Air Max Day and the AI Revolution: Celebrating Human Ingenuity
From Sneaker Stories to AI Futures: Embracing Change and Human Contribution
Your Job Is Going To Be Replaced By AI.
As someone who is in the market for work, I can’t seem to look in any direction online this week without seeing that headline. In fact, even people in the tech space that I deeply admire and respect have even started to jump on the “oh sh!t” reality of the artificial intelligence bandwagon. I really want to make a joke here about me being an OG AI (Allen Iverson) bandwagoner. But since this is a professional environment and a story about artificial intelligence and Nike’s wild and beloved inconsistencies, I will refrain.
Today is the internationally celebrated holiday that pre-dates even the oldest of solar systems. A day that is so organically easy to celebrate that you may even be unintentionally doing so right now. Today is the 26th of March, better known to Nike fans as Air Max Day.
Jokes aside, Air Max Day started in 2014 as a way to get people excited about Nike’s most famous technology. While I may be in a cynical mood as type this, I have to give props to whoever came up with the idea for Air Max Day, it’s so simple and genius that I think every brand should have their own completely made-up holiday. It’s the perfect way to get your fans excited about the history of your brand, while at the same time, an even better way to sell new products every year. It’s like being paid to plant seeds of nostalgia.
But What Is Air Max?
Nike’s “Air” cushioning technology was created by NASA Engineer Frank Rudy in 1980, but as the famous “Air Max” 1987, or Air Max 1, story goes, Tinker Hatfield wanted to make the Air cushioning unit visible to the outside of the shoe after being inspired by a visit to the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou. The Centre Pompidou famously positions features of the building normally contained in the building’s structure on the outside. The history of Nike Air and its Air Max lineage is rich with stories that make us want to be a part of it in some way. However, while I will be lacing up a pair of Air Max today like every other brainwashed consumer who buys into the marketing, a recent heated debate on our monthly Discord Community call this past weekend made me realize that “Nike Air” might be The Swoosh’s biggest branding fumble in the company’s history.
When someone says “Nike Air Max,” what comes to mind? For me, it’s a visible Air cushioning unit, followed by the Air Max line of running shoes. Beginning with the Air Max 1 in 1987, Nike (for the most part) has made a single pinnacle running shoe under the Air Max moniker every year since then. Most people will know the most famous ones without even looking them up. The Air Max 1 with University Red, the Air Max 90 with Infrared, the Air Max 95 with its Neon, and countless others have represented the technology that’s comforted sneaker enthusiasts as “OG” colorways for years. While we all know them and can identify Nike Air when we see it as a part of a shoe’s design and cushioning system, not all “Air Max” are even called that.
Take, for example, the Nike Air 180. When it was originally released in 1991, it was called the “Nike Air 180” and touted as the first 180 Air cushioning ever created. As a kid, I was mind-blown that the “clear” Air Unit wrapped around the bottom of the shoe. I really couldn’t believe you could “walk on Air” without it popping. Yet, somehow the collaborative effort between Air Force 1 designer Bruce Kilgore and Air Max 1 designer Tinker Hatfield, defied the mental constraints I had around how physics worked at the time. Just like me as a kid, you probably read through this paragraph and didn’t think twice about the Nike Air 180 being another Air Max shoe. However, in 1991, it was not labeled as an “Air Max” shoe, it was known as the “Air 180,” not the “Air Max 180.” Of course, there is no denying the shoe features the visible “Air cushioning,” or at least a modernized version of its original form, that allows a shoe to carry the noteworthy name.
“To err is human; to forgive, divine.” - Alexander Pope
If you first came across the Nike Air 180 in one of its retro forms, the shoe has often been labeled on Nike boxes as “Nike Air Max 180” throughout the years. Just to clarify, this isn’t the only Nike shoe with a long-running identity crisis. In fact, Nike isn’t the only brand that has been consistently inconsistent through the years. I’m just using the Air 180 as an example because it’s Air Max Day, and corporations and algorithms dictate our thought processes nowadays, but oftentimes we are okay with that. Even the most successful brands, the most creative people behind them, and the biggest budgets in the world can’t always be perfect. Especially with the way brands let go of older and more experienced and expensive talent these days.
The same will likely be said about artificial intelligence in the future. Yes, it’s getting impressively better every given moment that passes. Yes, many of the jobs that were stable and well-paying will not be in the future. Guess what, that happens every generation. Very few people had the foresight 20 years ago to see just how many opportunities the internet would bring to every human being who has access to a computer or carries a phone. For older generations, that was probably just as scary as the “AI” engagement tactics being used to get clicks today. People, and their jobs and careers, evolve like the naming of a sneaker and its future retro releases.
The people who will be successful in the future are the ones who learn to embrace the change and become the architects of how the real-world usage of AI will help humans become better, not replace them. At the end of the day, artificial intelligence will only be able to use what humans give it to learn from. Humans are only perfect at one thing and that’s being imperfect. Like all of those people who have worked at Nike through the years and somehow weren’t consistent in passing along the brand standards and Nike Air 180 naming conventions in an absolutely perfect way.
After all, behind the marketing budgets, targeted ads, and all of the analytics that go into making something like Nike Air a reason to celebrate, is a group of people who used the tools at their disposal to create something that changed the course of history. It’s for those people that I am lacing up a pair of Air Max today to celebrate their human contributions to stories that we will collectively pass on for generations to come.
Today…to Air is human…
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