Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #2

From VUCA to BANI, subtle notifications, decentralized fashion and exit to twitter

This is the 2nd edition of Rabbit Holes 🕳️ , in which I’ll share 5 perspective-shifting pieces that I’ve spotted lately. All pieces link to the core idea of Creative Destruction: to explore new worlds and perspectives in order to build a better world.

Let’s go down the rabbit holes!

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Rabbit Holes 🕳️ 

😅 BANI - A New Acronym To Describe The World

BANI stands for Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear and Incomprehensible. 

• Brittle: “You cannot rely on something brittle or frail. It may break down out of the blue – despite looking reliable, flexible, even unbreakable. In a BANI world, a brittle system may work well on the surface while being on the verge of breaking down for good.”

• Anxious: “If you are anxious, you will also feel helpless and unable to make decisions: any available option may potentially turn out terribly wrong.”

• Non-linear: “Cause and consequence no longer are assessable in advance. The basic logic of what we know as a linear cause-effect chain has become non-linear: they do not quite fit together.

• Incomprehensible: “Such non-linear results of any given cause, events, and decisions often seem to lack any kind of logic or purpose – they are incomprehensible. We cannot grasp the cause because it may have been long gone or it may appear too appalling or flat-out wacky.”

“As such, each letter of the acronym also hints at viable options to respond to our current challenges:

• If something is brittle, it requires capacity and resilience.

• If we feel anxious, we need empathy and mindfulness.

• If something is non-linear, it calls for context and adaptivity.

• If something is incomprehensible, it demands transparency and intuition.”

→ read more about BANI

🧘‍♀️ Google’s Subtle Notifications

Google is experimenting with a series of devices that allow for “distraction-less notifications”. Google Little Signals is made up of six different devices. Each one comes with its own way to notify you about things. The six devices include Air, Button, Movement, Rhythm, Shadow, and Tap. Each one is based on a simple design that gives you distinct ways to be notified of things like knocks at the door, pressing news, and more.

I especially love the Air device which one can place next to a plant and can then be programmed to blow air at the plant, for example, when your receive notifications of your best friends. This is only an experiment for now, but it reminded me of how early we are in the transition to a phygital (physical and digital) world that’s not f*cking our minds and well-being.

→ check out Google Little Signals

💬 Exit To Community vs. Billionaire Takeover

In my newsletter issue Exit to Community, I talked about DAOs and an alternative to traditional startup or company exits. After Elon Musk launched his now successful takeover of Twitter, Wired magazine ran a story that suggests Exit to Community and a user-owned democracy as a better solution. Meaning, that instead of a billionaire owning Twitter, why can’t all users own and govern Twitter?

In fact, this Exit to Community project has actually already been going on since 2016, when shareholders and collaborators organized the #BuyTwitter campaign to shield the platform from hostile acquisition takeovers by big companies. 

“…we formally proposed that the company study its options for converting to user ownership so that it could be itself a democracy. Juries of users might study and formulate policies for larger groups to vote on. Perhaps users would be able to debate and decide on moderation policies, for instance, and center those who have experienced harm on the platform in decisions about how to prevent it in the future. Perhaps cultivating a healthy public space would become more of a priority for executives than propping up the share price.

[…] We pointed to examples of broad-based ownership and accountability like the Associated Press, a global nonprofit owned by the thousands of news organizations it serves, and the Green Bay Packers, a beloved football team owned by its fans.”

→ read the Wired story

🌍 How The Influencer Industry (ad agencies, PR firms and lobbyists) Is Destroying The Climate

“Now, when you think of the industries most responsible for climate change, you probably summon up an image of an oil rig, right? Maybe even a coal mine or a megafarm, perhaps heavy engineering. But there’s one industry that’s never mentioned in that list even though every other industry depends upon it. I’m talking about an economic sector that makes ... nothing. It has no stock, no warehouses, no factories. It’s entirely powered by brains, by spreadsheets and by PowerPoint. Who is this mystery industry? The professional services of advertising and PR firms, the big management consultancies, the corporate lawyers and lobbyists.”

“[…] the X industry can no longer pretend it can remain neutral. Now if we do that, perhaps we could become a league of solutionists and shift all of this creativity, inventiveness, knowledge and influence towards fixing climate change. And then this invisible and intangible and incredibly influential X industry can finally stop being part of the problem and become part of the solution.”

→ watch the TED Talk

👖 Decentralizing Fashion With Web3

"Imagine buying the perfect pair of pants. Their hem length and bagginess were debated and voted on by their future wearers. Their fabric was sourced ethically, and you can look up the metadata of where it was milled. They have been minted on the blockchain, so if you resell them, the next buyer knows they’re legit. And instead of the pants pattern belonging to the brand for the rest of its life, it will have a life of its own, moving fluidly between design teams and production houses, with the creators paid equitably at each step. This is what designers Jeremy Karl and Eugene Angelo want decentralized garment design to be.”

"The unsustainable season-by-season overhaul would give way to designers releasing remixes of their creations and those of others, while smart contracts ensure that creators can share in the value their ideas are generating downstream. […] Ideally, even a photographer who takes an outfit picture that goes viral should be a part of a garment’s story.

[…] ‘It creates a positive-sum, cooperative industry, rather than brands competing with each other to the bottom, which is how fast fashion came about,’ Angelo says."

→ read about Decentralizing Fashion

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That’s it for this week!

Thomas