Future Design Inquiries. October 2025

Hello from ENSO, a future design company. We’re sharing the things that make us think, bring us joy or shift our perspective. 

American individualism: individual accumulation or individual responsibility?

Yvon Chouinard has spent his life choosing the latter path — but paradoxically, built such a powerful brand and business (Patagonia) that he accumulated more than 99.9% of those focused on accumulation. David Gelles’ new book, Dirtbag Billionaire does a great job tracing the arc of Chouinard’s remarkable life, from homeless climber eating damaged cans of cat food, to elite athlete, pioneering adventurer, and philosophical businessman. In many ways, he’s the ultimate American: maverick pioneer. But to many, he looks like a renegade anti-American, critiquing, as he does, so many facets of modern life. This seeming paradox comes down to how you interpret individualism. The project of Chouinard’s life has been to influence the culture of capitalism, to focus more on responsibility than accumulation. In the first catalog for Chouinard Equipment (Patagonia’s precursor), he wrote a wonderful essay making the case for a new style of climbing: “clean climbing”. This became the first time he changed an industry. The manifesto included a line, initially about climbing, that’s an apt summary of his life philosophy. “It is the style of the climb, not the attainment of the summit, which is the measure of personal success. Each of us must consider whether the end is more important than the means.” We’re asking ourselves: could focusing on means over ends be capitalism’s most underrated competitive advantage? (SB)

Who is articulating the positive future for AI?

The news around AI centers on money, the race for supremacy by a few companies, and detailed dystopian visions like AI2027. It’s no wonder people think AI will be a net-negative in their lives, and only 23% think it will have a positive impact on their work. I learned from mountain biking that if you focus on the ditch, rather than the path ahead, you’ll probably ride into it. There's a lot of earnest talk of policy guardrails, and that seems useful — but where is the future to be excited about, to build towards? The community around the early web told compelling stories of what was to come: things like Tim Berners Lee’s 'Weaving The Web', Wired’s ‘The Long Boom’, Nick Negroponte’s ‘Being Digital’, and later, Google’s ‘The web is what you make of it’ campaign. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, made an initial attempt to articulate a positive future in Machines of Loving Grace, while acknowledging that it should be seen merely as a starting prompt for a more serious effort. If we haven’t truly explored the positive eventualities, aren’t we likely to miss them? We would love to see compelling, vivid articulations of the future of work, learning, entertainment and health; visions that could be the seeds of a shared mission, rather than a cutthroat race for dominance. (SB)

Belief is a necessary precondition to progress – and we’re losing it

We talk a lot about the loss of trust in society, but I think we’ve lost something else as well: belief in ourselves and our capacity to build a better future. A new NYT poll shows only 33% of Americans believe we can overcome our divisions. That might seem like old news, but it’s relatively new. Just four years ago, that number was 51%. In other words, even during the darkest days of COVID, there was belief that we'd get through it. Now, that belief is fading. And that's a problem because belief is a necessary precondition to progress.

Here’s a wild stat: In a study of 186 randomized control trials, the placebo effect accounted for more than half (54%) of the treatment benefit. That means belief alone created real, measurable change. And when people got to choose how they received the placebo — pill or liquid? morning or evening? etc. — the effect increased. In other words, belief and agency can play determinative roles in healing from very real physical ailments. And very real social ones. In fact, society runs on our beliefs, which then shape our realities (not the other way around, intuitive as that may seem). The stock market moves according to the expectation (not the reality). Students whose teachers believe in them perform better. Which makes the erosion of belief not just a psychological crisis, but a structural one. If we stop believing that improvement is possible, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But that poll showed something else, which is that people of all stripes don't want to be as divided as we are. So that’s a start. But before we can restore trust, we need to re-cultivate the belief in one another, because that is the only way that things get better. (HS)

The space for new ideas (in tribute to Brett Willms)

I first met Brett Willms in the original marketing building at Google, where Scott Levitan introduced us excitedly, describing Brett as ‘one of the most entrepreneurial people at Google’. He thought we’d get on; he was right. We worked together on four different companies, and probably over a dozen different initiatives within those. He was exactly the kind of person I moved to California to be around: optimistic, creative, generous, collaborative. We talked often, and he always filled me with energy and asked how he could help; ENSO exists in large part because of his spirit. When I think of Brett, I think of him coming for creative sessions at our studio (and sometimes my house); we’d cover the walls and windows with ideas, and I think to a greater extent than anyone I’ve ever met, Brett respected the fragility of nascent ideas, and was able to suspend the all-too-destructive inclination to play devil’s advocate. There was a clear filter at work, but it was primarily one of excitement (seeking the upside), rather than fear (seeking the downside). They were remarkable sessions, and his energy fed us, which fed the ideas, which fed him. That space for new ideas is so challenging to create and protect inside companies, and I’m eternally grateful he did that. When I look at the list of initiatives we worked on together, including Let’s Put Our Cities On The Map; Faster, Fairer, Kinder; the Work Wellbeing Score; Valuing People Creates Value — his spirit is clear: he embodied the higher ideals of Silicon Valley, for technology to lift people. We’ve lost him far too young. The best way we can think to honor him is to work hard to maintain that spirit of joyful wonder and service. (SB)

These nuggets are curated by ENSO partners Hanna Siegel (HS) and Sebastian Buck (SB).

8 things that made us think, gasp, share and laugh:

• Timothy Snyder’s essay, Always be kind: An unexpected wartime slogan
• Cereal box records are still a thing – at least for a dedicated few

Duane Dimock for NYT

• AI is a bubble? AI will change the world? Both.
• Former Google [X] design lead, Nick Foster, published a compelling book on how we think about the future. ‘Could Should Might Don’t’
• ‘Successful democracy movements depend, above all, on courage.’ 
• Kim Scott: ‘Affluence and courage have become negatively correlated’ 
• The gun store owners trying to reduce firearm suicides
• The case for redesigning higher ed:

What we’re working on

ENSO is a small, senior team so that we can work on just a few initiatives at a time. This allows us to go deep on some of the biggest challenges/ opportunities. Recently, we’ve been working on a few main missions with our partners:

1. We have to redesign everything. We get to redesign everything. At this inflection moment of old systems breaking, widespread dissatisfaction and the AI explosion, we are thinking about how to redesign our world for abundance.
2. Changing the world of work: the labor market is the engine of prosperity, but ~80% of people are not engaged or thriving. We’re working to change the system.
3. Helping artists sustain an artistic life over the long term: Designing the space and tools to help artists everywhere thrive. 
4. Defining how the world’s most dynamic ecosystem can be harnessed to fight climate change: Finding a way to turn the incredible research, education and innovation into a new future for the planet, and for us. 

Reach us at news@enso.co

See you next time.

ENSO • 115 W California Blvd #9101 Pasadena, CA 91105