What Tech Gets Wrong

The Future is Unknowable because People are Unpredictable

For years now, data has reigned supreme. Why? People believe that the more we know, the clearer the picture as to where we’re headed. The hopeful Internet sold this early on. More information supposedly meant more facts, more truth, and more security in these fraught, uncertain times (Instead, we got more anxiety, confusion, and lies). Call it data analysis, algorithms, or machine learning, but predictive analytics is the new religion. It assesses the past to determine what’s best for the future. It judges which posts you’ve liked to serve you more of the same.¹ Data has dictated culture, trends, and markets. But one thing tech tends to underestimate is the power of human imagination. The creative mind can skirt data, confound tech, and distinguish us from robots. I like the word, “wonder.” Wonder is our essence. Wonder is the wellspring of creativity. Tech can take us up until this point, but wonder is where infinity begins.

With regards to smart business, even though we all know that some of the most fundamental markers of success exist outside the purview of data (brand reputation, culture, trust), Fashion continues to submit to data. Computers and technology have turned this game into a science.² There are forecasted trends to heed, seasonal hues to decorate your palette, and market movements to guide design choices. Customer acquisition, sales reports, and even social media strategies are deference to predictive analytics. Even though fashion is supposed to be a progressive medium, the tech model insists on looking backwards. It’s not an innovative or original path, but it is the safest and most secure. Data mining draws on concrete history instead of doubling down on an amorphous tomorrow.

This streamlines trends and espouses conformity (and mediocrity). If you’re sensitive to culture, you may have noticed that artistically, we’ve remained stagnant for decades now, repeating and reinvesting into the tried and true. Hip-hop is now fifty years old. The Internet is forty. Meanwhile, the most talked-about sneakers this week are the Tiffany AF1s, a shoe that was designed in 1982.

If you flip through the pages, however, culture isn’t galvanized by the steady baseline hum. It inches forward by the sudden pop of a horn or kickdrum. The more that art is channeled into a focalized mainstream tenor, the more the outlier clinks and clanks stand apart. Those discordant sounds are unwelcome, unusual, and…unpredictable. And to be human is to be unpredictable (which is why the future is unpredictable).

Generative AI is the ultimate exercise in predictive analytics. Enter one word or thought and chatbots like ChatGPT scrub through decades of ancient Internet to identify which word has historically come next. The same with generative AI art programs like DALL-E and Midjourney. Although they appear to be creating original art, they are pulling patterns from existing graphics and sampling designs. By predicting based on former data, the art therefore becomes predictable. It adds to the conversation but is not additive. And that’s why generative AI is limited. It stops at today.

In a time when we can find answers for nearly everything, the conundrum that continues to elude even the most intelligent human or robot, is what the future holds. Isn’t that amazing? No matter how technologically and scientifically advanced we get, the future remains a black box. No amount of forecasting, algorithm, or futurist prognosis could predict the nuanced extent of the pandemic, climate change, and social media fallout. Meanwhile, some of the wisest individuals have erroneously speculated that the iPhone wouldn’t catch on, let alone TV, let alone electricity.

Nobody is certain who will win the Russia-Ukraine war or if this meteor is gonna hit us. This morning, the tech and financial worlds hang in a balance as the embattled Silicon Valley Bank shuts down and is taken over by the FDIC. We’d love to know how this chapter ends: in 2008-style financial collapse or heart attack-inducing blip on the news ticker. You’d think that by reading the entire Internet, generative AI would be able to predict the next NBA champs, tell us how many rainy days we’ll have this year, or if we’ll ever find true love and be married. I think this is why people are so captivated by the markets, by investing into ventures, stocks, and crypto. These are the rare pockets where tech and data blatantly fail to call every shocking collapse or surprising victory. Like sports. Like elections. Like nonsensical fashion trends. When the world has become designed to be safe, expected, and foreseeable, then we seek mystery and adventure wherever we can.

As a writer, it’s my job to imagine fantastic scenarios. It’s the art of make-believe, of conjuring realities from scratch, of creating something out of nothing. It’s the closest you can get to playing God. And while thousands of years of literature, playwrights, and poets have led writing to this very moment, it’s my duty to make a sharp turn. To tell a radical story. To be unpredictable.

It’s the same when I design or paint. The blank canvas beckons, it taunts, but eventually, it succumbs and serves the artist. This is our playground, sheathed in a blanket of white snow, to etch angels with our bodies or build castles to the sky. But no one in history has ever done it this way before, not even me.

The other night, I was eating dinner at Saffy’s with Ben and a fellow streetwear founder friend. The three of us chuckled about our unorthodox, nontraditional approaches to business. On paper, our style is a perilous bet, especially through a conventional corporate lens. We’ve always been. In fact, this is how we inscribed our fingerprint on culture, zigging while everyone else was zagging. Ben and I once spent $30,000 on a door just because the bomb-proof exterior reinforced our brand narrative. We rejected hefty purchase orders from stores because we romanticized a long-term future for The Hundreds. Speaking of unpredictable fashion trends, we would’ve defied generative AI prediction by betting on knit sweaters in the 2000s while market research was screaming otherwise. The computer would’ve spit out “track jacket.” We wrote “cardigan.”

Meanwhile, we sat by and watched as blogs, stores, and industry bet on other “cooler” brands. All the data was right there! Many of these other designers exemplified the trappings of how brands have excelled in the past. Customers followed the arrows to capitalize on the hottest names. Investors were convinced that their horses would race the fastest. Under the merciless gaze of time, however, many of those labels and designers would die on the vine or explode in spectacular fashion. Yet, The Hundreds is still here. On paper, it doesn’t make sense but in our hearts and minds, it was unquestionable. Predictive analysis didn’t account for the depths of our wonder and the range of our creativity.

Streetwear, as a genre, became a mainstream fashion staple by bucking all expectations, standards and norms. As the clothing industry went more mass, streetwear contradicted the data by going limited and scarce. When the data said men wanted fitted, soft, and opulent in the early 2000s, we went big, boxy, and tasteful. These decisions weren’t calculated with data. In fact, they intentionally went against what the technology suggested. Movements and revolutions like these are inspired by the profound, unquantifiable, immeasurable universe within the artist. One that is not imprisoned by the past but liberated by the future.

Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow. Not AI. Not the most brilliant, powerful scholars on the planet (they’ve been wrong time and again). Not the big brains on Twitter armed with the latest data, declaring the next recession, apocalypse, or musician to watch. Over the last few days, we’ve discovered room-temperature superconductors, hidden chambers inside 4,500-year-old pyramids, and 7,000 Japanese islands that have never made it onto a map. In varying degrees, these revelations will affect the course of history and yet we didn’t know about them a week ago. Imagine what can happen next. As a human, it’s your purpose to do so.

1. I think this is why we are so viscerally opposed to social media algorithms, locking us into content that we sought out yesterday. Nobody likes to be held to their past judgments and decisions. We want to be afforded the opportunity to learn something new, change, and grow.

2. Games have rules that are meant for negotiation and creative disruption. Science is comprised of laws that are rigid and immutable. Games need humans. Science does not.