This doodle is one that I tend to sketch and show often when I'm meeting with leaders. (Especially leaders of publicly-traded companies.)
The present can feel volatile and unsettling. Don't let that be a distraction. Keep your focus on what you're building towards in the future.
@amywebb.bsky.social: CEO, futurist, and long-time SXSW alumna will return to the stage to deliver her yearly exploration of emerging technology trends.
There is an important lesson here for leaders both inside and outside of Hollywood: Moats aren’t static. They drain faster than you think. Especially when you spend 10+ years pretending the water level isn’t dropping.
Instead of preparing, Hollywood’s leaders doubled down on the illusion of safety — convinced their competitive moat was wide, their business immune, and that AI “could never touch them.”
Fast forward: today Tilly has SAG-AFTRA scrambling to draw red lines and prevent “synthetic performers.”
A marketing stunt, sure — but also an unmistakable preview of what was coming.
That was 14 years ago. I wrote & spoke about this extensively between 2012 - 2018, warning that as AI matured, generative content would challenge everything from Hollywood to cybersecurity to democracy and information.
Back in 2011, Japanese idol group AKB48 introduced a new member — Aimi Eguchi. Fans adored her. She looked perfect, fit right in, and drew real attention.
Except she wasn’t real at all. She was a CG mashup of six human performers.
Hollywood is acting like Tilly Norwood, the "AI Actress" came out of nowhere.
Let’s not kid ourselves: they’ve had more than a decade to prepare for this.
This is wild. I don’t know if I trust Russia’s numbers on this but any number greater than 1 is, quite frankly, stunning.
on.ft.com/4p3TsQu
This made me chuckle.
Which technologies will reshape our world in 2025?
My Annual Letter just went out to all of our Future Today Institute clients, but you can read it online here: mailchi.mp/futuretodayi...
My favorite training ride of the week: 30/30s. 😍
My colleagues and I are paying close attention to consumer spending today — if it beats analyst expectations, we think post-election sentiment might be a driving factor, which means more optimism & likely more consumer and corporate spending in 2025. Strong signal for folks in #strategicforesight.
But also, now my feed is now all politics again, which happened on Threads, Insta, Twitter and FB before. 🫠
I’ve been waiting for the party to show up. 👋🏻