Future Commerce cover art

Future Commerce

Future Commerce

Written by: Phillip Jackson Brian Lange
Listen for free

About this listen

 Future Commerce is the culture magazine for Commerce. Hosts Phillip Jackson and Brian Lange help brand and digital marketing leaders see around the next corner by exploring the intersection of Culture and Commerce. Trusted by the world's most recognizable brands to deliver the most insightful, entertaining, and informative weekly podcasts, Future Commerce is the leading new media brand for eCommerce merchants and retail operators. Each week, we explore the cultural implications of what it means to sell or buy products and how commerce and media impact the culture and the world around us, through unique insights and engaging interviews with a dash of futurism. Weekly essays, full transcripts, and quarterly market research reports are available at https://www.futurecommerce.com/plus©2025 Future Commerce Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales Philosophy Social Sciences
Episodes
  • The Internet’s Aperture Is Shrinking

    The Internet’s Aperture Is Shrinking
    May 6 2026
    Matt Maher, founder of M7 Innovations and the thirty-fifth member of the MIT Media Lab Consortium, joins Phillip and Brian to interrogate what really happens when enterprises leap from "zero to one" to "one to a hundred" with AI. The conversation moves from the productivity paradox (studies showing AI can add 20% to completion time even as users swear it saves them work) to the human hand-off in commerce, the limits of agentic shopping, and the shrinking aperture of the internet. The big takeaway is that 2026 is the year of assessment, not aspiration. Paleolithic Brains; Medieval Infrastructure; Godlike Technology Key Takeaways AI has created a productivity paradox. Although it may feel like a magical solution that unlocks productivity and throughput, it often lengthens time to completion. Cognitive atrophy is real and happening faster than we realize. Net-new ideas still need human intuition. AI learns from and mimics existing experiences and content. The human-AI handoff should be designed for where the agent stops and identity begins, mapped across three tiers: low-emotion, middle-emotion, and high-emotion products and content.Fix your site for LLM crawlers now. Agentic checkout can wait. Key Quotes [00:06:30] "We did not have a digital information superhighway… that was zero to one. And now we are in that one to 100 moment… we snap our fingers, and we're at parity with all these capabilities." — Matt Maher [00:17:30] "It objectively takes more time. Our dopamine receptors are feeling good when we're that productive. So we'll happily take 20% more time and claim we didn't." — Matt Maher [00:23:30] "AI could literally never have created [the elevator screen] because it did not exist in the world before. It is a reduction to the mean." — Matt Maher [00:51:30] "The aperture of the internet continues to shrink, and everything becomes more personalized for each of us. If you are not in that aperture of what people see, you don't exist anymore." — Matt Maher In-Show Mentions M7 InnovationsThe METR study (late 2025) on AI developer time savingsE.O. Wilson’s The Origins of CreativityNorbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human BeingsAmazon v. Perplexity lawsuit Associated Links What AI and Watchmaking Have in CommonThe Death of Slop and the End of TimeGet STRATA by Future CommerceCheck out Future Commerce on YouTubeCheck out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and printSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we're witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
    Show More Show Less
    52 mins
  • POSSIBLE’S Potential: The Hallway Track Leads to the Beach

    POSSIBLE’S Potential: The Hallway Track Leads to the Beach
    May 4 2026

    The funnel’s compressing, content volume is exploding, and everything is quickly descending into AI slop. But the Miami heat and chilled coconut water hit just right, so everything is juuuust fine.

    We’re unpacking our hot takes fresh out of POSSIBLE, Hyve’s sprawling beachside conference at the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc resorts. Between Walmart's "Who Knew" thesis, EMARKETER's no-safe-channels reset, and Phillip's case for what it would take for POSSIBLE to rival Cannes, the team weighs what makes a conference culturally relevant and what's still missing from most experiences.

    Great, Now We’re Drowning In Pod Slop, Too Key Takeaways:
    • POSSIBLE's beach-party-meets-marketing-conference format makes activations feel organic, not transactional.
    • The customer journey isn't collapsing anymore; it's compressing.
    • Pinterest now suggests 10 posts to break through feeds. Meta wants 50. Is the new playbook all about volume and velocity, not relevancy?
    • Walmart leverages AI in 73% of its marketing investments, but it’s still hiring.
    • POSSIBLE can only rival Cannes if or when the city itself has skin in the game.
    Key Quotes:
    • [00:29:37] "People will not become comfortable with AI until it's indistinguishable." — Sarah, on the EMARKETER-led "No Safe Channels" panel
    • [00:38:35] "Being AI first doesn't mean people last." — William White, CMO, Walmart US
    • [00:45:25] "Ops fulfills the promise that marketing makes." — Chris Gosser
    • [00:45:55] "Marketing's job is changing beliefs and behaviors." — Phillip, on William White's framing
    Associated Links:
    • Get the post-POSSIBLE dispatch on The Senses
    • Get our in-depth analysis of the modern conference industry
    • Buy STRATA by Future Commerce
    • Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
    • Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print
    • Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
    • Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

    Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!


    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
    Show More Show Less
    57 mins
  • Paris Hilton's 11:11 Media is at the intersection of Celebrity, Social Commerce, and Culture

    Paris Hilton's 11:11 Media is at the intersection of Celebrity, Social Commerce, and Culture
    Apr 29 2026

    What happens when a cultural figure with 20 years in the limelight decides to become a brand operator? Adam Domian, SVP & Head of Commerce and Audience at 11:11 Media, joins Phillip and Brian to break it down. From Walmart shelves to TikTok lives, Adam shares how Paris Hilton's portfolio balances licensing cash flow with equity-driven brands like Parive, and why "founder energy" is becoming a moat in an AI-saturated marketplace, especially with someone “sliving” such a dynamic and coveted life.

    Commerce Is Hot Key takeaways:
    • The licensee-licensor era is giving way to the celebrity-as-majority-owner era.
    • US social commerce lags Asia because of consumer habits, not the technology itself.
    • Trust travels with the person—platforms just shape the dialect.
    • Once everyone has AI, cultural instinct becomes the differentiator.
    • Archive footage is the new commercial inventory for legacy IP.
    Key Quotes:

    [00:14:31] "She is the same person across those platforms; it just allows us to lean further into different aspects of her life." — Adam Domian

    [00:19:15] "She was in the labs with the chemists from day one. [Parivie] product development took two and a half, three years." — Adam Domian

    [00:23:44] "We have Paris and her cultural pulse as an asset to these businesses, but 80% of it is running a traditional playbook." — Adam Domian

    [00:26:16] "When everybody's leveraging AI, there's a moment of parity. The humanness becomes the differentiator." — Adam Domian

    In-Show Mentions:
    • 11:11 Media
    • M13
    • Parivie
    Associated Links:
    • Get Strata by Future Commerce
    • Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
    • Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print
    • Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
    • Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

    Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!


    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
    Show More Show Less
    35 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c
No reviews yet