If I had something I wanted the whole world to hear, should I whisper or shout?
Probably neither. I should probably go get a megaphone of some kind.
Come to think of it, I’m not all that great at public speaking, but I write every day. I should probably write about whatever this thing is.
Writing for a few people is good, but I should try to grow an audience, then tell them about it.
Whatever’s important enough to be written about for hundreds of people to read today, it deserves all of my attention. It deprives me of time I might spend more leisurely, but it also rewards me with mental stimulation…
Today, I want to talk about what “it” is.
What is it that motivates me to spend so much energy writing every day?
It’s It! What Is It?
I believe that the world is changing rapidly—maybe even more rapidly than we’re going to be able to keep up with. The pace of change itself is beginning to accelerate, with shorter and shorter adoption times for new technologies, and ever less time for social adaptation.
Between the shrinking world (thanks largely to advancing technology) and the speed a which this new change tends to propagate, we are left reeling, trying to make sense of fundamental changes in the way we live.
We are only at the tip of the spear of these changes, and things are speeding up even more.
The Law of Accelerating Returns (LOAR) operates on the premise that as technology improves, it becomes a catalyst for further technological advancements. This creates a positive feedback loop, where each new generation of technology enables faster and more efficient development, leading to an ever-increasing rate of progress.
Building on Moore’s Law, the LOAR goes much further back in time, and seems much more like a law of nature to me. Let’s not forget that AI is completely relied upon to make chip advancements, and chip advancements are needed for AI advancements beyond a certain point, but the virtuous flywheel they’re both on right now puts us at the so-called “knee of the curve.”
I wrote more about LOAR and Moore’s Law here.
So, things are changing faster than we can keep up with, and as a result, we’re starting to see more change in a few years than we’ve seen in a few decades. Things are possible we thought were impossible before, and a virtuous cycle has taken control:
Yet, it's not just our technology that’s changing at breakneck speed.
The World
At the same time, against this technological backdrop—and because of it—we are seeing geopolitical change at a much more rapid pace than we’re used to.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the US calling attention to it before it happened, shuffled the cards of power to a surprisingly fast degree. After several years in the doldrums, US-Europe relations quickly improved, while a bit of an authoritarian axis began to solidify.
Comprehensive sanctions on Russia—a sort of hybrid economic warfare—began in earnest in 2022, and accelerated throughout the year.
Just this week, the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South America) announced that they’ll admit six new members: Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Egypt, and Ethiopia.
BRICSISUAEE is a mouthful, so let’s just call them “New BRICS” from now on.
Anyway, New BRICS is keen to be a counterweight to the west, with aspirations (but not realistic plans) to unseat the US dollar as the global reserve currency, and a way for the global south to expand its influence and facilitate trade among member nations… and away from the west.
New BRICS will have almost half of the world’s population, and around a third of global GDP.
And this is just one very recent, unthinkably fast shakeup. There’s going to be a lot more to come.
What To Do?
So we're standing on a precipice of an age of unprecedented change. Changes that used to take decades, now take years. New technology and new social paradigms that took years to take hold, now take months.
How long will it be until we see things that used to take months, taking days to come to fruition? Considering Silicon Valley Bank’s failure over the span of a little over 24 hours, with the primary driver of action being Twitter, I don’t think we’re going to have to wait long to see this sort of shocking acceleration.
How long will it be until we see things that used to take years happening in hours? Will we be able to adapt to such a crazy rate of change?
This acceleration isn't confined to one sector; it's shaking the foundations of our technological paradigms and reverberating through the corridors of global politics. Our ability to adapt, to absorb these changes, is increasingly lagging behind the curve. And the stakes? They've never been higher.
Knowing is half the battle, but talking with others is the other half.
We need a collective effort, a pooling of our intellectual resources, to even begin to comprehend the scope of these transformations, let alone tackle the challenges they pose. A single voice can get lost in the cacophony, but a chorus of informed dialogue can set the stage for action.
Talk to me about these changes here, and talk with your friends and loved ones when you have the chance. Think about these changes and what they mean for you, and also for the rest of us!
Beyond dialogue, it might be worth spending a little time with (gulp) some of these emerging technologies. Get to know what generative AI feels like by playing with Google’s AI search or Bing. If you start understanding what these tools can or can’t do from first hand experience, you’ll be much better prepared to lobby for policy reforms that can help society better adapt to the accelerating pace of change.
If you picked up on my Faith No More Easter egg, let me know in the comments. If not, it wasn’t a great joke anyway, but here’s the original video:
The following article covers similar territory, by arguing that "the more is better relationship with knowledge which is the foundation of science and our modern civilization is simplistic, outdated and increasingly dangerous."
https://www.tannytalk.com/p/our-relationship-with-knowledge
Your insight that the knowledge explosion feeds back upon itself is dead on right.
Nouveau Brics. This is fascinating and thoughtful. I wrote about law and technology for Forbes for over 10 years, which was a blast. The pace of change has fast, even furious, but nothing remotely like what we're witnessing today. I'm no fan of big government, but I found very interesting this article about nationalizing AI. In some respects, it seems like a red herring fraught with peril. On the other hand..... It's worth a read. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/20/its-time-to-nationalize-ai-00111862