ZINE

Matt Klein

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Alternative explanations and provocations around our tech, media, and overlooked social shifts. Webby-winning cultural intel for the curious. zine.kleinkleinklein.com

19 THG 11

Interview with Douglas Rushkoff: Program or Be Programmed

Interview Intro — MK: We’re here to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Program or Be Programmed, arguably one of the most foundational books on digital literacy. Program or Be Programmed originally offered 10 commands to intentionally navigate the biases of our digital technologies. Now a decade and a half since its original release, Program or Be Programmed — for better or worse — is more important than it has ever been… especially in the context of AI… the newest and 11th command in the re-released version... ...Which was published earlier this week. In prepping for this chat, I came across an online review that I think is perhaps best description of the value and intent of this work. Now mind you, this is a random review from Nathan G. on Amazon nearly 15 years ago... And I think Nathan nails it. Thank you, Nathan G. “What makes this book worthy of the Neil Postman Award that it won (I just learned that such an award exists) is its refusal to let any digital technology become transparent. From the first Arpanet connections to email to the ubiquitous vibrating phones (and "phantom phone buzz syndrome"), Rushkoff keeps his sharp eye on the assumptions that one has to make before the technology makes any sense: that one should adjust one's personal biological rhythms to the atemporal "always on" existence of computer networks rather than vice versa; that the world should conform its complexity to the reductionism of binary choices; and that human beings are meant to exist as infinitesimal nodes in a vast global network, just to name three. Spelling out those assumptions, Rushkoff does not so much give ten commands as ask ten penetrating questions, questions that ought to haunt human beings as we jump on board the Internet train.” Now 15 years later, we are certainly haunted by these questions and the Internet train feels to be hijacked, barreling and completely off its tracks. Program or Be Program is a time machine to a moment of opportunity 15 years ago. At the time, a chance to pre-read the rules of engagement in order to mindfully approach our tech. Re-reading it in 2024, in addition to its new text, elicited, for me, a total spectrum of emotion. On one side, sweet relief that the biases are all laid out for us. There’s no mystery. We know what our tech wants from us. And on the other side of the spectrum, utter frustration, as if we totally blew it. Yet now, excitingly and optimistically, we’re presented with another opportunity. Another chance to reapply these commands amidst the emergence of AI. I’m eager to not just continue reflecting upon these commands, but further, inquire why we didn’t embrace tech’s anti-human biases, and ultimately what we can do better this time around. It’s not too late. With that, I’d like to welcome to the Zoom stage window, author of Program or Be Programmed: 11 Commands for the AI Future out this week, Douglas Rushkoff. A Snippet — MK: This past summer, you were caught in the spin cycle of the podcast Substack post content whirlwind. I find myself too often programmed, getting demanded for more and more and more, whether that be other people or whether that be myself. How did you turn off that spin cycle? DR: For me, it took a willingness to risk everything. So, in the good old days, I know this sounds freaking insane, a journalist could get a contract with a magazine for like a year or two. And this is what I would do. They say, Rushkoff, we want you to write a thousand words or a 1,500 word piece about technology and society once a month and we'll give you like $3,000, like $2 a word to do this thing. And you would have that and you might have a publisher or I got a gig doing commentaries for NPR, and between three or four things, there's enough money to live your life through these sort of entities. And I was lucky to get under the wire so I could depend on a lot of these entities, but the entities are pretty much all gone. And as a journalist, even

1 giờ 3 phút
30 THG 9

Unplugging Is Not The Solution You Want

The crisis of endless troughs of content, outrage-bait, attention incentives, intermittent reward slot machine dynamics, comparative quantified self-worth, static profiles demanding fixed personal brands, Zoom-fatigue, and our weakening muscle of discerning fact from fiction it’s all just. too. much. for our brains to manage. Statistics about our declining state of mental health amid our increases in screen time are not even needed to support any of tech’s effects. Pause and take a breath. You can feel it. That’s enough. For remedies, we’ve been prescribed to delete our apps, curb notifications, turn our phones greyscale, invest in flip phones, and look away from screens two hours before bed. Oh, and especially don’t doom-scroll or check work email (same thing) as soon as you wake up. Whoops. Meanwhile, the recommendations from the other extreme advise us to become more productive by upgrading our tool stacks — as if we can transform into machines, ourselves, dominating our problems with “hacks.” Using more tech to defeat the pitfalls of tech? Nice try. How many times have you plowed through your timed app limits in the last week? Over the years, countless books and campaigns such as the Social Dilemma raised awareness and proposed the aforementioned solutions. But I ask: Has anything meaningfully changed over the last decade? No. Really. What’s changed? We now have TikTok. Screen time climbs higher. Our meditation apps interrupt us with push notifications urging us to return to their feed of more video content. A three year old is now impressively proficient with an iPad — good luck snatching that thing out of their clutch. Sludge content, unafraid, pleases our needs for stimulation. Hell, “brain-rot” is a phrase we don’t even question. Meanwhile, techie public intellectuals pivoted to “AI safety” and now promote their podcasts and newsletters on the very platforms they were catastrophizing just a few years earlier. With the emergence of AI, we face an onslaught of new issues (consent, copyright, fictitious content, etc.) without ever adequately rectifying those which came before. Most dramatic yet least questioned, AirPods and wearables continue to break sales records... Our tech is increasingly on and inside of our bodies. So much for “getting away.” Via digital trackers, we willingly give away our heartbeat, body temperature, and DNA to companies without an iota of control. And we’re the ones paying them. Whoops. We’re heading in the opposite direction we’ve been proposing. We are no more better off since we’ve coined “the tech-lash” a decade ago. Our interventions have failed. Or did we even try? With such a lack of any meaningful progress, perhaps we require a wholly different approach if we’re to experience a healthier, happier and more productive life with our devices, screens and apps. Perhaps, we must mature our discourse beyond fighting against these issues, to accepting them. It’s a strange word choice and seemingly antithetical to what we want, but bear with me... Instead of unplugging, how may we become more mindful in embracing and strengthening our ability to live with these consequences? Only then can we find better mastery with and over them. You are not weak. The Ignorance of Unplugging In Digital Minimalism, one of the most popular books on developing a better relationship with modern tech, author Cal Newport writes, “People don’t succumb to screens because they’re lazy, but instead because billions of dollars have been invested to make this outcome inevitable.” To overcome this malicious investment against us, Cal urges readers to digital detox. Simply spend a month away from your screens to discover new hobbies and take up journaling. Let me be clear: I could not agree more with this advice. We all need to touch more grass (or mosh), kindle both passions and meaning, establish new rituals, and engage in a habit of reflection. Absolutely. Yes.

19 phút
16 THG 7

Interview with Rory Sutherland: Emotional Efficiency & Reframes

Interview Transcript — MK: You’re listening to an audio edition of ZINE, the Webby-Awarding Winning publication making sense of our current cultural moment, relationship with tech and one another, and what may come next. My name is Matt Klein and I am a digital anthropologist, cultural theorist, strategist and writer, researching overlooked social shifts. I’m also currently the Head of Global Foresight at Reddit. If we’re to author our preferred futures, we first have to be proficient in our zeitgeist. In other words, we can’t write culture if we first don’t know how to read it. And today’s chat is an attempt at exactly that. Celebrated as “one of the leading minds in the world of branding” by NPR and "the don of modern advertising" by The Times, Rory Sutherland is the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy U.K. He’s also the founder of their behavioral science practice. Rory writes the Spectator's 'Wiki Man' column and presents series for BBC Radio 4. His TED talks about reframing perspective, and re-prioritizing details have racked up millions and millions and millions of views. He’s also the author of Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life, which was published in 2019, and is an absolute must read. Rory decodes human behavior and blends scientific research, absurdly entertaining storytelling, and deep psychological insight, which makes him, in my eyes, one of the most important and influential thinkers of our time. In college, I first came across Rory’s talk, “Life lessons from an ad man” where he makes it clear that advertising simply adds value to a product by changing our perception, not the product itself. Yet such reframes can be applied to all elements of our life. He let me see that marketing isn’t simply about slinging crap that people don’t need, but rather is a practice in helping solutions be adopted by those who need them most. Rory discusses how the Eurostar could have spent its budget not trying to increase the speed and decrease the time of its trains, but instead could have spent only a fraction of its budget on models and alcohol, and passengers would request the train ride to be longer, not shorter. These are examples of simply reframing existing problems and solutions, recognizing innate value. In my eyes, strategies to dial up humanity and empathy, and resist the urge to reinvent wheels and spend unnecessarily. And it’s these stories that wanted me to start working in communications and strategy. I’ve been following Rory ever since, and find that his best, most insight interviews are the ones where he just goes off. I’m excited that this, was one of those experiences. As a significant personal influence, here is my chat with Rory Sutherland. MK: I am endlessly fascinated in making sense of culture. More specifically, what's overlooked? What are people not paying enough attention to? And I cannot think of a better person to help answer those questions than yourself. I have a laundry list of questions, but maybe we'll, we'll start simple. What's on your mind? What are you thinking about? What's exciting you? What's worrying you? What are you thinking about in culture right now? RS: I think that question, by the way, is the right question to ask, which is — what we're talking about quite often is the product of a kind of media feedback loop where effectively every news publication and to some extent social media, but actually I think social media is less guilty in some ways than the mainstream media is — effectively decides what's important based on what other people are reporting. And it's been a facet of mainstream media for ages where there's this kind of effective echo chamber where people in the newspapers watch 24-hour TV news, and people on 24-hour TV news read the newspapers to decide what's actually worth talking about. And I think it leads to this complete imbalance where certain things get discussed far too much or

58 phút
12/09/2023

Betty Crocker's Egg is a Myth. Embrace Unknowing.

Originally published via Future Commerce Have you heard of the infamous “Betty Crocker Egg” story? It goes: During the 1950’s, sales of instant cake mixes were struggling. A worried General Mills, owner of the Betty Crocker brand, brought in consumer psychologist Ernest Dichter (creator of the focus group) to conduct interviews with housewives. In his discussions, he learned that housewives’ guilt from the effortlessness of the instant cake mix made using the product “too simple.” The process (or lack thereof) was self-indulgent “cheating” compared to the more rewarding process of baking from scratch. Therefore, the mix was a problematic buy. An insight and opportunity: “What if we left out the powdered eggs from the mix and allowed people to add fresh ones themselves, increasing participation, decreasing guilt, and ultimately increasing sales?” It worked. Once the new cake mix requiring fresh eggs was released, sales of the product began to soar — a win for both the baker and brand. This story reveals the seemingly irrational consumer mind and is a case study of the importance of in-person qualitative research. Only by looking beyond market data could we learn about “premium friction” or that the opposite of a good idea (e.g., more work, not less) may also be a good idea. For this reason, marketers, strategists and innovators alike love sharing it. The Betty Crocker tale supports “The IKEA Effect,” a cognitive bias coined by behavioral economist and author Dan Ariely. As proposed in his study, by putting together our furniture (rather than buying it pre-assembled), we create a unique, more personal relationship with it, increasing the perceived value of our creation. Like requiring fresh eggs, our participation changes perceived value. But here’s the problem: The “Egg Story” as we know it is bullshit. Critical Omissions and Confirmation Bias Why is it b******t? It’s missing critical nuance. There are five missing details which re-tellers leave out: First, Dichter’s findings include, but no one acknowledges, that fresh eggs produce superior cakes. Author and historian Laura Shapiro confirms this overlooked truth in Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America: "Chances are, if adding eggs persuaded some women to overcome their aversion to cake mixes, it was at least partly because fresh eggs made better cakes." The original dry egg mix produced cakes that stuck to the pan, burnt quickly, had a shorter shelf life, and tasted like eggs. We knew fresh eggs made for better cakes because... Second, a patent for fresh eggs in cake mixes was first filed in 1933, decades before Dichter discovered their “psychological importance.” The original patent reads: “The housewife and the purchasing public in general seem to prefer fresh eggs...” Companies were debating dry vs. fresh eggs since the very inception of the cake mix product, not just when “sales were struggling.” (More on that in a second.) Paul Gerot, CEO of Pillsbury during the time called the egg mix “The hottest controversy we had over the product” from the get-go. The story makes it seem like fresh eggs were this novel discovery. In reality, these companies had been debating them for years. Third, around this time, cake mixes were actually selling incredibly well, but only when they weren’t flying off of shelves did it cause worry. Between 1947 and 1953, sales of cake mixes doubled. The concern only arose during the late ‘50s, when there wasn’t a “decline,” but just a modest +5% growth — a “flattening,” if anything. Cake mix sales didn’t suddenly flatten at once because of a mass onset of guilt... especially after years of excitement and growth. There are endless explanations for a flattening such as novelty wearing off, market saturation, product competition or evolving tastes. The story makes this seem like a brand problem when in fact it was a shared category problem. Which brings

13 phút
12/07/2023

Colleges Are Dying, Long Live Higher Education

To forecast our future, we have to identify patterns of change early. But rather than only seeking out collections of signals representing growth, it behooves us to simultaneously study what’s crumbling – signals of decay. After all, growth stems from deep fractures. One of today’s most glaring fractures worthy of our attention is higher education. The changing landscape of higher education is ground zero for radical social change and required innovation. Good news! TVs, toys and software have never been cheaper in human history. Bad news: College tuition and textbooks have never been more expensive. This is according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics which has been tracking the prices of consumer goods and services relative to inflation for the last two decades. College tuition — second to healthcare — is the most “increasingly expensive” buy in America. How coincidental that these are two of the most important purchases one can obtain, and certainly the sort which more should have access to, not less? According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in the 1968 academic year, it cost $1,545 to attend a public, four-year institution (including tuition, fees, room and board). In 2020, it was $29,033. For the fifth of college students attending private schools, that figure is significantly higher. Noteworthy as the cost of (manufacturing) education and textbooks have not risen at the same rate. Is it any more expensive to “produce” education today? This is perhaps why NYU, among many schools across the country, are developing “Schools for Professional Studies” — certificate program alternatives dedicated to furthering education during a moment when traditional degrees are slipping. According to a report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, the number of students who earned undergraduate degrees fell by -1.6% in 2022, reversing nearly a decade of steady growth. As of last year, only 51% of Gen Z are interested in pursuing a four-year degree, down from 71% a couple years earlier. The pandemic and Zoom screens have put things into focus. And students’ parents are on the same page: nearly half of parents don’t want their kids to go straight to a four-year college. Graduate degrees are falling out of favor just as dramatically. For The Wall Street Journal, Lindsay Ellis reports, “At Harvard, widely regarded as the nation’s top business school, M.B.A. applications fell by more than 15% [in 2022]. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania recorded more than a 13% drop. At other elite U.S. programs — including Yale University’s School of Management, as well as the business schools at the University of Chicago and New York University — applications dropped by 10% or more for the class of 2024. Cost was the biggest factor blunting demand.” Meanwhile, this decline is about to worsen — not just because of prices and attitudes, but because of significant demographic change. Kevin Carey, VP for Education Policy at New America, a think-tank, wrote for Vox: “[In 2026] the number of students graduating from high schools across the country will begin a sudden and precipitous decline, due to a rolling demographic aftershock of the Great Recession. Traumatized by uncertainty and unemployment, people decided to stop having kids during that period. But even as we climbed out of the recession, the birth rate kept dropping, and we are now starting to see the consequences on campuses everywhere. Classes will shrink, year after year, for most of the next two decades. People in the higher education industry call it ‘the enrollment cliff.’” Like any business facing disruption, many are pivoting to diversify revenue. Earlier this year I learned NYU was growing its Marketing certificate program for those seeking to enter the field or gain more experiences from practicing experts. I raised my hand and began the process to volunteer as an Adjunct Professor at night.

48 phút
23/03/2023

How To Approach Online Culture

The following is a summary of my 2023 SXSW Talk: Movements > Trends. Here’s Part II. Firstly — there is no such thing as “online culture” vs. “culture.” That’s the digital dualism fallacy kicking in. It’s just one in the same. But for the sake of common understanding — “online culture” in this instance is the fast culture memeified online discourse, which organizations are too often obsessed with. It’s a shift that occurred ~15 years ago. 2007 was a monumental year for marketing. Facebook introduced Pages. Brands suddenly looked exactly like our friends. They weren’t. But nonetheless, brands saw the opportunity. And it was a glimmering one. “What do we have to do or say to feel like a friend?” Ever since the 00’s, brands have been seeking out material and excuses to join in online discourse across social — the perceived “hotbed” of culture. “If we win these discussions, we win culture... and then sales.” It’s uncertain if this notion has even been measured or supported, but was — and often remains — the collective hypothesis. Regardless, “trending” headlines and the meme of the moment became the focus for “friendly relatability.” Attempts to resonate and cut through, optimizing for attention, has resulted in an obsession: scan, track, measure, understand and activate upon whatever’s “trending." Brands say bae, express nihilism — are they depressed? — and are now seemingly... horny? Hashtags, challenges, and aesthetics have replaced the original intention of a “trend”: a meaningful social shift in human behavior. We’ve come to conflate “trending” with “trends.” In the process of chasing cool, most discussed “trends” are really just frivolous entertainment. We’ve lost the plot. Meanwhile, two other macro factors have helped further reverse the figure and ground. In a moment of chronic uncertainty, trends have become our “answers” — comforting explanations of what comes next. And simultaneously while culture also feels stagnant, trends have become our “progress” — comforting change. As a result, the number of published trend reports have roughly tripled since 2016. Trends are trending. And the trending is seen as trends. It’s a mess. Yet in primary research when asking 1,500 people globally if they’ve heard of ten “trends” — from Cottagecore and Barbiecore, to Indie Sleaze and Permacrisis — 43% haven’t heard of a single one. Utter “vibe shift” to the general public, and they’ll think you’re speaking a foreign language. ...Because you are. And meanwhile, for the 57% of people who have heard of one of the most discussed “trends,” less than half of those people have actually participated in any capacity. The vast majority of people have not heard of what cultural thinkers and strategists obsess over, and the general public isn’t doing anything with it. “Trends” as we currently know them are really only for ourselves. That’s fine... but for as long as we recognize they’re untethered from the real needs and desires of real people. These are empty vessels for us to fill whatever explanations we wish into them. They are our Rorschach tests. Cottagecore is whatever we want it to be... because it doesn’t actually exist. If our foundational task is to understand people, we’re way off the mark. For this reason, we need to break up with trends as we currently know them. It’s a toxic relationship. The critical caveat here is that understanding culture remains a priority, but the nuance is mistaking “trending” with substantial ideas worthy of strategy and investment. We must continue to study these signals, but with a dose of skepticism and healthy distance. If anything, they’re signals in themselves, not substantial shifts. Cottagecore as a viral, idyllic aspirational aesthetic is one thing. A sensibility. But we have to hold that in conjunction with the reality that this “trend” only applies

10 phút
28/11/2022

Modern Religions For A Lonely World

Meet Liver King. He’s a media personality caricature repping the “all meat diet.” He chomps animal brains to win big in the attention economy, as much as he fights for the reassessment of what a more nutritious diet may entail. His success primarily lies in the former: attention. Many dismiss his honesty. There are countless videos “exposing” his regimen and potential steroid use. But it’s moot. Controversy only adds to his hyper-masculine mythology. His Carnivore Diet has been around for as long as the internet has. The pitch ranges from weight loss, increased energy, higher testosterone, and mental clarity. But several more drivers are now giving this “lifestyle” newfound energy. Firstly, it’s never been easier to get in touch with a tribe of like-minded thinkers. Often exposed via algorithmic means, an odd practice effortlessly reaches millions today. A video — or the mere thumbnail of one — is an invite for new, potential inductees. With this, we can now choose our own adventure of truth and determine what’s healthiest for us. Secondly, the attention around the all meat diet has risen with the larger adoption of veganism — also coincidently driven by health benefits. The blossoming of plant-based diets has allowed a counter trend to enter and thrive. It’s no surprise that we see the Carnivore Diet rage in a moment when meat-alternatives are increasingly finding their way onto menus. After all, many cultural trends are just tensions. Equal and opposite reactions. Trend. Counter-trend. Cause. Effect. Further, meat consumption also symbolizes status and mastery over one’s domain — one which is currently aflame and we’re hastily losing. Promoting one’s machismo dominance is also quite timely as we simultaneously evolve beyond a gender binary. Again: Trend. Counter-trend. Back to Liver King... A six pack, grizzly beard and bloody goat intestines appear to run counter to animal rights, environmental decline and gender fluidity. And here lays the ultimate overarching pitch and final driver to this all meat diet: identity and the community which comes along with it. You don’t even have to consume the raw liver. You just have to consume the content. The all meat diet is a starter pack of values. Worship him or ridicule him — either gives you the opportunity to express your beliefs, find a vocal role in this world, and bring you closer to those who feel the same about animals, the environment or gender. Modern Religions In Tara Isabella Burton’s book, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, she reminds us that religion is more than places of worship or mere deities. Religion can be anything that provides us meaning, purpose, ritual and community. An all meat diet is a religion. And Liver King is our high priest. Burton reports: “Back in 2007, 15% of Americans called themselves religiously unaffiliated, meaning that they didn’t consider themselves to be members of any traditional organized religion. By 2012, that number had risen to 20%, and to 30% when it came to adults under thirty. Now, those numbers are higher. About a quarter of American adults say they have no religion. And when you look at young millennials — those born after 1990 — those numbers reach almost 40%.” But while younger generations claim to be “less religious,” that’s not to say they aren’t rabidly seeking spirituality, answers or belonging. Definitions and modern examples of religion just haven’t caught up to the surveys. Outside of entertainment fandom, more glaring today: politics and social justice have become our loudest religious replacements. Helen Lewis, staff writer at The Atlantic puts it, “Many common social-justice phrases have echoes of a catechism: announcing your pronouns or performing a land acknowledgment shows allegiance to a common belief, reassuring a group that everyone present shares the same values. But treating politics like a religion also makes it more emotional

19 phút
19/09/2022

The Creator Paradox: Cultural Stasis Amidst Creative Surplus

Part I:The Tension There’s a new dilemma. Only it’s not that “new” of a dilemma. At the beginning of this summer, decades of glacier-paced cultural change was captured perfectly in a single weekend. The top of the charts revealed our endangered media ecosystem. You’ve heard this song plenty before. Thanks to inclusion in Netflix’s fifth season of Stranger Things, Kate Bush’s 1985 song “Running Up That Hill (Make a Deal with God)” found itself back in the zeitgeist. It went from 22,000 streams per day to 5.1M. Momentarily, a 37-year-old track was the most streamed song on Spotify. Meanwhile, Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel to the 1986 original, broke box office records, banking $156 million the same weekend. This was right before Jurassic World stomped in — the seventh installment since 1993. Then came Minions 2 — a sequel and a spin off to the Despicable Me franchise, which in itself already had three installments. Further, in video games that weekend, 9 out of 10 best selling titles were from franchises. And the New York Times Best Sellers list saw James Paterson, the Guinness World Records holder for the most #1 New York Times bestsellers, taking up two of the top five spots in fiction. It was the summer weekend for big premieres. But in fact, nothing about these releases were particularly that new. Most noteworthy though, this pattern of mega-successful reboots stood against a backdrop of another story... These titles were released at a moment when more people are creating more content than ever before in history. Spotify boasts 70,000 tracks uploaded every day. YouTube is uploading 30,000 hours of new content every hour. Nearly 3M unique podcasts exist. Twitch is broadcasting +7.5M streamers, indie game releases and play are both growing year over year, and roughly 4M books are published annually in the U.S. — nearly half of those self-published, a +250% increase over just five years. On one hand, we have a booming Creator Economy, with an ever-expanding democratization of tools for production to anyone with an idea. So much so, that according to 1,000 surveyed Americans by Zine, 86% of people believe there is an overwhelming amount of entertainment available today. Yet meanwhile on the other hand, we seem to have also found ourselves culturally stunted. Our box office and streaming platforms are soggy with the same regurgitated franchises. Reboots rule the roost, and familiar faces hog our charts, while notable newcomers redefining genres feel few and far between. With this, 64% of people declare they are getting fed up with today’s reboots, sequels and remakes. What gives? How is it that during a moment of radical creator liberation and audience frustration, we’re finding ourselves with the same tropes and hooks? Chris Anderson’s 2006 optimistic Long Tail vision promised us that “specificity” — the shallow and obscure — would be economically feasible as the internet would connect the niche to its audience. Aggregators will win, the odd would thrive, and those on the edges would celebrate. Creators could finally connect to their 1,000 true fans. But as seen from the macro view, a diverse, bottom-up media ecosystem is in fact not thriving. Instead, the inverse is happening. Homogeneity is winning. Part II:Sameness Everywhere In an analysis by Adam Mastroianni, a postdoc scholar at Columbia Business School, “the same” keeps rising to the top — across all media. Simply, there are fewer winners. Mastroianni calls this our Cultural Oligopoly. “A cartel of superstars has conquered culture,” he writes. “Until the year 2000, about 25% of top-grossing movies were prequels, sequels, spin offs, remakes, reboots, or cinematic universe expansions. Since 2010, it’s been over 50% every year. In recent years, it’s been close to 100%.” “Since 2000, about a third of the top 30 most-viewed shows are either spin offs of other shows in the top 30 (e.g., CSI and CSI: Miami) or multiple b

36 phút
01/08/2022

A_Framework_To: Find Overlooked & De-bias Trends

The META Trends are invaluable in identifying where the collective, trend forecaster psyche is at. But as we learned in a five year look back: biases thrive, agendas direct, risk is feared, quantification is scarce and toxic optimism influences. Deeper, as we learned in a series of exercises with AI: analyzed cultural data reveals what we humans think is most important, may not actually be the case. All of this META Trend work is predicated upon industry trend reports... which, as we’re learning, may not be as dependable as we once hoped. The META Trends are insightful, but they and the industry reports used to get there, leave us with an incomplete picture of what’s driving culture forward. Only with friction, daringness and originality, can we analyze the sharp edges and fringes of culture that have influence. The weak, the uncomfortable and the complex help color our picture of the future. As we uncovered, AI can be helpful in discovering overlooked micro-trends which were hidden within the one million words of analyzed reports. However, many of these discoveries are things: Gut Health, Fluid Fashion, Privacy Enhancing Tech, etc. What we also need to augment is our ability to identify more nuanced, emotional overlooked trends. But this is a task a human can do best. Creative extrapolation is our superpower. So to identify the overlooked, we can use the META Trends as filters seek out what’s not surfaced. But we can also use these META Trends in another way... Sarah DaVanzo and I created a framework to spin out unique perspectives of any existing trend. 4X Interrogative Questions_ To Identify the Overlooked * Outside = What is an outsider’s POV or experience? * Other Side = What is the inverse or contradictory tension? * Dark Side = What is the malicious or distressing angle? * Back Side = What is the devious or inappropriate twist? Interrogating non-obvious dimensions of even the most trite, overly reported trends can reveal new ideas, threats and opportunities. For example, let’s use the most reported trend for 2022: Eco- Everything: a continued obsession with sustainability and an integration of green-thinking into all products and services. Applying the 4X Interrogative Questions we get: Outside = How are those on the equator signaling new norms of climate migration? → What does this reveal about the effects of climate on the less prepared, mobile or privileged? Other Side = How do consumers reckon with still opting in for two-day shipping amidst climate marches? → What does this reveal about a fear of sacrifice and collective cognitive dissonance? Dark Side = How are therapists managing to counsel those with onset climate anxiety, a new diagnosis? → What does this reveal about the spillover, emotional toll of something once believed to just be a physical crisis? Back Side = How do we account for the carbon footprint of online porn? → How can we speak to the stigmatized and uncomfortable drivers of humanitarian risk? By using this framework, we can open the door to new, often overlooked components of any cultural discussion. We net out with valuable trailheads to then explore. Call them insights, counter-trends, or just components of the original trend itself — it makes no difference. These are simply elements of culture that should be acknowledged. To continue this exercise, let’s go through all 14x 2022 META Trends to reveal some critical, often overlooked pieces of the puzzle. 01. Eco- Everything ♻️ Overlooked = Sustainable living is unaffordable for many, climate migration will be unachievable for a growing elderly population, and paper straws and PR plays are jokes to Gen Z 02. Digital Default 🌐 Overlooked = 27.6M U.S. households still don't have home internet, motion sickness and wanting to know what’s behind us still curbs VR adoption, and our desire to experiment with identity runs deep 03. xX~VIBES~Xx 🍄 Overlooked = Indigenous communities are being destroyed from drug tou

9 phút
25/07/2022

How To Spot Trends with AI

After Sarah DaVanzo and I leveraged NWO.ai’s invaluable AI to score and re-rank the META Trends, we were left stuck with one finding: Both the global and U.S. AI data-driven ranks were significantly different from the original human rank. The AI declared that what we humans thought was most important was not actually the case. Were we just splitting hairs of importance here, or were these divergent rankings a signal that our META Trends (which came from source material) were not as important as we once thought? Maybe more influential cultural shifts are out there waiting to be exposed. And if so, how can we find them? We debated important but missing META Trends for weeks — but, how important could these be if the experts couldn’t agree upon their importance by not collectively highlighting them within their reports which we analyzed? But simultaneously, according to our work analyzing the last five years of META Trends, the “most important trends” being reported haven’t changed much. There was no denying, though: important, nuanced cultural shifts were missing from our list of 14 META Trends. So, how could we identify and highlight these overlooked trends... and further, in a way that isn’t subjective (Sarah’s opinion against mine)? We considered just naming our favorite cultural phenomenon not included in the original META rank, or we could have just surfaced interesting leftover trends from the 40+ reports that didn’t make their way into one of the 14 META Trend themes, but both approaches would have thrown us into the same trap which we immediately called out after publishing the most recent annual Meta Trend report: the prevalence of bias and scarcity of risk in the trends and foresight field is concerning at best... While Sarah and I both have historical proof and a pedigree of accurate trend forecasting, our life experiences and methods differ. Just listing our favorites felt too qualitative. So we designed another experiment with NWO.ai. Experiment 04.AI META Trend Identification_ Comparison Left on its own, could AI identify similar or different — perhaps missing — META Trends? This time we fed all of the text from the original 40+ sourced trend reports into the NWO.ai AI platform. Nearly one million words of text. We figured that the AI could process this information with a different, extraordinary comprehension than us humans, who attempted to do the same when creating that original 2022 rank. We hypothesized the AI would make more connections — ergo identify META Trends completely overlooked by the humans. By crunching all of the reports and instructing the AI to identify META Trend patterns (clusters, themes, etc.), would it come back with missing valuable, social shifts? Answer: Not even close. We were very wrong to believe AI could complete this exercise similar to that of an expert trend spotter. From the one million words of text inputted, the AI used Natural Language Processing (NLP) and clustered like-with-like, arriving at 72 clusters of “trends.” Interestingly, there was very little overlap with our 14 META Trends — a handful at best, which were really just optimistic stretches. Further, the AI’s clustered “trends” weren’t even trends, but rather general topics like “technology” and “pandemic.” It’s not to say that these themes weren’t impressive — they were — but these findings aren’t helpful to an experienced cultural strategist who can arrive at more provocative groupings. So to answer the question: Could AI identify overlooked META Trends: No. But feeling we were onto something we asked a follow up... Experiment 05.AI Micro-Trend Identification_ Extrapolation Rather than identifying large patterns which we’d call META Trends, could we use the AI to identify and rank smaller, perhaps overlooked micro-trends from within the reports? To figure this out, instead of having the AI merely organize the reports’ text, we instructed the AI to tak

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18/07/2022

Using AI To Quantify & Size META Trends

Earlier this year Sarah DaVanzo and I published the fifth annual 2022 META Trend analysis, a distillation of 40+ industry trend reports to ultimately identify the most frequently reported (i.e. noteworthy) trends for the year. Fourteen (meta) trends were identified to represent what the entire trends industry was collectively forecasting. During this time we also announced that for the first year, we’d quantify each of these META Trends to more precisely size and evaluate their cultural influence. It’s been a moment, but we finally crunched the data... To get here though, we first had to answer a series of very thorny questions: How do we define the criteria or “borders” of each META Trend, which sources of data should be leveraged to score each, should we study these trends’ influence within a U.S. or global data set, how do we even collect and analyze this data at scale, and how do we complete this exercise without adding any human interference, tipping the scales of objectivity? Once answering those could we then shine light on the larger questions at hand: * By leveraging cultural data, would AI rank the META Trends differently than how the humans did? * Left on its own, could AI identify similar or different (perhaps missing, overlooked) META Trends? * And conclusively, what are the best tasks and roles for humans versus AI in order to develop a successfully orchestrated cultural intelligence system? While asking ourselves all of these questions, we formed a partnership with the team at NWO.ai. The NWO.ai platform, which was amongst the finalists for LVMH's Innovation award, and an Industry Cloud partner of SAP, was formed in 2020 to identify consumer signals before they become exponential. Its AI algorithms learned over the last 2.5 years, and now boasts statistical trend prediction accuracy. They effectively quantify culture. With Sarah’s previous experience collaborating with them earlier this year, we determined their platform would be the perfect tool for our quantitative META Trend analysis. Experiment 01.2022 META Trend Scoring & Ranking_ Humans vs. AI As for our first question: If AI was to collect cultural data against each of the META Trends and then score their importance to rank each of them, would the AI ranking match or produce different results from the original human rank? Answer: Different. As a reminder, our “human ranking” was completed by Sarah and myself manually counting the frequency of similar trend mentions throughout the 40+ industry reports. For example, sustainability trends received the most attention and real estate across the analyzed 2022 reports, and hence the “Eco- Everything” META Trend was born and ranked in the top spot. So, to more precisely size and rank these META Trends, NWO.ai’s AI calculated a series of keyword “portfolios” of each trend. These portfolios were essentially groupings of keywords and phrases (i.e. booleans) representing each of the 14 META Trends. Sarah and I authored these portfolios ourselves, but to curb any subjectivity, we only leveraged the language used from the original reports’ descriptions. To be clear, Sarah and I did not forecast these 14 META Trends – these were simply the most talked about concepts throughout the industry. NWO.ai then measured the cultural importance of each META Trend via its portfolio of keywords. Consumer interest was quantified using a variety of data sources spanning: social, news publications, search, investments, patents, scientific journals, e-commerce data, and even film scripts. Ultimately, an AI-derived “Impact Score” was calculated by aggregating: volume (quantity of these signals across sources), frequency (volume over day), reach (distribution of publications), etc. These scores were finally normalized on a 0-100 scale to fairly pit each of the META Trends against one another and create our official AI ranking. This AI ranking from the cultural data behind each of this year’s 14 META

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Alternative explanations and provocations around our tech, media, and overlooked social shifts. Webby-winning cultural intel for the curious. zine.kleinkleinklein.com

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Matt Klein
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2022 - 2024
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Interview with Douglas Rushkoff: Program or Be Programmed

Unplugging Is Not The Solution You Want

Interview with Rory Sutherland: Emotional Efficiency & Reframes

Betty Crocker's Egg is a Myth. Embrace Unknowing.

Colleges Are Dying, Long Live Higher Education

How To Approach Online Culture

Modern Religions For A Lonely World

The Creator Paradox: Cultural Stasis Amidst Creative Surplus

A_Framework_To: Find Overlooked & De-bias Trends

How To Spot Trends with AI

Using AI To Quantify & Size META Trends

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