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We're covering the first 100 Days of the New Commerce Department: what trade and tariff policies are up Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's sleeve? PLUS: We dig into TikTok's dizzying fake-out, Doji's mystifying deepfake try-on tech, and the long-awaited launch of the 2025 Future Commerce Annual Journal, LORE.

• Preorder LORE
• Explore Doji: Doji App
• Watch the Head and Shoulders video we geeked out about

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In this landmark discussion from NRF 2025, we lay out our theory of commerce's next evolutionary leap: the necessary fusion of human and artificial intelligence in digital spaces. As today's retailers hastily construct separate domains for silicon and carbon-based shoppers, we explore why this well-intentioned bifurcation may be precisely the wrong approach. From Salesforce's stumbling first steps with Agent Force to NVIDIA's more integrated vision, we examine how commerce might pioneer a symbiotic digital future. PLUS: Our 2025 journal, LORE, makes its debut!

• The Evolution of Digital Agency: Tracing the path from simple chatbots to truly agentic AI, and why the distinction matters.
• Biological Precedent as Digital Prophecy: How the coexistence of early human species might inform our approach to human-AI integration.
• The Attention Arbitrage: Why AI agents represent not just tools, but extensions of human cognitive capacity.
• Beyond the ‘Agentic Ghetto’: The case for unified digital architectures that serve both silicon and carbon-based users.
• The Memory Migration: How technology has already transformed human cognition, from oral histories to cloud storage.

• {00:23:00} "When we've talked about agents and bots and how you're gonna have your own assistance, we're talking about consumers... [The industry is] thinking about it from a very different angle than the people that are trying to sell the software right now." - Brian
• {00:25:31} "This is kind of like homo sapien and Neanderthal having to coexist... one advanced form and one less advanced form actually having functional tools and functional societies and functional coexistence together." - Phillip
• {00:28:55} "Written language allowed us to move from having to memorize things and be able to recall them from ourselves to having them available to quote. We actually exported our brains into books." - Brian
• {00:31:44} "The last thing we want on planet earth is to create a non-visual [space] in the ether for it to go purchase that isn't a thing that a human could actually go... The functional web needs to stay functional for humans and for bots to coexist in." - Phillip

This episode challenges conventional wisdom about AI integration, suggesting that our current trajectory toward segregated experiences misses a crucial evolutionary opportunity. Through the lens of NRF 2025's innovations and stumbles, we explore how commerce might pioneer a more symbiotic digital future—one where the distinction between human and artificial intelligence becomes not a wall, but a bridge.

• Order LORE on Metalabel
• The Attention Economy (August 2, 2019)
• Your Body Is A Dataland (August 1, 2017)
• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce+ 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!

This week, we’re unpacking Adobe’s holiday shopping report, the AI bot takeover, and the dead internet theory. As 2025 kicks off with powerful demand for both in-person experiences and AI-driven, frictionless online shopping, we’re peering into the future of the tension. PLUS: Phillip the Time Capsule Guy takes us back in time, and 5,000 years into the future.

• [00:14:30] “Black Friday shopping is one of the most isolating things you can do now. It used to be a team sport, something you'd all go out and do…you get up early, you get the coffee and the hot chocolate in your warm coats, and you go out and you have a good time together amid consumerism madness.” – Brian
• [00:20:24] “I think the return to physical connection and this loneliness epidemic is driving people back to real-life connection.” – Phillip
• [00:46:55] “We are going to be building from this point forward websites or ecommerce experiences, channels, APIs. Anything that we build in ecommerce from henceforth will be done thoughtfully to assist both humans and agents to be able to seamlessly purchase from a brand.” – Phillip
• [00:58:04] "Time capsules by Westinghouse and Panasonic might be humanity’s greatest contributions to cultural preservation." – Phillip
• [01:01:20] “This is part of Mythopoeia. This is how you build a myth that extends into the future. You do stuff like this that's an extension of the story. And Westinghouse may be revived 5000 years in the future because of these time capsules.” – Brian

• Future Commerce Upcoming Events
• The Future Now: January 28th, 2025. Immerse yourself in a collaborative and visionary roundtable experience with retail executives. Register here
• Your Body is a Dataland: Insiders #66
• Adobe Holiday Shopping Report
• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce+ 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!