jakiro
Author: Wang Chao, Source: X, @chaowxyz
1. Time collapse
In 2020, if you want to know the three-dimensional structure of a protein, what do you need to do?
Find a PhD student, give him an X-ray crystal diffractometer, wait a few months, and with luck, you might get the answer.If you are unlucky, you may have to wait several years, or even never.Protein is the basic component of life, and its structure determines its function.Understanding protein structure is the key to understanding diseases and designing drugs.Humans spent 50 years measuring molecule by molecule and accumulated 190,000 protein structures.
These 190,000 data points were obtained by generations of biologists in exchange for their youth.
In 2024, this number becomes:200 million.Because there is an AI model called AlphaFold.
From 190,000 in 50 years to 200 million in 4 years, this isAbout 13,000 times the difference.
On October 9, 2024, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who created AlphaFold.
The award citation said: “They have solved a 50-year-old problem in biology.”
And this is just the beginning.
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inMaterials ScienceHere: Google’s GNoME, predicting 2.2 million new crystal structures in 17 days.The number of stable materials previously known to mankind was approximately 48,000, which increased by more than 10 times at once.
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inmath competitionHere: In 2024, AlphaProof won the International Mathematical Olympiad silver medal; in 2025, Gemini Deep Think won the gold medal.Cultivating a human IMO gold medal player requires more than ten years of hard work and relies on the talent of one in a million.Now, Google can “mass-produce” countless gold medal-level AIs by pressing Enter.
Genius, once scarce, is now becoming industrially replicable.
This is not an “efficiency improvement”.
This istime collapse.
What takes a PhD student three years to complete can be done by AI in three days. What does “Doctor” mean?When knowledge can be instantly used by AI, what does “education” mean?When the productivity increase is not 10% or 50%, but 10 times or 100 times, what does “work” itself mean?
2. First Half: 10,000 Years of Scarcity of Intelligence
To understand the second half, we must reexamine the rules of the game from the first half.
In the first 10,000 years of human civilization, there was an iron law that has never been broken:Intelligence is scarce.
High-level intelligence only exists in the human brain, cannot be copied or transferred, and the training cycle takes decades.
This fundamental law determines the fate of mankind:endless pressure to survive.Because intelligence is scarce, it is impossible to transform the world efficiently. The vast majority of people must work all day long to survive.
The two reinforce each other, forming a cycle that lasts for thousands of years:Scarcity of intelligence → Breakthroughs rely on rare geniuses → Slow improvement in productivity → Huge pressure to survive → No time to think → Scarcity of intelligence
But history also reveals hidden turning points: each productivity leap, although slow, has successfully liberated some people, cultivated more intelligent resources, and promoted the upward spiral of civilization.
Let’s see how this spiral unfolds…
The First Leap: Energy can be stored (Agricultural Revolution)
Through long-term observation and trial and error, humans have gained insight into the laws of plant growth and created a system (agriculture) to capture energy on our behalf.
Archaeological evidence shows that it took Homo sapiens 90,000 years before a few tribes stumbled upon the secrets of cultivation.This in itself reflects the extreme scarcity of intelligence.
And when the revolution finally arrived, its spread (i.e., “sharing of victory”) hit the same wall:The communication medium of this system (knowledge) is the most efficientword of mouth.Each tribe needed to master this complex set of skills through precepts and deeds, and through generations of trial and error.Knowledge is easily distorted and forgotten during dissemination.Therefore, this revolution took a whole3000 yearsJust traveled around the world.
However, the results of this cognitive leap are astonishing: in the agricultural era, the number of people that could be supported by one square kilometer of land was thousands of times higher than in the hunting and gathering era, and the global population increased 60 times in 10,000 years.
The second transition: energy can be amplified (Industrial Revolution)
The power of steam was discovered in the 1st century AD – the “steam ball” of ancient Greece.But from toys to powered machines, humans have spentA whole 1,700 years, waiting for engineering geniuses like Newcomen and Watt, who are one-in-a-million.
With the brains of these few geniuses, mankind has gained insight into the principles of thermodynamics and mechanics, and finally mastered this “steel muscle” that can amplify its own intentions.
Compared with the three thousand years of agriculture, the popularity of this time has been greatly accelerated, thanks to the popularity of a new communication medium: printing.For the first time, knowledge can be solidified on books and drawings for large-scale, low-distortion reproduction.Change no longer relies solely on the master leading the apprentice.
But even if there are drawings, a large number of engineers and skilled workers who can read the drawings, operate complex machines, and manage the factory are still needed.The cultivation cycle of this new type of intelligence is still decades long.Thus, the globalization of this revolution was stretched toover 100 years.
The result was an explosion of economic growth: after the Industrial Revolution, between 1800 and 1900, global GDP per capita doubled.Maybe you think doubling in 100 years is not fast, but you must know that from AD 0 to AD 1800, the global GDP only increased by 40% in 1800.
The third transition: energy can be transmitted (electrical revolution)
In the 1870s, Edison invented the electric system and Tesla promoted alternating current.Electricity can be transmitted instantaneously, covering cities and factories through the power grid.For the first time, energy can be transmitted and converted efficiently.It connects the entire economy like a “nervous system,” making assembly lines possible and standardization and mass manufacturing exploding.The economic growth rate has increased by 2-3 times based on the industrial revolution., ushered in the “golden age of productivity”.
Compared with the century-old spread of the Industrial Revolution, this transition has accelerated again, thanks to more efficient media:Mass education system and telegraph.The spread of knowledge was systematized and standardized; and the telegraph made cross-country coordination and management possible.
However, the bottleneck remains and is twofold: high physical costs and scarce professional intelligence.
Operating this huge “nervous system” not only requires the laying of a huge amount of power grids, but also a large and well-trained group of experts.From grid planning to factory electrification, every step relies heavily on them.
The speed of construction of physical infrastructure and the speed of training experts, jointly determine the upper limit of innovation diffusion.This revolution also cost about70 yearsJust completed the spread.
The Fourth Leap: The Information Revolution—The First Direct Attack on the Bottleneck
1940s to present.If the first three jumps were all about energy, this time, the object of the jump is information and intelligence itself.
Calculating becomes a breeze.ENIAC, transistors, personal computers… have outsourced the “rules-based, repeatable” part of human intelligence.
Information dissemination is no longer limited by distance.The Internet allows information to be copied and transmitted instantly at zero cost.The knowledge of an expert can reach millions of people through online courses.
This was the greatest attempt in the first half and the revolution that spread the fastest.However, it ultimatelyHit the ultimate bottleneck:We solved the problems of “computation” and “dissemination”, but not the problem of “creation”.Computers need humans to program, and the Internet needs humans to create content.let us thinkproductCan travel at the speed of light, but does not increase the number of thoughtssourcequantity.The specter of scarcity of intelligence still lingers at the heart of civilization.
The end of the first half and the prelude to the second half
Looking at this blueprint spanning thousands of years, the pattern is clearly visible: every change is faster, but the fundamental constraint of “scarcity of intelligence” has never been broken.This also shaped human beingsThe core system upon which survival and development depend:
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education system: In order to cultivate intelligence in batches.
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career system: For trading and pricing intelligence.
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organizational structure: To coordinate and manage intelligence.
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economic model: In order to maximize the use of scarce intelligence.
The “superstructure” of human civilization is a building built over thousands of years around the foundation of “scarcity of intelligence.”Now, the rules of the game have finally changed.Artificial intelligence is directly challenging this ultimate problem.So, whenfoundationWhen it was removed, thisbuildingWhat happens?
To answer this question, we must look at the other side of history – what the leap in productivity brings is efficiency;Liberation.
3. Mirror Image of History: Transition and Liberation
Every jump in productivity will produce a “production surplus”; and the “production surplus” will liberate more and more people from day-to-day subsistence labor.
So, what is the relationship between this “liberation” and the development of human civilization?Humanity has answered this question four times in ten thousand years.
First: Early Agricultural Revolution (10,000-3000 BC)
Contrary to most perceptions, humans have become busier after the Agricultural Revolution.Archaeological evidence shows that in the early agricultural era, the average height of humans dropped by 10 centimeters, bone diseases increased, and labor intensity became higher.
But the key change is: there isfood surplus.
For the first time, not everyone has to run for food every day.A very small number of people (tribal leaders, priests) were liberated from day-to-day labor – less than 1% of the population had the luxury of “not directly producing food”.mindBeing liberated for the first time,.
What does liberated intelligence create?
They began to observe celestial phenomena, formulate calendars, establish religious rituals, and conduct social management.The earliest writing, the earliest calendar, and the earliest religion were all born from this liberated 1%.
Second: Axial Age (800-200 BC)
After thousands of years of accumulation, agricultural technology gradually matured, irrigation systems were improved, tools were improved, and crops were domesticated.More importantly, the form of imperial organization emerged – large-scale collaboration further improved production efficiency, and food surplus could support far more than 1% of the population to be liberated from direct production.
Take Athens as an example: out of a population of 400,000, 120,000 slaves performed most of the manual labor, and the agricultural surplus was enough to feed tens of thousands of adult male citizens.this meansIn a city-state like Athens, maybe 10% of the population, for the first time, I had enough time.Not just an occasional moment, but a lifetime of unproductive activity.
What did these liberated people create?
This is the most amazing era in the history of human civilization.
In four different corners of the earth, almost at the same time, humans began to think about the same question:
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China, Confucius asked: “What is benevolence? What is righteousness?”
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In India, Gautama Buddha asked: “What is suffering? How to get rid of it?”
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In Greece, Socrates asked: “What is good? What is justice?”
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In Israel, the Hebrew prophets asked, “How does God want us to live?”
German philosopher Karl Jaspers called it the “Axial Age”—the source of all modern philosophy, ethics, and religion.
For the first time, humans have sufficient intellectual resources to think about “meaning” itself.Not “how to live”, but “why to live”.Not “how to grow more food”, but “what is a good life”.
This era established the basic framework of the human spiritual world for the next 2,000 years: philosophy, ethics, classic religion, and the classic forms of art.
The Third: Industrial Age (1800-1950)
The Industrial Revolution changed the rules of the game.The power of the steam engine and electricity enabled the production of material goods to exceed that of all previous eras combined.The energy controlled by humans has leapt from human and animal power to fossil energy.
This time, the main force in creating surplus is no longer just people, but also machines.The rapid development of productivity has made30-40% of the populationout of direct production positions.Not only nobles and monks, but also hugemiddle class– Scientists, engineers, teachers, doctors, civil servants, lawyers, journalists, artists.They do not directly produce food or goods, but they build and maintain the functioning of the entire modern society.
Facing the complex society brought about by industrialization, these liberated minds began to design and build the huge systems that support the operation of the modern world:
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scientific system: The scientific paradigm for observing and explaining the physical world is established.
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political system: Nation-states, representative governments, and modern legal systems were systematically established.
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economic system: Market economy, modern company system, and global trade network began to take shape.
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social system: Public education, mass media, and modern medical and health systems began to spread.
Civilization Leap: From Meaning to System.The philosophers of the Axial Age questioned the meaning of personal existence, while the elites of the Industrial Age used the power of reason to systematically construct and organize the entire external world.
The Fourth: Information Age (1950-2020)
If the industrial revolution is themusclesoutsourcing to machines, then the information revolution will begin tobrainOutsource to machines—at least that part of your brain that can be clearly written into rules.
Computing became cheap and ubiquitous, and the storage, retrieval, transmission, and processing of information was automated on a massive scale.The result was not a slight increase in efficiency, but another leap in productivity: in developed countries, up to 50–60% of workers were removed from direct material production jobs.At the same time, the efficiency improvement of the entire society has quietly brought about another historical turning point——For the first time in their lives, most people spend more time on leisure than on work.
In other words, the information age has brought about two superimposed “liberations”:
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One isLiberation of work style: More and more people are changing from manual workers to “knowledge workers” who mainly process information;
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The second isliberation of time: Outside of work, everyone has unprecedented time at their disposal.
The achievements of liberation are huge. These knowledge workers have built a “digital system” parallel to the physical world: a digital system that connects everything.digital communication network, covering the whole worldcomputing infrastructure, and the one that swallowed half the worldsoftware system.
This whole set has gathered into the “digital base” of modern civilization, which is equivalent to our new “operating system”.
In their freed spare time, people began toTurn to spiritual and cultural pursuits.What started as passive consumption of pop culture soon evolved into a more subversive form:The awakening of popular creativity——
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Volunteers worked together to write Wikipedia,
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Programmers spend nights and weekends building open source software,
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Countless individual creators continue to produce content using videos, text, and music.
This cultural explosion that seems to belong to “entertainment” and “interest” has in turn reshaped our material world and values.
If the industrial age isA few elites build the system, and the masses passively consume the system, then the information age becomes:
On the one hand, there is a group ofProfessional “Liberator”*In building a “digital base”; on the other hand, it is partially liberated*“Democratic Liberator”, on this pedestal, detonated the reshaping of culture and values.
It is this digital base: the massive data it has accumulated, the algorithm paradigm and computing power foundation it has spawned, which constitute the next revolution.artificial intelligenceAll the conditions for an explosion.
The information age is both the pinnacle of the first half and the starting gun of the second half.
Now, for the first time, history has reached a critical point.
When AI can do most of the work, survival no longer depends on the labor of all people.
This is the most profound turning point in the history of human civilization.
4. The iron law of transformation – history will not be gentle
At the end of the first half, we see a ten-thousand-year cycle that is about to be broken, a dawn when intelligence is no longer scarce and humans will gain great liberation from survival labor.It sounds incredibly bright, as if humanity is about to graduate from a long period of drudgery and enter a golden age of creativity and meaning.
But the B-side of history always has a completely different melody.Every great liberation is accompanied by a painful tear.To understand the real challenge of the second half, we must cast our gaze from the light of liberation to the vast, grim shadow behind it.
In 1811, in Nottingham, England, when textile workers stormed into the factory and smashed the automatic looms, they lost not just a job, but the entire world.A skilled weaver’s identity, dignity, and status in the community are all woven in those hands.It is a skill gained through more than ten years of apprenticeship, and it is the pride passed down from father to son.His value is his irreplaceable craftsmanship.
Then the machine appeared.
It crushed this value that lasted for hundreds of years to pieces overnight.He is no longer a “skilled craftsman” but “looking after the parts of the machine”, ready to be replaced by a cheaper woman or child.This is not just unemployment;death of identity.What followed was the ghetto, the darkness of 6-year-olds toiling in mines for 14 hours, and the price of “progress” for an entire generation.
This is not an accidental episode, but an iron law that runs through all productivity leaps:Every seemingly great transformation almost goes through three stages: disorder, game and reconstruction.
The first stage is “disorder”.The old order (“My craft is valuable”) collapsed overnight, but the new order (“Being a ‘worker’ is also dignified”) is far from being established.This is the most painful time, filled with confusion, anger, and existential crises.The early 50 years of the Industrial Revolution were such a “period of disorder”, with cities filled with despair and turmoil.
The second stage is “game”.Amidst the ruins, different social forces fought fiercely to define new rules.Workers organized unions and went on strike; capitalists pushed for legislation and hired police.The entire society is torn apart, fighting for the right to write the future.These are the most chaotic times, full of conflict and uncertainty.
The third stage is “reconstruction”.After a long and bloody game, a new social consensus was slowly formed.The eight-hour working day, weekends, labor laws, public education, modern medical care…these systems that we take for granted today were achieved bit by bit by countless people during a century-long struggle.In the end, society used the new ethics of “work = value = identity” to barely stitch up the huge wounds caused by the industrial revolution.
From disorder to reconstruction, it took Britain a full 100 years.The sacrifice of one generation brings stability to the following generations.
So, what about this time?
This time, we are also standing on the edge of the cliff of “disorder”.But history does not simply repeat itself. The transformation brought about by AI will be unprecedented in three dimensions.
First, there’s speed.The pain of the industrial revolution lasts for a century, but the core impact of the AI revolution may be compressed into a short period of time.10 to 20 years.History seems to have pressed the fast-forward button 10 times. The social tearing and reconstruction that only unfolded in the past century may now be completed in the lifetime of one generation. We do not have much room to “slowly adapt”.
Secondly, there is scope.In the past industrial revolution, even at its most intense, what was really torn apart was mainly manufacturing and some types of work.This time, the target of AI impact is no longer a corner of the economic map, but the entire map: almostAll industries, all types of work, will be affected to varying degrees, the difference is only in the order and depth.
The third is the way of evolution.In the past, technology was “invented once → slowly popularized”, but this time, AI itself is also involved in designing stronger AI.While we strive to adapt to it, we are forced to catch up with its rate of self-evolution.
A century of social pain was compressed into more than ten years.It has evolved from partial changes in a few industries to systemic restructuring in almost all areas.And the technology itself, for the first time, drives this reconstruction forward in a “self-accelerating” manner.
This is the reality we are about to face.
If you think you can switch smoothly and painlessly from the “survival narrative” in the first half to the “meaning narrative” in the second half, you are most likely misreading history.Before the true dawn comes, there is often a period of deepest darkness.
5. Three core games: determining the future direction
If the next decade is a storm, it will not be directionless turbulence.If you stand in the eye of the storm and look out, you will find that there are three forces that continue to pull. They are not short-term events, but three groups.Unavoidable structural issues:
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Who controls smart infrastructure?
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How does the wealth created by AI flow through society?
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When “work = value” begins to loosen, what counts as a “good life”?
These three things respectively correspond to the second halfPower structure, distribution structure and value structure.They will determine the kind of world we live in for a long time to come.
Power structure – who controls smart infrastructure?
Artificial intelligence is not an ordinary tool, but a set of tools that can learn and upgrade themselves.smart infrastructure.It is more like the power grid and the Internet protocol: whoever masters it will have huge influence on the computing power, information and decision-making process of the entire society.
Three forces have roughly formed around this infrastructure:
First, technology giants.A few large companies have the computing power, data and engineering systems required to train top models.They have the ability to make the system extremely powerful and efficient, and they have enough motivation to make it as closed as possible – turning it into a new “digital railway” and “digital oil.”History reminds us time and time again: when critical infrastructure is highly privatized, others often become “tenants” who pay to open the right of way.
Second, open source and public technology communities.A large number of researchers and developers are constantly releasing models, codes and tools in the open source community, hoping to turn intelligence into aopen infrastructure: Anyone can access, modify, and reuse, instead of being locked in a few black boxes.This path may not be perfect, but it significantly reduces the risk of monopoly and abuse, and also releases a wider space for innovation.
Third, governments and public sectors.The traditional state apparatus is waking up from the old geopolitical logic and realizing that there is a new “sovereign territory” here.On the one hand, regulators hope to prevent the safety and ethical risks brought by AI from getting out of control; on the other hand, countries are investing heavily in building “sovereign AI” to avoid being completely locked into the role of “digital colony” by transnational platforms in the new round of technology cycles.
There will not be a once-and-for-all answer between these three forces, but the general direction is clear: the future world will largely depend on whether this set of intelligent infrastructure is tightly held by a few subjects, or whether it is gradually regarded as aPublic infrastructure that benefits everyone, can be regulated, and can be checked and balanced by societyCome build.
Whoever controls the model controls the mind of the world.
Distribution structure—where does the wealth flow in the AI era?
When AI creates huge amounts of wealth with extremely high efficiency, the distribution logic we were accustomed to using in the first half is failing.Over the past two hundred years, the mainstream rules can be summarized in four words:Distribution according to work——Your income and social status come from your position and contribution in the production system.
But if one day,The material output required to maintain the functioning of society requires only a small number of humans + a large number of machinescan be completed, then:
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Are those who no longer need to “go to work” considered “not contributing”?
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In what way should the profits generated by AI automated systems flow between shareholders, engineers, data providers, and society as a whole?
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Will the responsibility for ensuring a “basically decent life” still fall entirely on individual workers, or will it be shared through new tax systems, welfare and ownership arrangements?
Around these issues, some exploration directions have emerged:
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Universal Basic Income (UBI)
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“Robot Tax” “Automation Tax”
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“Data Dividend” “Data Sovereignty”
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Public and collaborative AI infrastructure…
They are like a batch of “lifeboats” with different designs, trying to answer the same question: When labor is no longer the only basis for distribution, what new rules should we use to maintain the basic sense of fairness and stability in society?
If nothing is done, things will most likely slide down the path with the strongest inertia: wealth will follow the old track of capital and technology ownership,Concentrate it more quickly into the hands of a few entities with “intelligent capital”.This may not just be a widening gap between rich and poor, but a new stratified structure: on one end is a very small group that masters AI + capital, and on the other end is a large number of economically passive and structurally replaceable “redundant populations.”
After the Industrial Revolution, Western society took a century to slowly stitch together a new contract through strikes, legislation, ideological movements and institutional innovation: labor laws, public education, social security systems… are all the sediment of that century’s debates and tossing.
This time, we are facing a new distribution problem after the “gradual decoupling of labor and value”, but there is no another hundred years.
The third question: Value structure – what is a “valuable life”?
The third problem seems to be the “softest”, but in fact it is also structural.What it cares about is not someone’s temporary confusion, but:What standards does society use by default to judge whether a person is “successful” or “useful”?
Over the past two hundred years, this value structure has had a very stable core answer:work.
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Your career is your business card;
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Your income is your score;
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How busy you are is, in a sense, used as proof of your worth.
“Protestant ethics” and “modern work concepts” have long penetrated into education, media and daily language: not working is almost naturally tied to “failure, laziness, and lack of promise.”Even if we are no longer so scarce in material terms, this deep presupposition will still create strong existential anxiety.
When society is technically capable of allowing a considerable number of peopleThere is no need to arrange your life around “making a living” as you did in the past.At that time, when inefficient human manual work was inevitably replaced by efficient automation in most fields.
For the first time, we were abruptly pushed to a question that we had never seriously answered:
If “making a living by working” is no longer a must for everyone, what narratives and rules will society use to organize relationships between people?What should individuals use to understand their own value?
In reality, new value structures are quietly growing in some corners:
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On GitHub, some people use their spare time to maintain key modules of open source projects for a long time;
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On site B, someone spends hundreds of hours making a video about unpopular knowledge. The profit is meager, but he never tires of it;
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In the community garden, some retirees spontaneously take turns tending flowers and plants, just to make people nearby feel better when they walk by.
From the perspective of traditional economics, these activities have “limited contribution to GDP”, but from the perspective of the second half, they are like samples of a new value structure, and value comes more fromIntrinsic motivation and network——
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The joy that comes from creation itself,
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The satisfaction that comes from sharing and being understood,
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From authentic connections with others,
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The sense of belonging that comes from contributing to a purpose larger than oneself.
This layer can be regarded as aThe pull between the old value structure and the new value structure:
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On the one hand, there is the deep-rooted “work = value” narrative, which is reinforced by family education, workplace assessment, and the symbol system of consumer society;
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On the other side, there is a new narrative of “creation/learning/collaboration/care = meaning”. It is still very weak, but it is already emerging in code warehouses, video platforms, and community spaces.
The direction of this layer will determine whether the large amount of time and mental resources liberated by AI will mainly sink into the “void of abundance” composed of algorithm recommendations and nipple-related products, or whether it will have the opportunity to slowly accumulate into a dispersed but widespread “new renaissance”, a value structure with creation, learning, collaboration and care as the main axis.
These three issues are entangled and restrict each other:
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ifcontrolHighly focused, pursuing fairerallocateIt will be extremely difficult;
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If the distribution is extremely unbalanced, most people will lack both security and resources to seriously question and practice their ownmeaning;
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If the only meaning left is “making money” and “consumption”, society’s reflection and restraint on the control and distribution structure will also weaken.
We are passing through these three hurdles at the same time.Every institutional adjustment, technological choice, and cultural narrative change will leave traces in this triple game.
6. Epilogue: the second half that has not yet been written
If human civilization is regarded as a long play, the first half can be roughly summarized in one sentence:Keep as many people alive as possible.
Every technological revolution in agriculture, industry, electricity, and information is gradually raising the bottom line of “the number of people who can survive” and “how much more decent life can be lived.”In this process, we invented the country, the company, the market, the school, and also invented the daily vocabulary of “career”, “working day” and “commuting and getting off work”.
Now, the problems in the second half inevitably surface:After being able to live, how else do people want to live?
This question sounds big, but when it falls on everyone, it often involves some small moments:
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When part of the work is taken over by the model, the person on the other side of the screen begins to hesitate: “Then what am I doing here?”
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When an industry no longer needs so many people due to automation, some people breathe a sigh of relief, while others suffer from insomnia;
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When more and more creations come from machines, human creations become “assisted” or “amplified.” Some people feel liberated, while others feel replaced.
These emotions have no universal answer, nor do they need to be jumped to conclusions.They simply remind us:The core of the second half is actually a slow question about “meaning”, rather than a quick problem that can be solved quickly with a few policies and slogans.
From a historical perspective, we may be in a very awkward and unique position:
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The rules of the first half have not completely expired: most people still need to work to make a living, and “What do you do?” is still the most common opening line;
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The outline of the second half is already looming: intelligence is accelerating its expansion, and the three major structural problems are beginning to loosen, but they are far from being solved.
Maybe many years later, when we look back at this period, we will feel that it is a bit like the Axial Age, a bit like the early days of the Industrial Revolution, but not exactly the same: at that time, humans, under new technological conditions, invented “citizens”, “workers” and “middle class”, as well as “weekends”, “holidays” and “retirement”.
And this time, we may be forced to invent some new words to describe those:
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Labor no longer has the sole purpose of making a living;
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Contributions not entirely measured by salary and title;
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Not just “whose employee am I” but “who am I doing what with” identity.
These words don’t exist now, or they only appear here and there in some corners.They need time, conflict, and ordinary people’s attempts bit by bit to slowly grow into real languages and systems.
Therefore, rather than saying what answer this article gives, it is better to say that it just draws a line: on one side of this line, isThe first half where intelligence is scarce and survival is the center, and the other side is the second half where intelligence begins to proliferate and one has to face the problem of meaning..
We were standing right near this line.This is neither an honor nor a burden, just a fact.It is only natural that everyone will make different choices: some will actively embrace change, some will choose to maintain stability as much as possible, and some will swing back and forth between the two.
History cares less about our attitudes than it does about our actions.As for what kind of second half these actions will eventually add up to, this generation may not be able to see the full picture.
What most people can do is probably just: try to be aware of what is happening, and then think about it quietly in their limited positions:In such an era, which future am I willing to silently prefer?
Otherwise, just leave time to answer.
