What should the future look like? Inside the tech-funded program to create a new aesthetic

In late December, Stripe CEO and tech billionaire Patrick Collison and libertarian economist Tyler Cowen published a one-page website with the provocative title “A Call for New Aesthetics.” In around 500 words, the two longtime collaborators outlined an informal grant program they were launching to fund artists and thinkers who want to define the aesthetic of the 21st century. The 20th century, they noted, was largely influenced by a design ethos that emerged from the Bauhaus school of…