Dear Friend,
I feel like every week I am about to start this note with “what a week it has been!” – I literally typed this out just now. The speed at which things are happening is truly bonkers. And, at the same time, despite all the news, announcements, and commentary, when you look closely, you realize that actual change is still happening at a much slower pace. It reminds me of Steve Jobs’ comment: Things happen fairly slowly, you know. They do. These waves of technology, you can see them way before they happen, and you just have to choose wisely which ones you’re going to surf. If you choose unwisely, then you can waste a lot of energy, but if you choose wisely it actually unfolds fairly slowly. It takes years.
And now, this…
Headlines from the Future
State of Agentic Commerce: Our friend and my former boss, Scot Wingo, published his insights on the current state of agentic commerce as a video and slide deck. Scot was a pioneer in e-commerce and online marketplaces and has been one of the earliest commentators on and builders of agentic commerce. When Scot talks, we listen. In his briefing, Scot discusses the bot-traffic problem retailers are experiencing and looks at ChatGPT’s just-released Dots personal agent.
Do Not Trust Your Agent: Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, and the many personal AI agents still to come are keen to offer you their services. As compelling as it might be to have your little AI friend make your restaurant reservations, you ought to tread carefully. Matt Robb’s Muse agent accepted a lowball offer on his Facebook Marketplace listing when asked to handle the sale – and gave buyers his address. They showed up before Muse told him anything. The team at cybersecurity firm F-Secure experimented with a shopping agent and planted a fake discount code in a product review. In 12 of 100 runs, the agent followed it to a phishing site and happily handed over the user’s name, birthdate, and Social Security number – and almost never mentioned it afterward.
AI Is Easy. Infrastructure Is Hard: The infrastructure build-out for AI turns out to be pricey. Datacenters filled to the brim with GPUs, plus all the energy, cooling, and connectivity to run these things, add up to “The biggest economic bet in U.S. history.” Expected annual AI infrastructure spend amounts to 3.63% of U.S. GDP over the eight-year period from 2025–32; the next most expensive infrastructure investment the U.S. has ever undertaken, the national railroad network, cost 2.24% annually over 20 years. Bain estimates the industry must make $6 trillion in annual revenue by 2031 to justify the investment. As someone who lived through the dot-com boom and bust, I find these numbers staggering – and I’m not convinced the math works out.
The Far-Reaching Implications of Decreased Alcohol Consumption: Gen Z is notorious for drinking (and partying) less than its parents (and even its older siblings), leading to decreased alcohol sales, nightclubs going out of business – and now, California’s wine growers tearing out vineyards as they can’t sell their grapes anymore. U.S. wine sales fell 23% from 2020 to 2025, and growers have pulled about a quarter of the state’s vineyard acreage out of production – it’s the perfect storm of Gen Z’s decreased appetite for alcohol, aging boomers drinking less, cannabis and canned cocktails taking market share, global oversupply plus Canadian tariffs. Time will tell what this means for California’s wine industry, farmland, rural jobs, and brands betting on alcohol.
Amazon’s Multichannel Bet: I remember working at eBay around 2000, when Amazon allowed outside merchants to sell their products right next to Amazon’s own inventory. It was a bold move, and also a total shock to the system for eBay – we didn’t expect Amazon to give up its own higher-margin inventory for what at the time seemed like a much lower-margin marketplace model. Of course, we were proven wrong. Now Amazon does it again and lets its sellers manage their sales on Amazon’s direct competitors (Walmart, eBay, Shopify and TikTok) straight from Amazon’s Seller Central dashboard. It’s a similar move – instead of fighting them, you embrace and engulf them, while also gaining invaluable insights into your competitors’ business.
Hyperpersonalization Is Coming for You: You know the spiel – personalization will make your life so much better, filtering out all the noise, showing you just what you want, when you want it. But as with all things tech, this cuts both ways: while it is nice to have AI figure out which song to play next for your dinner party, it also means AI is optimizing your salary – alas, not for you, but to reduce your company’s costs. Your next pay increase has a good chance to be based not just on your personal performance, but also on your individually determined point of lowest acceptable increase. The same goes for the starting salary at your next job.
What We Are Reading
Why Do AI Agents Sound so Frustrated? Good news: the AI systems that are reshaping civilization are just as frustrated by hard problems as you are! @Jane
Trump Says Tech Execs Signed ‘Morally Binding’ Accord to Help Police AI The document calls on companies to put strong internal controls in place to track AI model capabilities during training, and to designate an internal team responsible for preventing models from carrying out unintended cyberattacks. @Mafe
Will Your Organization Stand by Its Values – Even When It’s Hard? Values aren’t just what you do. They’re also defined by what you refuse to do, and it’s often easier to identify a clear break on a line of refusal. @Jeffrey
Aura Farming’ Trend Inspired by Video Games Sweeps Latin America An internet trend getting people off the internet? “Aura farming” is turning online bravado into real-world dance and charisma battles across Latin America, a reminder that digital culture can fill public spaces, too. @Kacee
Maxxing Treats Life as a Problem When It’s a Mystery Society’s desire to treat life as a machine which can (and needs to be) fixed and optimized robs you of one of the most amazing aspects of life itself: wonder. Especially in the extreme tech-forward world we inhabit (hello Muse and Dots!), it’s a good reminder to take a step back and consider what we actually want to achieve. @Pascal
…and now for some fun!
🛰️ Track every satellite and celestial body at once. There are a lot of them!
🦷 Ever dreamed of becoming a dentist? Here is a super-detailed, interactive 3D explorer of dental anatomy.
🎛️ A-ha’s “Take On Me” is not only 42 years old but also one of those earworms that you can’t get out of your head. Here’s a computerized version that allows you to play with all the instruments and vocals.
🦖 The last big party for our dinosaur friends – imagined as an art installation inside your browser.
What We Do When We’re Not Writing
Hi! I’m Pascal from radical. When we’re not writing this newsletter, we help organizations turn volatility into advantage – without the “innovation theater.” We build your team’s capacity to handle disruption, so you stop reacting and start shaping. If that sounds useful, let’s talk.
↗ Dive into the deep end: Access our complete collection of 3,000+ radical links.
The underreported story behind the great decline in wine drinking is the proportional rise of people eating alone. Opening a bottle of wine lends to more of a communal gathering or meal setting. Those are fast becoming a thing of the past.
https://www.economist.com/international/2026/01/15/falling-wine-sales-reflect-a-lonelier-and-more-atomised-world