What it is
This world holds the future as questions, not predictions. AI, energy and biology are moving fast, and the useful work is asking what they might change and what should stay human.
Second-order effects matter most. Cars changed cities, not only travel; new tools change the shape of work, ownership and attention in ways their inventors rarely foresee.
Ideas to carry
- 1
Questions, not forecasts
Forecasts age badly. Good questions keep you alert.
- 2
Second-order effects
The biggest change is usually not the obvious one.
- 3
What stays human
Care, taste, trust and judgment may matter more as automation grows.
Established What we know
- The computation used to train notable AI systems has grown by many orders of magnitude since 2010.[1]
- The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics recognised foundational discoveries that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.[2]
- The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognised computational protein design and AI-based protein structure prediction.[3]
Interpretation The older lens · Christian mysticism
Teilhard de Chardin imagined a “noosphere”, a layer of shared thought wrapping the Earth, decades before the internet.
Reading
- 1955The Phenomenon of ManPierre Teilhard de Chardin
- 1970Future ShockAlvin Toffler
- 2014SuperintelligenceNick Bostrom
2010 predictions: flying cars
2026 reality: arguing with a chatbot about a recipe
Connected subjects, projects and writing
- Agents and automationSubject · Intelligence
Perspective What changes when tools can plan is the central open question of this decade.
- Open questionsSubject · Frontier
Questions kept open on purpose: what science, philosophy and this site do not yet know.
Sources
- Artificial Intelligence Our World in Data. Checked 5 Nov 2026.
- The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 Nobel Prize, 2024. Checked 5 Nov 2026.
- The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 Nobel Prize, 2024. Checked 5 Nov 2026.