Vince Gilligan spent a decade ruminating about his next TV series before he had a clear vision of what it was going to be. But through all that time, the writer/director, who is best known for creating Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, knew one thing for sure: it had to be entirely different from what hed made before. In fact, it had to be completely unlike any other show, period.
As far as a prime directive, it is always: A) how can we make this show look different than any other show on TV? That’s the most important one, Gilligan told me during a recent call. And B, how can we make the show look and sound and feel different from the other shows we’ve already done?
Gilligan made good on his promise to himself. The resulting show, Pluribus, really is a wholly unique take on the sci-fi genre. Massive in scope, yet intimate at its core, its a deep study of a character who is going through an impossibly hard situation that affects the entire planet.
Before Gilligan told anyone about his idea for Pluribus, he wanted to get his idea onto paper. I wait as long as I can, and I have as much figured out, at least with the first episode, as possible, he says. And in this case, I had the luxury of having a completely written first script, I think actually, possibly a completely written first two scripts.
Vince Gilligan (center) [Image: Apple]
That’s what he showed to Rhea Seehorn, who played Kim Wexler opposite Bob Odenkirks Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul. Initially, Gilligan thought about a male protagonist for Pluribus but, after working with Seehorn, he decided to write the series for her. I talked to Rhea first because I wanted to make sure Rhea would star in the show, he says.
It was only after Seehorn agreed to play Carol Sturkathe grumpy bestseller romance author who becomes the herothat he got the production ball rolling. I started talking to our department heads, our wonderful crew people that I’ve been working with for years, he tells me. And that makes it a lot easier.
[Photo: courtesy of Apple]
Gilligantogether with series writer/director Gordon Smith and writer Alison Tatlocksays the shows premise is meant to be the opposite of every “alien invasion film” youve seen up to this point. Having first worked as a writer on The X-Files, which embodied and invented many of the universal sci-fi tropes, Gilligan knew that Pluribus needed to serve the premise with no cracks in the story, which resulted in flipping, subverting, and ultimately destroying every single sci-fi trope wedged into our collective mind since The Twilight Zone.
For Gilligan, Pluribus is the culmination of decades of work in TV. Filmed in Albuquerque (where most of the crew lives), Gilligan says the show is a direct result of working with the same reliable team hes been with since Breaking Bad. Pluribus composer Dave Porter, who worked with Gilligan on his previous two series, told me that Gilligans directive cut across departments on Pluribus: We wanted to plant our flag in the ground to say this is a very, very different experience.
[Photo: Apple]
A Post-it sketch becomes a panopticon
To understand the production design, it helps to know what the series is about (my recommendation: run to watch the first episode if you havent yet). The series begins with an eerie but subtle alien encounter. The U.S. Army lab uses RNA code radioed from an exoplanet 600 light-years away to create a self-replicating alien retrovirus. The virus infects one person transforming her into the first node of a hive mind called The Others. Within a few weeks, all of humanity turns from a selfish, violent-prone, greedy group of individuals into a pacifist, vegetarian, and very happy collective.
Immune to this alien virus, only 13 humans survive this process, called The Joining. Carol being one of them, is the only person in the U.S. that keeps her free will. The Others only have one mission: To turn civilization and the entire planet into a hippie bliss paradise, all while trying to find a way to save those last 13 humans from what they think is the angst of freewill, the pain of our daily choices, our imperfect nature. Its not that they want to assimilate the 13 like the Borg or cordyceps; The Others believe they are doing the right thing when they liberate you from your sad pointless life.
[Photo: Apple]
Pluribus follows Carol as she grapples with this new reality, and as she tries to find a way to revert the world back to how it was. Carol has a mission, but her mission is far from a sci-fi trope of saving the world. There are no tropes in Gilligans vision. In fact, the series team had to strip away the spectacle usually associated with global cataclysms.
Smith and Tatlock describe this as a pursuit of scrupulous emotional truth. In most sci-fi, when the world changes, the characters sprint toward the explosions. In Pluribus, as it happened in Better Call Saul, they stop. Your wife just died. Really? The world just became a hive mind, how fast do you move to get past that? Smith asks.
This refusal to rush required a specific kind of geography and to ground the infinite scope of a global hive mind, led the production team to build a very small, very specific cage for Rhea Seehorns character. Her home is the center of her world.
That began with a crude drawing. My favorite picture is a Post-it drawn by Vince, production designer Denise Pizzini tells me. He has a little cul-de-sac and he has these houses and he has the one house at the top that says C, which is Carol’s house.
[Image: courtesy of Denise Pizzini]
That doodle evolved into a big civil engineering project. Rather than fighting the logistical nightmare of filming in a real neighborhood for multiple seasons, Pizzini and her team leased a plot of empty land outside Albuquerque and built Carols cul-de-sac from the dirt up, complete with plans and full permits and licenses. They poured concrete slabs, laid curbs, and constructed seven custom homes around a circle of asphalt, which became itself a way to communicate later in the series (warning: some minor generic spoilers ahead).
[Photo: Apple]
A controlled gaze
The physical location of the house is real, with fully working systems and finished downstairs interiors. The team also built the upstairs bedroom, office, and hallways on a controlled soundstage. They duplicated the ground floor almost exactly, allowing the camera to seamlessly look from the street into Carol’s living room, or from her kitchen window out to the hive, without a cut, effectively building the house twice.
[Image: courtesy of Denise Pizzini]
The architectural mirroring was so precise that the illusion eventually fooled its own creator. I watched the episode last night, and there’s a shot of her in the kitchen seeing the exterior, and I thought, I couldn’t tell, Pizzini confesses. Is that on location or is that on the set? Which is great because I don’t remember.
[Photo: Apple]
For Gilligan, this wasn’t just about production convenience; it was about the gaze. Before a single wall was framed, the team pounded stakes into the empty field so Gilligan could test the camera angles. Vince was very specific about what we wanted Carol’s view to be, Pizzini says. We needed from her front door and that front window, we needed to be able to see everybody else’s front door. Plus the city lights below. They even graded each house separately to ensure the street curved precisely to vanish into a fictional neighborhood.
[Photo: Apple]
The result is a set that functions like a panopticon, designed to ensure Carol is never truly alone. Pizzini designed Carols house as the bastion of her humanity, filled with the evidence of her previous life with Helen, who fails to survive the merging into the hive mind. The prodction team filled the space with invisible details. Helen was [Carols] organizer . . . she manages all her tours, Pizzini says. They placed Helen’s laptop on the dining room table, an orchid she bought, her sleeping mask, and her books by the bed. Just little things like that give you an indication that they had a life together, she says.
[Photo: Apple]
Pizzini also designed the interior knowing that this home was a character in itself. Inside, she used arches and open sightlines because so much of the action was going to happen there and they needed to move the camera around. She’s in a little bit of a maze because she’s kind of stuck in her house . . . or she chooses to be, Pizzini tells me. To show the passage of time, Pizzini added an atrium. I decided to do this so there could be actual sunlight coming in. We could see the plants kind of growing or dying because Helen’s not there taking care of things.
[Image: courtesy of Denise Pizzini]
Gilligan was over the moon with the Pluribus set, he tells me, because it opened so many creative opportunities for them. They were able to design so many scenes in advance. For episode one, when Carol’s coming home after this horrible night she’s been through, I wanted certain angles past her onto the house next door where the little kids [part of The Others] come out, Gilligan says.
[Image: courtesy of Denise Pizzini]
Carols home is a brutal contrast to the spaces controlled by the hive mind. As The Others consolidate, they abandon individual homes for communal living to save electricity and water. The world becomes austere. Traffic doesnt exist. Lawns grow wild. Commercial spaces and offices are closed. Buffalos roam golf courses. Hospitals have the bare minimum personnel (remember, since the minds merged, everyone has everyone elses knowledge, so every person regardless of age, gender, or previous occupation, is now the best doctor, the best pilot, the best physicist, and the best anything you can imagine).
Supermarkets are also empty. The production took over a real Sprouts supermarket after a year negotiating with the actual chain and weeks physically emptying the shelves. Emptying out a supermarket . . . boy, that’s a nightmare, Gilligan says. Sometimes you think something is going to be very complicated but turns out to be so easy. This was the contrary: They thought it was simple but it was a logistical hell, he points out. “Every step of the process, I was like, this is a nightmare,” Smith adds. Seeing the empty supermarketand how it gets filled in a matter of hourscaptures a society that has optimized itself into terrifying efficiency and silence.
[Photo: Apple]
Subtracting humanity, adding logic
So many other things required the same level of subtraction, which became the mandateand nightmarefor the visual effects department. Rather than adding hordes of zombies, spaceships, and lasers, VFX Supervisor Ara Khanikian and his crew spent his time erasing life from each frame. We’re subtracting a lot instead of adding, he says.
To achieve the eerie stillness of a society reduced to its most efficient expression, Khanikians team meticulously rotoscoped out people, cars, and movement from wide shots of Albuquerque. This forced the team to realize more consequences about the shows premise, answering philosophical questions about a post-human world. If there’s no concept of humans and traffic . . . are they all green or do they continue blinking? Or have we turned off the electricity to that because we don’t need it anymore? Khanikian asks.
[Photo: Apple]
Another question was how The Others move. At one point of the series, there is a massiveexodus from the city. The team initially created film plates to animate cars moving in perfect synchronization, assuming a networked intelligence would drive with mathematical precision. But it looked fake. Theoretically, if everybody’s in sync together, there shouldn’t be any traffic jams, Khanikian explains. We have to add a little bit of that human imperfection . . . Some people accelerate just a little bit more. Some brake a little bit later.
[Photo: Apple]
Gilligans commitment to physical reality extended everywhere. At one point, one of the unaffected humans arrives at the airport in Bilbao, Spain, on Air Force One. Initially, Pizzini tells me, they started out building just the planes door, the surrounding frame, some stairs and green screen. But we knew Vince was going to want it big, she says.
[Image: courtesy of Denise Pizzini]
Gilligan saw it and he asked to expand it. He was like, no, we need to do a little more, a little more, she recalls amused. So we built a big chunk of it and we found the stairs that could go up to it. And then we . . . built little pieces of the interior, so you could go inside Air Force One and shoot out and see them coming up the stairs.
But it didnt end there. They ended up buying the frontal 747 landing gear. And, since they filmed scenes on the runways of Bilbaos airport, they had to match the cement and asphalt patterns of the airport. That was a big, big set, Pizzini recalls.
[Photo: Apple]
Clothing becomes function
Like the sets, the costumes show us a civilization that has decided to stop waste, both physical and mental. Costume designer Jennifer Bryan pitched a radical concept to Gilligan: In a hive mind, clothing no longer serves to signal status, culture, or religion. It is reduced to its leanest, meanest function. I pitched to him that the clothes shouldn’t signify any of that, Bryan says.Basically just leaving clothing as a shell to cover your body, like a snail has a shell.
[Image: courtesy of Jennifer Bryan]
She stripped the costumes of jewelry and accessories. She only kept belts in cases where pants would literally fall down. The clothes also tell the story without having to enunciate it with dialog, one of the core strengths of Pluribus.
[Photo: Apple]
In the early days of the assimilation, because the hive mind shares its knowledge, anyone can do anything, regardless of their attire. This leads to the visual dissonance of a TGI Fridays waitress piloting the Airbus that flies Carol to Bilbao. The woman wears the uniform she was caught in when the virus struck, but she possesses the skill set of a veteran pilot. When you see the uniform or the clothing not matching the occupation, you know something’s off, Bryan says. Even the man cleaning Carols house in a spandex cyclist suit is a misplacement of role (fun fact: that character is played by the actual mayor of Albuquerque).
Those were the early days of the hive mind unification. Later in the series, as society continues to optimize, people lose their individual uniform and begin to wear plainer, neutral clothinga shell aesthetic will only deepen as the series progresses. As the hive mind realizes that wool requires disturbing a sheep and silk requires killing a worm, the very materials of clothing will change to reflect a society that refuses to do harm.
[Photo: Apple]
In the second season you’ll start to see the effects of that, Bryan teases. She explains what we all know about modern society. Somewhere along the line, something had to die for it, whether it’s a mulberry worm to make silk or you cut on a tree to make lumber.
This also opens a stark contrast among the few remaining humans. While waiting to find the science to assimilate them, The Others are obsessed with pleasing the 13 free humans by doing anything these ‘freewill’ humans ask for. While Carol largely rejects the hive’s offers of help and comfort, other survivors indulge.
[Photo: Apple]
Mr. Diabate, one of the 13 free humans, treats the hive like a genie lamp. To dress him, Bryan looked to the Sapeurs of Brazzaville, Congoblue-collar workers who dress in ostentatious, high-end suits. She dressed Diabate in a tuxedo made of African fabric, a visual explosion of ego in a world that has otherwise been flattened to grey. She looked at the characters and asked herself: If you could get every single thing that you wanted, what would you go for?
Since Gilligan insisted on actors who were genuinely from the regions they portrayedlike Mauritius, Colombia, China, or Peru, Bryan collaborated with them on the specific mix of Western and traditional clothing unique to their cultures.
[Photo: Apple]
The sound of the swarm
The final layer of this happy apocalypse is the soundscape. Like everyone else on the production team, composer Dave Porter tells me that he got the same prime directive from Gilligan. After spending 20 years defining the sonic palette of the Breaking Bad, El Camino, and Better Call Saul universe, he realized he needed to strip it down to the studs for Pluribus.
The series premise also defined his musical choice from the start. Instead of sci-fi synths or traditional orchestral arrangements, Porter chose the most innate human instrument: the voice. But like the traffic in Khanikians visual effects, he found that a controlled cacophony of a slightly off-sync choir was the perfect way to convey both the nature of The Others while introducing a disheartening, uneasy feeling. Something must be wrong.
Porter tells me that he was influenced by American minimalist composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich to structure the score, using syncopation and phase-shifting to mirror the hives behaviormoving from soothing unison to chaotic dissonance. At times, this chaos gets into an ever-increasing crescendo that reminds me of the work of Hungarian composer György Ligeti for the Monolith in Stanley Kubricks 2001: Space Odyssey. Nobody’s singing any words, but there’s a lot of syncopation and punctuation about what they’re doing, he says.
This technique was used to perfection in a chilling scene in which Carol is trying to extract information from Zosia, the character who serves as her primary contact and chaperone with The Others. In the scene, Carol drugs Zosia with Sodium Pentothal, as she asks Zosia to give her information about what might reverse whats happened to the world. When the hive mind realizes whats going on, a mob appears out of nowhere to surround them. The on-set extras’ voices were blended with a choir to create an overwhelming wall of sound to stop her.
Tatlock told me the story logic behind that moment. The Others were not talking in perfect synchronicity because of network latency but as a tactic to create a buzz to stop her. They can pretty quietly and calmly drown her out, Tatlock explains. It is a sonic tactic designed to foil Carols questions without aggression. The hive doesn’t need to scream; it just needs to vibrate at a frequency to drown you in sound.
[Photo: Apple]
The ants
Porter tells me that the music was designed to explore the tension between the pain of individuality and the comfort of surrender. He also avoided scoring The Others with purely menacing music. Instead, he used vocals that could shift from comforting to terrifying. As Vince has been saying a lot in interviews about the show, theyre not all bad, right?” he says. For Gilligan, it was important that the score didnt paint anything in black and whitethere’s always multiple ways to view things.
[Photo: Apple]
Which brings us back to the very nature of the show. Unlike most series, it doesnt give us answers; instead it gives us all the questions we should be asking. At every plot turn, every reveal, and every character decision, you feel that any kind of dichotomy is a false one. Like Porter says, there are no binary answers in the real world. Especially when it comes to free will, our nature, and the nature of the societies we build.
And thats perhaps Pluribus greatest success, beyond its storytelling and cinematic virtues. Vince and his family have built a glass ant farm, removed the chaos of individuality, and forced us to watch what remains. The result is a world that feels nice, quiet, seductive, yet profoundly inhuman, which makes you appreciate your faulty humanity even more.
In Denmark, a grocery store chain used a black star. In Canada, it was a maple leaf.
President Donald Trump’s trade war inspired new country-of-origin “Made In” labels this year as shoppers outside the U.S. looked to avoid buying American-made goods and shop local instead. In the U.S., though, the “Made in USA” brand is losing its domestic appeal.
Country-of-origin labeling is designed to be a stamp of authenticity and quality. Countries police their own rules to ensure products labeled “made” or “assembled” in their country really were made or assembled there and that they meet national standards.
When the Copenhagen-based think tank 21st Century introduced its concept for a possible future “Made in Europe” label, its managing director said it was designed to establish trust, as in, if something was made in Europe, consumers could trust no arsenic would be in it.
In the U.S. this year, though, “Made in USA” isn’t so much about trust for a growing number of consumers as it is about higher prices. And they don’t want to pay them.
A Conference Board survey released in August found about half of U.S. consumers say knowing a product was made in the U.S. made them more likely to buy it again, an 18% decline since 2022. The report’s author blamed the drop on consumers appearing to associate “Made in USA” with being expensive because of high domestic production costs.
U.S. consumers today face an overall average effective tariff rate of 16.8%, according to Yale’s Budget Lab. That’s the highest rate since 1935, and it comes amid wider economic discontent.
Half of U.S. adults say they are spending more time than usual looking for the the lowest price for items, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. That’s up from 31% in 2021 and helps explain the rise of yuppie, designified generic brands. Value matters to consumers today.
Trump’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans to make “Made in USA” one of its top enforcement priorities in 2026, but for half of all shoppers looking for the best deal, they won’t be swayed one way or the other, no matter where a product was produced.
Americans say they are generally attentive to where their products are made, an October Gallup poll found, with 76% aware of the country products were made in before purchasing them sometimes, most of the time, or always.
Following years of inflation, though, the most important label for many U.S. shoppers isn’t “Made in USA.” It’s the price tag.
For the chronically online, 2025 was the year of brain rot, AI slop, and rage bait,” a time of consuming Labubu matcha Dubai chocolate to the sound of nothing beats a Jet2 holiday and six-seven, on repeat, as a form of torture.
Here, we take a look back at the biggest internet-culture moments that brought us all together even as the country is more divided than ever.
The TikTok ban that never happened
If I told you the supposed TikTok ban was this year, would you believe me? In January, users panicked over the looming threat of the apps impending disappearance, flocking to alternatives like the Chinese-owned RedNote and making last-ditch confessions on the doomed apponly for the ban to never materialize.
American woman in Pakistan
American Onijah Andrew Robinson went viral in February after claiming she flew to Pakistan to marry a 19-year-old she met online, only to be rejected. Instead of returning home, she became a minor celebrity in Pakistan, holding press conferences in Karachi, demanding money, and announcing plans to rebuild the country, earning the moniker American woman in Pakistan.
The lone anglerfish
Usually found 6,500 feet under the sea, this black seadevil was filmed by marine researchers in Tenerife swimming toward the waters surface. Tragically, the fish died just hours after being spotted, sparking an emotional outpouring on social media for this six-inch fish. RIP.
Tesla Cybertrucks
If one good thing came out of 2025, its the unanimous cancellation of Cybertrucks. The ostentatiously hideous vehicles became everyones favorite punching bag in 2025 as a result of anti-Elon Musk backlash.
A group of TikTokers known as the Cybertruck Hunters roamed the streets, hunting Tesla Cybertrucks in the wild. People posted their Tesla trade-ins on TikTok accompanied by the hashtag ByeTesla and scored to Taylor Swifts Look What You Made Me Do.” Die-hard owners eventually retreated to Facebook support groups and demanded harassment of Tesla drivers be labeled a hate crime (if so, owning one should also be considered one).
Great Meme Depression
The panic around the lack of memes as we entered the third month of the year began on March 10, when user @goofangel posted a video titled TikTok Great Depression March 2025. He says, Nine days into March and we havent had a single original meme. The Great Meme Depression soon became a meme itself, later triggering talk of The Great Meme Reset of 2026. Stay tuned for updates.
OpenAI Studio-Ghibli-gate
After Images for ChatGPT launched in March, users transformed selfies and family photos into Studio Ghibli-style portraits. What started as a lighthearted trend quickly took a darker turn as ethical questions and copyright issues began to surface. In a resurfaced clip from a 2016 documentary, Hayao Miyazaki, the founder of Studio Ghibli, called AI an insult to life itself. Some food for thought for 2026.
Chicken Jockey
If you took a trip to the cinema in April to watch A Minecraft Movie, based on the popular game, you would likely have been subjected to a teen-filled audience yelling Chicken jockey! at the top of their lungs, flashing phone lights, and launching popcorn and drinks at the screen. (To which I say: Why were you watching A Minecraft Movie in the first place?)
Conclave
In May, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost of the United States was declared the 267th pope, taking the name Pope Leo XIV. On social media, diva sightings, memes about the niche, daily process of conclave, and live updates of the Sistine Chapels chimney flooded FYPs. Can we do it all again next year?
Velvet Sundown
The mysterious indie rock bandseemingly unironically named Velvet Sundownsuddenly appeared in Spotifys Discovery Weekly in July, quickly amassing hundreds of thousands of listeners. Their rapid rise sparked speculation that the group might be AI-generated (while they confessed they kind of are, but kind of arent). A true mystery for the ages.
Etsy witches
2025 has been a big year for Etsy witches. From sports fans hoping to gain an advantage for their teams to anxious brides praying for perfect wedding weather, more people than ever were purchasing spells on platforms like Etsy this year to turn their luck around.
Coldplay’s Kiss Cam
We all remember where we were the first time we saw the clip. A Coldplay concert in Massachusetts went viral in July when an HR executive was caught on the jumbotron embracing her companys CEOspurring a million memes nd breaking the internet in the process.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security
The official X account of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security tested a new social media strategy this year, as meme lord, drawing widespread backlash on and offline. So far, theyve got on the wrong side of Sabrina Carpenter, SZA, Olivia Rodrigo, Jess Glynne, Theo Von, and Pokémon, to name a few, for featuring their songs and audios without permission to promote deportations.
“6-7”
Last but not least . . . you cant talk about 2025 without mentioning six, seeeeven. Or maybe we can, and instead pretend a bunch of grown adults dont need to dissect a trend that is only funny, relevant, or interesting if your birth year begins with a two.
Unfortunately, the two digits have become too ubiquitous to ignore, wreaking havoc in classrooms, banned at fast food chain In-N-Out, and cemented as the choice for Dictionary.coms word of the year.
Lets hope for 2026.
When you hear the phrase family business, you might think of the backstabbing Roys of Succession or the dysfunctional Duttons of Yellowstone. But while TVs family companies are entertaining, their real-life counterparts may be even more compelling.
Around the world, family businesses produce about two-thirds of all economic output and employ more than half of all workers. And they can be very profitable: The worlds 500 largest family businesses generated a collective US$8.8 trillion in 2024. Thats nearly twice the gross domestic product of Germany.
If youre not steeped in family business researchand even if you aretheir ubiquity might seem a little strange. After all, families can come with drama, conflict, and long memories. That might not sound like the formula for an efficient company.
We are researchers who study family businesses, and we wanted to understand why there are so many of them in the first place. In our recent article published in the Journal of Management, we set out to understand this different kind of whynot just the purpose of family firms, but why they thrive around the world.
The usual answers dont really explain it
The standard answer to Why do family companies exist? is straightforward: They allow owners to generate income and potentially create a legacy for future generations.
A related question is: Why do entrepreneurs even want to involve their relatives in their new ventures? Research suggests entrepreneurs do so because family members care and can help when resources are limited.
But that might not be unique to family businesses. All companieswhether run by a family or corporate executivesbalance short-term profit and long-term goals. And all of them want reliable workers who are willing to pitch in.
So those answers dont explain why family companies, specifically, are so common worldwide.
A different angle: Winning without fighting
For our study, we considered decades of research about family firms to conclude that family businesses are uniquely skilled at keeping competitors out of their market spaceoften without actually competing with them.
How? We think a quote from Sun-Tzus The Art of War captures the idea:
To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemys resistance without fighting.
Family-owned businesses often do exactly this, which is why there are so many of them. Heres how it works in practice.
3 key differences
Research on family businesses has shown that they differ from other types of companies in three key ways: the types of goals they pursue, the governance structures they establish, and the resources they have. Together, these three characteristics explain how family businesses may use their property rights to get an edge over their competitors.
The first is goals. Unlike other types of enterprises, family businesses prioritize noneconomic goals involving the reputation, legacy, and well-being of the familyboth now and in the future.
Of course, they still have to worry about making a profit. But their interest in family-centered goals can lead them to choose projects that may yield lower returns but still fulfill their noneconomic goals. These sorts of projects may not be attractive to other types of firms. As a result, family businesses may find themselves operating in spaces where theres not much competition to start with.
For instance, take Corticeira Amorim, a family-run Portuguese company that dominates the global market for cork stoppers and other cork products. The cork industry is a classic narrow niche: There are only a handful of serious global competitors, and Amorim is widely described as the worlds largest cork processing group, with a sizable share of global wine and Champagne corks.
CEO Antonio Rios de Amorim discusses the history of his family business in this Business Insider video.
The second key factor is governance. Family members who work together often know each other well, care about each other, and want the best for both the family and the firm, which may stay in the familys possession for generations. This fact may reduce operating costs and the cost of contracting.
Why? When they make decisions, they dont always need to hire a fancy, Harvey Specter-like lawyer from the show Suits. They can decide on the next move for the company while having dinner together. This significantly reduces the costs associated with decision-making. In other words, because they rely less on formal contracts and monitoring, family businesses can operate more cheaply.
Finally, family firms use resources like information and money differently. Since many established family businesses have been around for decades, relatives who work together accumulate information thats hard to acquire and transfer, and might not even be useful elsewhere. Being a family membr means not only doing business with relatives but also going through life together, acquiring a unique perspective about the family itself.
As a result, family businesses have lower transaction costs than other companies. Sometimes this shows up in very concrete ways. An uncle may invest money in the business and never ask for it back. Would that happen at a nonfamily business? Probably not. This dedication makes family members a special type of human asset thats hard to replace.
Put simply, nonfamily businesses are unlikely to hire someone who cares as much about the companys success as a deeply invested relative does. And because these relationships arent for sale on the open market, competitors cant easily access them. That fact helps family businesses keep competitors at bay while essentially being themselveswhich in turn explains why there are so many of them.
Family businesses are so common worldwide that there are several holidays celebrating them, including International Family Business Day on November 25; U.S. National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day on March 29; and the United Nations Micro-, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises Day on June 27. This holiday season, you might consider spreading a little extra cheer with the family-run retailers in your community.
Vitaliy Skorodziyevskiy is an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Louisville.
Hanqing “Chevy” Fang is an associate professor of business and information technology at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Jim Chrisman is a professor of management at Mississippi State University.
If youre an entrepreneur, at the end of the year youre probably excited about the prospect of time off, but also daunted by the new year’s potential and all the deadlines you should be setting.
Traditional planning methods like to-do lists and calendars are no longer enough for the complexity of modern careers and lives. This year, I leaned into AI to approach planning differently.
When used thoughtfully, AI becomes a partner in strategy, and a system that helps you transform aspirations into structured, executable plans.
Heres how I recommend using AI to clarify where youre headed and offer more clarity on how to get there.
Redefine the role of AI
Most people use AI like a junior assistant, asking it to summarize things or spit out a process or recommendation based on relevant input shared. But what I realized is that AI can be extremely helpful as a thought partner, forcing clarity where youre vague and exposing blind spots youd otherwise ignore.
One of the first prompts I ran this year was If I repeat the same behaviors I had this year, where will I realistically end up in 12 months?
That question alone reframes everything. AI is excellent at pattern recognition, including your own.
Before planning forward, I let AI show me the trajectory Im already on to help me decide what needs to change.
Plan like a portfolio manager
We have a tendency to approach planning as if every goal deserves equal attention, but lets face it, thats rarely the case.
This year, I asked AI to treat my time like a portfolio. I said, given my goals, which 20% are likely to produce 80% of meaningful outcomes?
The result was uncomfortable to see but important to make me realize that several projects I thought were important turned out to be just draining my energy.
For example, the AI flagged two goals as the most important: clarifying and focusing on one user problem to make sure the team was pushing in one direction, as well as building a regular feedback loop, so that we can iterate the product based on feedback as most important. Everything else on the backlog had to come second.
Use AI to run premortems on your year
One of the most powerful ways I use AI is by asking it to assume failure.
Before finalizing major goals, I run a premortem, by providing context as if its already December next year and the plan failed, helping me see what went wrong.
This helps me surface predictable risks, such as being overly optimistic on timelines, or trying to do too many things at once.
For example, last year I ran a premortem on what looked like a perfectly reasonable plan of scaling my company while simultaneously launching two new agent products, expanding partnerships, and tightening our internal tooling, all within 12 months.
The AI flagged that Id assumed linear progress in a year that would almost certainly include regulatory friction, hiring delays, and long integration cycles with partners. It pointed out that running multiple launches in parallel would fragment leadership attention.
This single exercise has saved me months of wasted effort by planning ahead for what can keep me stuck.
Turn goals into systems
Traditional planning tends to be driven by milestones like “scale by Q4.”
But what if, instead of asking what do I want to achieve, you ask: What system do I need to follow to ensure I reach this milestone? This could look like a weekly publishing system with feedback, as opposed to just saying you want to write more.
AI helps design these systems, and refine them over time.
Let your plan evolve in real time
The biggest flaw we tend to make in our annual planning is pretending the future is static.
Whats changed for me this year is using AI agents to continuously adapt my plan based on new information, such as meetings added to the calendar or opportunities emerging that I didnt anticipate. You can just sync your preferred chatbot with your calendar to help you do this.
This turns planning into a living conversation, not a once-a-year ritual.
AI wont magically give you discipline, but it will expose contradictions between what you say you want and how you actually allocate time.
Used well, AI becomes a mirror that reflects your priorities back at you in uncomfortably precise ways.
The people who will get the most out of AI next year will be doing fewer things, more coherently, with systems that adapt as fast as life does.
Using AI to help you in this process is what will make a difference between a plan that looks good on January 1 and one that works all year long.
2025 was unquestionably the year of the AI boom at work. When generative AI like ChatGPT entered the scene a few years ago, it started as a novelty. Early adapters saw its potential to change the way we work, but for most people it was a way to rewrite Keatss poetry in pirate speak, or remix their favorite memes.
But in 2025 AI rolled into offices everywhere, taking up residence as the boss who set performance goals, the on-call therapist-cum-coach, and the silent brainstorm partner. A McKinsey study found that 33% of organizations used genAI at work in 2023, and 55% used AI. This year, that leapt to 79% and 88% respectively. Here are five ways AI changed work in 2025.
1. The AI job application
Not only is AI changing how we do our jobs, its changing how we get our jobs. AI generated résumés submitted on LinkedIn surged by 45% this year. Job candidates are also using AI to find companies to apply to and help them network.
In parallel, overwhelmed by all the AI generated applications, HR departments are using AI to help them keep up. Three-fourths of hiring managers say they use AI to schedule interviews, and over 90% use AI to screen résumés. While interviewing still remains the domain of humans, about 25% of companies are using AI interviewers. Researcher Brian Jabarian even found that AI interviewers are more likely to result in increased job offers. They also improve 30-day job retention by 17% for industries that hire at a high volume, such as customer service.
2. AI as the superstar employee
AI arrived on the scene as the perfect employee. It does not ask for a salary or raises, it does not care about getting promoted, and it wont steal someones lunch from the break room. Instead, it can do the automatic, repetitive work thats present in every job that eats up hours of the week offering very little intellectual satisfaction in return.
In fact, even as companies waffled on how to train employees on how to use AI and what their AI policies should be, employees took matters into their own hands and figured out how to use AI to make their jobs easier. About 80% of employees at small and medium-size companies were using their own AI tools at work giving rise to BYOAI: bring your own AI.
AI has also reduced the barrier to entry for founders: instead of hiring a fleet of programmers, vibe code. Instead of sinking hours into finding client contact information, get AI to suggest leads.
3. The silent copilot
Not only is AI the superstar employee, its the perfect confidante since it wont gossip. As such, AI also became the silent copilot who helped workers brush up on their soft skills and stress test their ideas without judgement. In an informal survey Fast Company conducted of employees using LinkedIn, workers reported using AI to organize documents, brainstorm ideas, challenge assumptions, summarize meeting notes, and prioritize tasks. Employees are even asking AI what kind of health insurance they should get.
Its not just employees: leaders are using AI to up their game. Studies show that 85% of new managers dont receive training. AI quietly stepped in to fill the gap. James Cross, cofounder of Tenor, an AI leadership company, noted that managers are often more receptive to AI feedback, because theres no emotion attached to it.
4. The rise of workslop
AI might be the best employee but its also the worst employee because it knows not what it does. While AI can generate work, that doesnt mean it understands what its doing. 2025 might have seen the ascendance of AI at work, but it also saw the ascendance of AI generated workslop. Stanford researchers found that 40% of employees reported receiving AI-generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.
Meanwhile, in July, MIT published a report that found that while companies were investing billions of dollars in AI, 95% of companies had found no return on their AI investments. Worse, OpenAIs research found that their models can lie deliberately. AI promises to work easier, but workers may find instead of kicking back, they have a new job: sorting through piles of AI generated trash.
5. AI took all the jobs, or did it just get blamed for it?
In addition to being the superstar employee, AI is also everyones favorite scapegoat. Its getting blamed for replacing all the jobs for good reason. First, 2025 was a rough year for layoffs, with layoff announcements totaling over one million. Second, CEOs pinned the blame on AI. Understandably, as wave after wave of layoffs have swept through corporate America, nearly a third of employees say that they think AI will lead to fewer job opportunities.
However, experts point out theres little evidence AI is replacing workersAIs impact on the workforce is comparable to earlier technological disruptions such as the rise of the PC and the internet. In a rocky economy, where companies are struggling to trim back, it makes companies look good to their shareholders, to suggest we are deploying AI so well [that] we are now cutting our labor costs, Molly Kinder, a Brookings senior fellow, told Fast Company.
This holiday season, an unexpected treat has stepped into the limelight and onto the buffet table at many a festive gathering: the Jell-O shot. But the shot in question, which is currently going viral on TikTok and popping up on high-end menus across New York City, is nothing like the ones you probably remember from the sticky basement of a college frat party. Instead, these treats are sleek, refined, classy, and covetedin short, the opposite of electric green slime in a plastic cup.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by s o l i d w i g g l e s (@solidwiggles)
Brooklyn-based Solid Wiggles, cofounded by pastry chef Jena Derman and mixologist Jack Schramm, is among the pioneers of this Jell-O shot revival. Founded in 2020, the company describes its mission as reimagining the nostalgic Jell-O shot with its “cocktail jellies” that double as edible art. Flavors include margarita, espresso martini, and mezcal negroni, all presented in eye-catching cubes with epertly layered colors, flavors, and designs. A 40-piece, full-menu sampler costs $115.
After just five years in business, Solid Wiggles are on the menu at 20 bars and restaurants in the U.S., including NYCs ultrapopular restaurant Tatiana, helmed by James Beard award-winning chef Kwame Onwuachi. According to Derman, the brands sales have roughly doubled every year for the past three years, and its gearing up to release its own cookbook with Penguin Random House in 2026.
A clear trend is emerging: the Jell-O shot is getting a rebrand as a classy treat for a more mature drinker (foodie?) In a growing number of circles, its no longer a kitschy throwback, but instead a fashionable food statement.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Victoria Granof (@victoriagranof)
The Jell-O shot’s tasteful rebrand
To get a taste of the Jell-O shots newfound popularity, one need only search the term on TikTok and brows through some of the most popular videos.
Maturing is realizing your friends will take jello shots if you call them edible cocktails, reads the caption of one recent TikTok with 13,000 likes, starring Jell-O shots with encased maraschino cherries cut into cubes.
Another TikTok of lychee martini jello-shots with cherries, once again artfully cubed (and this time dusted in powdered sugar), amassed nearly 140,000 likes in just two days. And a third YouTube Short, also sharing a lychee martini shot recipe, recently surpassed half a million views.
Im 27, and a real shot sends chills through my literal spine these days, creator @babytamazz explains in the clip. Im still gonna take them, but a Jell-O shot is just preferred at this time. Plus, theyre so fun and bitchy and an awesome party pull.
Perhaps the most popular video, though, was created by the publication Punch and features Solid Wiggles unique take on the Jell-O shot. Derman says its now been viewed more than eight million times across social media, leading to what she described as a “colossal” spike in sales just before the holidays.
Solid Wiggles has spent five years trying to convince consumers that the Jell-O shot can be cooland, clearly, its paying off.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by s o l i d w i g g l e s (@solidwiggles)
Recipe for success
Derman and Schramm met back in 2014, when they both worked at the popular dessert spot Milk Bar. They parted ways when Derman pursued commercial bakery consulting and Schramm went on to work in upscale cocktail bars. After reconnecting during the pandemic, they founded Solid Wiggles.
In 2020, all the bars that I was working at were closed, Schramm says. Jena, ever entrepreneurial, was working on this jelly project where she was using coconut water as a clear base to make these big, elaborate, beautiful jelly centerpieces, but wanted to branch out into some new flavors. She reached out to me because I had centrifuge expertise to make juices clear, and we met at her apartment and made some really tasty jellies.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by s o l i d w i g g l e s (@solidwiggles)
That first day, Schramm recalls, he said, Lets put some booze in these”and the pair havent looked back since.
Not your mother’s Jell-O shot
Jelly desserts have existed for centuries, from France in the Middle Ages to Mexico City in the 40s, but Solid Wiggles is perhaps the first business to pioneer the edible Jell-O shot art category.
Though creative uses of gelatin often evoke an ill-advised recipe from the 1950s (savory Jell-O salad, anyone?), Derman says Solid Wiggles customers are a grown and sexy crowd. These are folks who are sick of just bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner and want to wow their hosts with something new.
We spend all this time making it so that when it finally hits your mouth, you can’t distinguish any of the texturesit all should read as one,” she says. “It should come across as being really simple, even though it’s not so simple.
Schramm believes one of the main factors driving enduring interest in the dessert is that it’s broadly nostalgic.
I think the nice thing about Jell-O in general is it’s not limited in terms of demographics that enjoy it, Schramm says. It’s sort of universally enjoyed by all ages, all demographicseven frat bros grow up at some point and want something delicious that’s also a little bit more beautiful.
Its normalperhaps even biologicalto slow down at the end of the year. Winter weather brings less sunlight, causing our bodies to produce more melatonin and less Vitamin D.
Humans have to fight the urge to hibernate like bears because of the exhausting holiday season. If you find yourself behind and needing to cross off some last-minute items on your to-do list, heres a handy guide to your options on Christmas Day 2025.
Are banks open on Christmas?
No. Christmas is a federal holiday, so brick-and-mortar locations are closed. Online banking and outdoor ATMs are available.
Is mail delivered on Christmas?
The United States Postal Service will not deliver mail on Christmas, and post offices are closed. The only exception: Priority Mail Express is delivered on the holiday.
Is the stock market open?
No. Both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq exchange are closed for the holiday.
What grocery and convenience stores are open?
Trader Joes, Costco, and Aldi are closed. That’s bad news for shoppers but good news for their employees.
The following stores are open:
Acme Market: Some East Coast locations are open.
Albertsons: Some stores are open; hours vary by location.
Caseys General Store: Opens at 10 a.m.
Circle K: Most locations are open 24 hours, even on Christmas, but check your local store to be sure.
Cumberland Farms: Hours vary by location.
Safeway: Some locations are open; hours vary by location.
Wawa: Most are open 24 hours.
7-Eleven: Most are open 24 hours.
Are big-box retailers open?
Most major retail chains, including Walmart and Target, are closed on Christmas.
What about major pharmacy chains?
CVS: Most locations are open with reduced hours; check your local store.
Walgreens: Some locations are open 24/7, though most are operating with reduced hours; check your local pharmacy.
Are fast-food restaurants open on Christmas Day?
Its hard to pinpoint which fast-food restaurants are open because many are franchised, so its up to the individual owners discretion whether or not to remain open. Here are some that should be available.
McDonalds: Most locations are open, but check your local restaurant for hours.
Burger King: Most are open with reduced hours; schedules vary by location.
Starbucks: Many locations are open, but check your favorite spot ahead of time for hours.
What about other restaurants?
If you pull a Scott Calvin from The Santa Clause and burn the turkey, never fear: Many restaurants are open on Christmas Day.
Its important to note, however, that these establishments will most likely have reduced hours and potentially limited menus. The following restaurants will be open with hours that vary by location unless otherwise specified; check the individual location finders for local hours.
Applebees
Buffalo Wild Wings
Dennys (This is Scott Calvins restaurant of choice.)
Huddle House: 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
IHOP
Papa Johns
Perkins: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Red Lobster
Waffle House
Many Chinese restaurants are also open on Christmas Day.
Are movie theaters open?
Buttery popcorn and good flicks? Yes! Most movie theaters are open for business on Christmas Day.
Families and those young at heart can check out Zootopia 2 from Disney or The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants from Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon.
If youre in the mood for a sexy, suspenseful drama, consider The Housemaid starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried. Sci-fi fans can catch James Camerons latest epic, Avatar: Fire and Ash.
Artsy types will enjoy Marty Supreme from A24. Star Timothée Chalamet is already getting early Oscar buzz for his performance.
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.
Theres no doubt about it: Housing market softening across the Sunbeltthe epicenter of U.S. homebuildinghas caused homebuilders to lose pricing power over the past year.
Amid the additional margin compression, some giant homebuilders are adjusting their strategies. Lennar is finally easing up a little on its market share, taking volume-over-margin strategy, while KB Homea homebuilder ranked No. 526 on the Fortune 1000said on December 18 that it plans to lean even harder into built-to-order (more on that below).
At the end of last week, KB Home posted its Q4 2025 earningsthe three months ending November 30. During its earnings call, it underscored just how tricky the current housing market remains, even for builders that have avoided the most aggressive incentive wars and speculative inventory strategies.
In todays article, ResiClub highlights seven key takeaways from KB Homes latest earnings.
1. KB Homes margins compress to the lowest Q4 level since 2016
During the Pandemic Housing Boom, many publicly traded homebuilders achieved record profit margins as home prices soared and buyer demand ran red-hot. Ever since the national housing demand boom fizzled out in the summer of 2022, many large homebuilders have reduced margin and made affordability/pricing adjustments where and when needed to maintain their sales pace or prevent a bigger sales pullback.
That includes KB Home, which reported a housing gross profit margin of 17% in Q4 2025down from a Q4 cycle peak of 24.1% in Q4 2021. Its margin has now compressed to its lowest Q4 level since Q4 2016.
As KB Home CFO Robert Dillard said on the company’s December 18, 2025 earnings call:
Housing gross profit margin was 17%, and adjusted housing gross profit margin, which excluded $13.7 million of inventory-related charges, was 17.8%. Adjusted housing gross profit margin was 310 basis points lower due to pricing pressure, negative operating leverage, higher relative land costs, regional mix, and product mix, which was pronounced due to the age and price of incremental volume versus guidance.
2. KB Homes average selling price is down 8.8% from its 2022 peak
Unlike many giant homebuilders such as Lennarwhich has preferred to pull the mortgage rate buydown lever when making affordability adjustments this cycleKB Home has chosen to rely more on outright price cuts. [Back in summer 2023, KB Home CEO Jeffrey Mezger told me that these price cuts would be their strategy if any of their regional housing markets weakened further.]
In Q4 2025, KB Homes average selling price ($465,600) was 7.1% below Q4 2024 ($501,000) and 8.8% below its cycle peak in Q4 2022 ($510,400). While part of this decline is due to mix shift, KB Home has previously acknowledged cutting home prices over the past 18 months in markets such as Austin and San Antonio, as well as in Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida.
Average selling price declined 7% to $466,000 due to regional and product mix and general market conditions,” Dillard said on the earnings call.
3. KB Homes margin defense plan: leaning harder into Built-to-Order
KB Home is making no secret of its goal: Increase built-to-order deliveries as a share of business to 70% or more of total volume, up from 57% in Q4 2025.
The reason is simplebuilt-to-order margins are materially higher for KB Home. Built-to-order homes tend to generate higher margins because theyre sold before construction begins, reducing inventory carrying costs. Buyers also tend to select higher-margin upgrades and options, which lifts gross profit per home.
KB Home COO Robert McGibney said on the company’s December 18 earnings call:
While we always have some inventory homes available for those buyers that need a quicker move-in date, the superior margins we generate on built-to-order homes will allow us to realize greater value from our communities. Our gross margins on built-to-order homes are trending 3 percentage points to 5 percentage points higher than on inventory sales, and we began to see a shift toward more built-to-order sales during November, an encouraging trend that has continued into December. As we remain focused on selling our built-to-order homes and these sales become deliveries over the course of fiscal 2026, we expect to achieve a favorable trajectory in our gross margins.
Were very focused on getting back to at least a 70/30 [built-to-order] ratio, and we see a great opportunity to drive that change with the new communities coming in the spring.
KB Home executives believe that by leaning more into built-to-order, itll help see their margins bottom in Q1 2026.
KB Home CEO Jeffrey Mezger said on the earnings call:
We’ve already shared that the first quarter margins are the low-water mark, and we expect improvement quarter-over-quarter as the year progresses from there. And it’s a combination of better leverage as we grow revenue back and better margins as our community mix rotates around.
4. KB Homes home sales are down 10% year over year
KB Homes net new orders by Q4
Q4 2018 > 2,013
Q4 2019 > 2,777
Q4 2020 > 3,937
Q4 2021 > 3,529
Q4 2022 > 692 (mortgage rate shockpause before pricing recalibration/easing backlog)
Q4 2023 > 1,909
Q4 2024 > 2,688
Q4 2025 > 2,414
We were disciplined in not taking overly aggressive steps to capture sales during the seasonally slower fourth quarter,” Mezger said on the earnings call. “By doing so, we believe we are positioned to achieve better margins on these sales in our 2026 first quarter than we would otherwise have produced.
5. KB Homes margin compression would be greater right now if not for modest declines in construction and material costs this year
This margin pressure was again partially offset by lower direct construction costs per unit,” Dillard said on the earnings call. “It’s notable that average costs per unit declined in the quarter as direct construction costs and material costs declined more than lot costs increased.
6. KB Homes cancellation rate remains stable
7. Faster build times
KB Home has reduced build times by roughly 20% year over year, hitting its company-wide target of 120 days or better for built-to-order homes. Some divisions are now averaging under 100 days.
Where does KB Home actually build?
Pulling data from the ResiClub Terminalwhere we keep footprint data for Americas 21 largest homebuilderswe made the map below.
Apple and Google would like to see your identification, please.
With the formers Digital ID launch last week, both companies now let you scan a digital version of your passport at more than 250 Transportation Security Administration checkpoints, using an iPhone or Android phone. A growing number of U.S. states already support digital drivers licenses for the same purpose.
But the push for these digital IDs isnt merely about airport security (which still requires you to carry a physical license or passport anyway). Its really part of a broader effort to verify who you are online, one that can finally start in earnest with passport-based digital IDs that are available nationwide.
This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jareds weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get more insights every Tuesday.
How it works
From left: Digital IDs in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet
Apple and Google have similar processes for digitizing a license or passport:
Open the Apple Wallet (iPhone) or Google Wallet (Android) app.
Hit the + button and select the ID option.
Scan your IDs main page with your phones camera.
Scan the back of your license, or place your phone on top of your passports barcode page to scan the embedded RFID chip.
Submit a photo of your face.
Capture one or more short videos of your face performing some kind of movement. (This is presumably to prevent someone from digitizing your ID without permission.)
After a brief verification period, youll be able to access your ID through your phones digital wallet screen, the same place youd use Apple Pay or Google Pay.
While digital passports are available nationwide, support for digital drivers licenses or state IDs varies. Apple and Google currently let you digitize a license from Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Puerto Rico. Apples system also works in Hawaii and Ohio. A smaller number of states maintain their own digital ID apps, either in addition to or instead of Apples and Googles versions, as listed on the TSA website.
Scanning a license or passport doesnt mean you can leave the print version at home. The TSA may still want to see the real thing, and passport control agencies wont accept the digital version when you cross the border.
Moreover, digital ID support will be spotty outside of airports. While some states have been encouraging bars, restaurants, and other businesses to accept digital IDs, the merchant needs a phone or other identity-reader hardware for that. Much like in the early days of Apple Pay and Google Pay, trying to use your digital ID probably wont be worth the potential weird looks and awkwardness.
So whats the point?
Apple and Google both have bigger plans for digital IDs beyond just a slightly more seamless TSA process.
Apples Digital ID setup page, for instance, says itll eventually work while booking flights or hotels and opening new online accounts. Google is more specific, saying its digital ID will let you recover an Amazon account if youre locked out, log into health portals such as CVS Health and Epics MyChart, and verify your profile with companies like Uber. Some states that have enacted age verification laws for porn sites have started accepting digital IDs as well.
Therein lies the true endgame with these digital IDs: The point isnt really to replace physical IDs in the real world, but to verify your identity in the digital one. You can easily imagine a future in which a digital passport lives alongside or even replaces traditional passwords as a way to prove who you are online, with a verification process that feels a lot like checking out with Apple Pay.
This obviously introduces some new concerns. The convenience of digital IDs could also become an excuse to gate off large swaths of the internet, so you might need ID to visit a local brewerys website, rent an R-rated digital movie, or access sites with social features of any kind.
And while Apple and Google tout the ability to keep your personal details privatefor instance, by sharing just your age with a website without revealing your name or addressthat assumes the companies asking for your ID wont request or store more details than they need. Combined with broader use of digital IDs, this could make it a lot harder to browse the internet anonymously.
A lot of this is still theoretical, but it seems to be the future were headed toward. So be aware of what Apple and Google are really asking for when they encourage you to create a digital ID. In the long run its about a lot more than getting through the airport.
This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jareds weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get more insights every Tuesday.
