how you're creating the content around, and now publishing content around that thesis. I think that's really... I mean, many VCs would say that that's what they do. Very few create this output that you're doing. So cool. Fascinating stuff. Brian, anything else that we should cover?

[00:44:41] Brian: I mean, there's so much more to cover, but I think we might be out of time. Yeah. Gillian, we will have you back anytime. We have to. Love chatting with you, love your perspective on the world, and cannot wait to get into the full details of this report. So can't wait to get in.

[00:44:59] Gillian: Thank you guys for having me. It was truly a pleasure. And you say you'll have me back anytime, so I'll be back.

[00:45:06] Phillip: Don't be a... much appreciated. And once again, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Future Commerce. You can find more episodes of this podcast and all Future Commerce properties at futurecommerce.com. If you want to catch a glimpse of that report, make sure you hit up the show notes. It's a very well-known fact at this point, I've been saying it at the end of the episode the last few weeks. Many of the subscribers, most in fact, are not rating and reviewing this podcast, and it helps others find it. So why don't you take a moment out of your time and go do that right now? And if you want to bring more of Future Commerce into your world, check out our print shop where you can get our newest journal. This is the zine that's called Strata. This is volume one, and it's our first edition of our new annual. It's the 10 aesthetics of commerce. This is the next wave of Future Commerce. You can get this. It's 80 pages, available on our shop, futurecommerce.com/strata. And remember, commerce shapes the future because commerce is culture. We'll see you next time.