While we in Slovenia are passionately polishing the brass on the Titanic and fighting over deck chairs, Silicon Valley has long since switched to the Enterprise and turned on warp drive. Biology is becoming software, aging is just a "bug" in the code, and in the meantime we are collecting corks and waiting three years for an inspection, convinced that the pinnacle of civilization is a properly completed travel order. Read why most of our jobs today are just shuffling digital paper before extinction and why what is coming is not just a storm, but a completely new climate in which you will be wet to the bone without an umbrella. We are at the point of the singularity of progress - let me explain.
If aliens landed right now... Slovenia and listened to our debates, we would probably conclude that the pinnacle of our civilizational dilemma is the question of who stole whose sandwich in the parliamentary canteen. While we are dealing with trivialities that could have been solved in kindergarten with a calming corner, the world out there is not only spinning – the world is alsoshifted into fifth gear and is just turning on the nitro drive and moving towards singularity points of progress.
Progress singularity point
It seems like we live in two parallel realitiesIn one, we argue about bureaucratic red tape and wait in line for a personal doctor. In the other reality, the one dictated by technological visionaries in Texas and Silicon Valley, and a “supersonic tsunami” is brewing. It’s no longer about progress. It’s about the singularity. This is the point when the graph on the blackboard no longer goes up nicely and slowly, but turns vertically into the sky, and we’re still staring at the chalk. Progress will be fast, instantaneous, and not everywhere uniform.
The end of the era of ficus trees in offices
Let's be brutally honest. Most of what we call “work” today is really just shuffling digital paper from the left pile to the right. And that era is coming to an end. All the work that doesn’t involve physically reshaping atoms—all the typing, all the analysis, all the bureaucratic gymnastics—is on the way.
Artificial intelligence It's not coming; it's already here, tying its shoes to run a marathon while we're still putting on our slippers. We won't beat it with more diligence. It's like trying to outrun a rocket with a horse-drawn carriage. Half of this work can be done by "silicon brains" today. And instead of preparing for a world where people will have to find a new meaning beyond "shift work," we're still raising children for jobs that will soon be as relevant as typewriter repair.
Abundance economy vs. crumb economy
Our national obsession is redistribution of shortages. How to take from those who have a little more to give to those who have a little less, and in the meantime lose half. Meanwhile, a shift is taking place on the global stage towards an economy of abundance. We are not talking about social transfers, but about a world where energy and computing power become the only true currency.
Once the cost of labor falls on the price of electricity and when robots start producing robots, the concept of “expensive goods” is disappearing. Everything becomes ridiculously cheap. And us? We are still collecting corks for our wheelchairs and trembling for a pension that will be worth as much as a handful of rice compared to the coming reality. Instead of a universal basic income, we are promised a “universal high income”. But we will not get there with tax coffers, but with a radical technological transformation. With a society that looks ahead.
Aging is just a bug in the code
Perhaps the most bizarre difference between our "kindergarten" and what's happening in the world is in the perception of life itself. In our country, success is if you get a date for a specialist check-up in less than three years. In the laboratories of the future, however, they view aging as an engineering problem. As an error in the code that needs to be fixed.
Biology is becoming software. The goal is no longer to live to retirement and then watch television, but “hack"a system to keep the body from collapsing. It sounds like science fiction, but once you understand that our bodies are just incredibly complex machines, it becomes clear that you can fix any machine if you have the right tools. And we're still fighting over who supplies the stents. Something she'll solve singularity point of progress.
Conclusion: Time for evolution or fossilization
It's not about who's in power. It's about mentality. We're like frogs in a pot, except the water isn't boiling slowly - someone just threw dynamite into the pot. The future won't be "a little better" or "a little worse". It will be radically different.
The world is rushing towards a civilization that will drew energy from the stars and where intellectual work will be done in milliseconds. And we act as if the greatest achievement of civilization is a properly completed travel order.
It's time to stop looking at the ground and looking for change and look to the sky. Because what's coming is not a storm. This is a completely new climate. And whoever doesn't have an umbrella - or in this case, whoever doesn't have an open mind and a willingness to adapt - will be left wet. To the bone.
