👋 On time for your weekend: a round-up of this week's 23 remarkable stories at the intersection of #technology, #business, #design, and #culture.
📚 Reading
Proof of Passion:
The social returns to prescient taste and committed fandom just went up dramatically. This dynamic will upend how cultural trends are born, financed, grow and die, change marketing and community building, and turbocharge the value of influence. It will also create a backlash to the financialization of every aspect of creativity, and leave us to grapple with a transformed society.
🪙 The tokenisation of creativity—Trends, Analysis, Lies and Statistics
The Furry Lisa, CryptoArt, & The New Economy Of Digital Creativity:
Much like Uber did for transportation and Airbnb did for hospitality, the blockchain is transforming and expanding the market of art and digital experiences of all kinds. The only distinct difference about this digital transformation from many that came before: it is empowering the careers of creators themselves more than everyone in the middle.
👻 That’s creativity without the rent—Scott Belsky
American Idle:
Once we all live in the metaverse, this type of infinite replication and remixability will be something we take for granted, but even now, we're starting to see an early version of it on TikTok. This type of native remixability feels like it will be table stakes in future creative networks.
📈 And creativity compounds—Eugene Wei
🎧 Listening
The simplest things were incredibly hard:
Before [Airbnb] had a single employee, they talked about the culture and the core values that they wanted in the company. That‘s not typical. They have made decisions along the way that are probably not the best for revenue and growth, but to preserve culture and the mission. They were ultimately exactly the right thing for the business. The community aspect is such an important part of why people want to be part of Airbnb
Varsha Rao—Danny in the Valley
Who's in the office? Notes on a year of remote work:
The liquidity of where people are and when the conversations happen is interesting. It's partially the asynchronicity of it. It's also ... where could that conversation or that event be, who could join it, how will that happen now and how many of these [new habits] will stick?
Benedict Evans, Toni Cowan-Brown—Another Podcast
The Art of Storytelling:
[T]he Internet has totally forgotten: you don't need to go fast to keep people captivated. When you want to say something deep, you change your tone, you change the pitch of your voice. You change the cadence of your words, and you let things sink in.
David Perell—The Danny Miranda Podcast
👷🏻♀️👷🏻♂️Our Work
The sister newsletter, this week honing in on platform design strategies—The NTWK.
A short piece on embedded finance for the Passion Economy—Genesis
📬 Suggestions?
Please, feel free to send tips and ideas for the next issue by replying to this email. Or, send them directly to hello@futuring-architectures.com 🙏