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On trends, systems, and what we learned in the last ten years
This text was originally published in Why is This Interesting? newsletter on December 5th 2019. You can subscribe to this newsletter here.
2020 marks the beginning of the new decade, as Scott Galloway likes to remind us at the regular 30-day intervals. Look back at what captured our collective attention over the past ten years, and a narrative emerges.
We went from being enamored by the potential, the verve, and the creativity of startups to being alarmed by their unicorn (and minotaur) valuations, borderline insane founders, and often dreadful internal cultures. We went from being excited about sharing economy to grappling with the fallout of its legal, geopolitical, ethical, and human side-effects. Around the middle of the decade, we went through hygge and retromania (remember when every Urban Outfitters store featured a gramophone?) in order to protect ourselves from the world that brought nothing but anxiety and uncertainty. Towards the end of the decade, hygge morphed into our obsession with astrology, self-care, and daily meditation. We went from ownership to usage and all the way back, suggesting it’s best to own fewer better things we keep for a long time. Marie Kondo went from getting rid of our stuff to selling us more stuff. We went from Netflix and chill to Netflix, Disney+, Apple, HBO, etc. … and…
