We Digitized Everything. Now We Want to Be Human Again.

Since coming back from my summer break in Austria and throwing myself back into the pace and energy of New York, I've been out and about a lot - having conversations with different people across fashion, business, technology and leadership.

And there's something I keep noticing that I wanted to write about today, because it’s been coming up – one way or another – in almost every conversation.

It’s a shift in what people seem to want, what they’re craving, and what they’re starting to value again. And the irony of it kept staring me in the face. Because for the better part of three decades, the fashion industry has been chasing technology.

First came the internet and e-commerce, then social media and mobile, followed by data and personalization, virtual showrooms, augmented reality, digital fashion, the metaverse and now, of course, AI.

With each new wave came enormous investment - of money, time, talent and attention - and the promise that technology would allow us to know the customer better, predict what they wanted, design and manufacture faster, reach people anywhere and personalize almost everything.

Above all, we wanted to remove friction.

And we did. We got VERY, very good at it.

You no longer had to walk into a store or talk to a sales associate. You didn't have to wait for Fashion Week to see a collection, or rely on an editor to tell you what mattered. You didn't even have to go looking for something you might like because, increasingly, an algorithm would find and suggest it for you.

From an efficiency point of view, it's extraordinary.

But I wonder if, in our determination to engineer away all that friction, we also engineered away some of what made the experience special in the first place - the anticipation and discovery, the conversation with someone who knew more than you did, the unexpected find, the personal attention, the story behind something, or simply the feeling of being somewhere and experiencing it.

We spent decades and billions of dollars digitizing all of this.

And now?

We're starting to put some of it back.

The pendulum is swinging back

You can see it happening all around us, and perhaps most interestingly among younger generations - the very people we assumed would want everything digital.

Vinyl records are back. Film cameras, print magazines and physical books have found new audiences. Some young people are switching to flip phones or carrying “analog bags” filled with books, journals, sketchpads and crosswords for those moments when they might otherwise reach for a screen.

And then there's one of my favorite examples: people are now buying physical devices whose sole purpose is to block the social media apps on their smartphones.

Think about the absurdity of that for a moment. We created extraordinarily sophisticated technology designed to make it almost effortless - and incredibly compelling - to stay online. And now we're creating another category of technology to stop ourselves from using the first one.

We spent years removing friction. Now we're deliberately putting some of it back.

Not because younger generations are anti-technology. Far from it. Perhaps because they're beginning to understand something many of us are only now realizing ourselves: just because technology gives us constant access doesn't mean we have to give it constant access to us.

You can see the same desire playing out in the growing appetite for phone-free dinners and events, book clubs, running clubs, crafting groups, listening parties and supper clubs. People are seeking out opportunities to be together in real life, often with people they don't already know, rather than simply joining another online community devoted to the same interest.

One of my favorite examples is The Longest Table.

It started in Chelsea in New York in 2022 with an almost ridiculously simple idea: close the street, put one very long table down the middle of it, invite the neighbors and eat together.

Five hundred people showed up.

The idea has since spread to communities around the country, and there's something about its simplicity that I love. There is no elaborate experience design, no personalization engine and no virtual component. It's just people, food, chairs and a table long enough to bring strangers together.

Perhaps that's exactly why it works.

Fashion, retail and luxury are rediscovering this too

For years, we heard that physical retail was dying. Everything would move online and stores would either become increasingly transactional or disappear altogether.

Yet look at what some brands are doing now.

Tiffany's reimagined Fifth Avenue Landmark isn't simply a place to buy jewelry. Its ten floors combine product with art, archives, installations and hospitality, creating somewhere you're meant to spend time and experience rather than simply transact.

Gymshark is an even more interesting example because it was built largely online. When the brand opened its first permanent U.S. store in New York, it devoted space not just to selling product but to community events, athlete gatherings and live podcasts.

And Bottega Veneta's newer Meatpacking District store includes something wonderfully old-fashioned: a library filled with books on poetry and visual art, with the space also intended for events and programming.

There is something fascinating about all of this.

After decades spent trying to recreate the physical experience digitally, some of the most interesting brands are investing again in physical spaces where the point isn't simply to get you in, get you to buy something and get you out.

They want you to stay awhile, discover something, have a conversation, experience the brand and perhaps even feel that you belong there.

Maybe we're beginning to remember something great brands once understood instinctively:

The experience wasn't friction around the transaction. The experience was part of the value.

And perhaps that's where we got something wrong.

In our pursuit of efficiency, we started treating almost anything that slowed down a transaction - the salesperson, the wandering, the waiting, even the conversation - as a problem to be solved.

But maybe some of those things weren't friction at all.

Maybe the salesperson who remembered your name or introduced you to something you would never have chosen yourself mattered. Maybe wandering without knowing exactly what you were looking for created discovery. Maybe waiting created anticipation. Maybe the conversation was part of why you remembered the experience in the first place.

In other words, perhaps in some cases we engineered away the very things that made a brand feel special.

Somewhere along the way, connection became connectivity

I think we've done something similar in our own lives.

Technology has made us extraordinarily good at connectivity. We can reach almost anyone, anywhere, instantly. We can work with colleagues we've never met, build communities across continents, follow thousands of people and attend meetings without leaving the kitchen.

These are incredible developments, and I certainly don't want to give them all back.

But connectivity isn't necessarily connection, and perhaps after several decades of confusing the two, we're starting to feel the difference.

Seeing someone's post isn't the same as sitting across from them. Sending a message back and forth isn't always the same as having a real conversation. Having thousands of followers doesn't necessarily create a sense of belonging. And being reachable by everyone certainly doesn't mean we feel known by anyone.

Maybe that's why a three-hour dinner suddenly feels so good.

Or why people are joining clubs and gathering around tables again.

Or why, after years of building our lives around convenience, we're increasingly drawn to experiences that ask us to actually show up.

And then along comes AI

Which makes this moment even more interesting.

AI is about to make an extraordinary number of things easier. It can already help us write, research, analyze, plan, predict, personalize, create and communicate faster than most of us would have imagined even a few years ago.

And we all use it. A lot.

So this isn't an argument for abandoning technology or nostalgically returning to some supposedly better pre-digital world. I don't particularly want to return to fax machines, paper airline tickets or standing in line at the bank.

Technology has made many parts of our lives immeasurably better.

But I do think the arrival of AI gives us an opportunity to ask a more thoughtful question.

Instead of simply asking “What else can we automate?”, perhaps we should also be asking “What shouldn't we?”

Because maybe the last thirty years have taught us something useful: just because we can make an experience faster, more efficient or more digital doesn't necessarily mean we've made it better.

Sometimes we have. Sometimes we've simply made it faster. And sometimes we may have removed something we didn't realize mattered until it was gone.

The Courage Shift: Not all friction is bad

Maybe the choice ahead isn't between digital and analog, or between AI and human. That's too simplistic, and frankly, it's not how most of us want to live.

The real challenge is becoming much more discerning about where each belongs.

Use AI where it gives you back time. Automate the repetitive work that doesn't require your attention. Use data where data helps you make a better decision, and let technology remove the genuinely meaningless friction that makes life unnecessarily difficult.

But perhaps we should become a little more careful about removing meaningful friction.

The conversation you didn't plan to have because you happened to be in the same place. The dinner that takes three hours. Walking through a store and finding something you weren't looking for. A handwritten note. The slightly awkward first few minutes with someone you've never met. An afternoon spent making something with your hands. A meeting where everyone actually puts their phones away and pays attention to each other.

None of these things is particularly efficient.

Maybe that's not the point.

Maybe some friction isn't a problem to solve. Maybe it's where life happens.

A few questions I've been sitting with

As we rush to integrate AI and technology even further into our lives and businesses, I think there are a few questions worth asking.

What are we making more efficient - and what might we be losing in the process?

Speed can be enormously useful, but speed and improvement aren't necessarily the same thing.

Where have we confused personalization with actually knowing someone?

An algorithm knowing what you're likely to buy is very different from a person understanding what matters to you.

What have we digitized that might actually be better analog?

Maybe it's a conversation you've been trying to resolve over email, a meeting that should happen around a table, a customer interaction that would benefit from a real person, or simply an experience that deserves your full attention rather than another screen.

And perhaps most importantly:

Where might a little friction actually make something better?

Not bureaucracy or inconvenience for the sake of it. I'm talking about the kind of friction that creates anticipation, discovery, conversation, attention and memory. The kind that asks us to slow down enough to actually experience something.

A Courage Challenge

This week, put a little meaningful friction back into your life.

Choose one thing you would normally do through a screen and make it human instead. Call someone rather than sending another string of texts. Meet for coffee instead of scheduling another Zoom. Walk into the store rather than automatically ordering online. Leave your phone in your bag during dinner. Go somewhere you might actually talk to someone you don't already know.

Nothing revolutionary. Just pay attention to what changes when you're fully there.

Personally, I'm longing for the return of the coffee shop as an actual meeting place. Maybe it's my European roots, but I miss cafés filled with conversation -people meeting, talking, lingering - rather than rows of people sitting alone behind laptops and headphones. Sometimes a room can be full of people and still feel strangely like a funeral home.

We've become remarkably good at being alone together.

Perhaps we got so excited about everything we could digitize that we forgot to ask what was worth preserving.

And that may be the more important question now.

The future will undoubtedly be more technologically sophisticated. But perhaps the best brands, the best leaders - and, I suspect, the richest lives - will belong to those who know when technology makes something better and when it doesn't.

Who know when to choose efficiency - and when to choose experience.

When to remove friction - and when to leave a little room for wandering, conversation, surprise and connection.

A little room for something beautifully, stubbornly human.