Complex Information Was A Form Of Encryption, With AI In The Hands Of Millions—It Is No Longer.
The world is an intricate web of interconnected events, groundbreaking ideas, and technological revolutions that have shaped human civilization in ways we rarely anticipate. The difficulty of predicting the future is one of humanity’s most persistent intellectual struggles. However, by analyzing the past, we can recognize the peculiar ways in which innovation unfolds, the unintended consequences of technology, and the transformative impact of knowledge dissemination. From Admiral Shovel’s fatal navigational error to the printing press’s role in sparking the Protestant Reformation, history reveals that progress is never linear. This article delves into the complexities of technological change, the challenges of knowledge management, and the cultural transition toward a world where individuals wield unprecedented intellectual power.
Predicting the Future
Predicting the future is akin to solving a puzzle where half the pieces are missing, and the remaining ones keep changing shape. Danish physicist Niels Bohr once remarked, “Prediction is extremely difficult, especially about the future.” This is not merely an expression of scientific humility—it encapsulates the inherent unpredictability of progress due to the multitude of interwoven variables influencing change.
Consider the example of Henry Ford’s Model T. In the early 20th century, customers could have any color they wanted—so long as it was black. Ford’s vision was singular and efficient, prioritizing mass production and uniformity. Now, in the modern era, choice is abundant to the point of paralysis. By the time a new AI model is released a new one is about ready to rendered it obsolete. School curriculums struggle to keep pace with scientific advancements and cultural shifts, often teaching students outdated material before they even graduate. This perpetual lag mirrors the bewildered state of the average citizen inundated with rapid technological shifts—evoking the sentiment of a vacationing depressive who sends home the puzzled message: “Having a wonderful time, why?”
The Cascading Consequences of History: From Shipwrecks to Toilet Paper
One of the most fascinating aspects of history is how seemingly unrelated events can ripple through time to produce results no one could have predicted. Take, for instance, a tragic maritime disaster in 1707 that inadvertently contributed to the creation of the modern toilet roll.
On a stormy night off the coast of England, Admiral Sir Cloudsley Shovel commanded the British fleet’s return home. Unbeknownst to him, navigational errors led him to miscalculate his position. He ignored the warnings of one of his navigators, insisted on altering course, and promptly ran his fleet into treacherous rocks. The ensuing shipwreck was catastrophic—thousands of British sailors perished, including Shovel himself.
In response to this calamity, the British Parliament launched an ambitious initiative to improve maritime navigation, offering a significant financial prize for anyone who could develop a precise method for determining longitude at sea. Enter John Harrison, an English clockmaker who realized that a highly accurate timepiece could solve the longitude problem. His pursuit of the perfect marine chronometer led to innovations in steel manufacturing, as he required more precise clock springs.
This demand for better steel had a cascade effect. Benjamin Huntsman, an enterprising ironworker, developed a superior method for producing steel, which, in turn, was adopted by an engineer named John Wilkinson. Wilkinson found that Huntsman’s steel was ideal for manufacturing thinner, more reliable water pipes and cannon barrels. These cannons were later sold to both the British and French militaries—regardless of who they were at war with at the time.
Napoleon, ever the innovator, seized upon these lightweight cannons to develop highly mobile horse-drawn artillery. This tactical advancement helped him dominate European battlefields—at least until Waterloo. However, Napoleon’s push for military and industrial progress also led him to sponsor prizes for civilian innovation. One of these prizes went to a Frenchman named Nicolas Appert, who pioneered a method of preserving food by sealing it in airtight glass bottles and boiling them—a precursor to modern canning.
A decade later, a British company purchased Appert’s patent while in Paris, but only after first acquiring another nearby patent—one for a new papermaking process. This unintended purchase led to the mass production of paper and, eventually, the creation of the modern toilet paper roll. Thus, a single navigational mistake in 1707 set off a chain of events that, centuries later, resulted in one of humanity’s most essential hygienic conveniences.
AI, The Box of Knowledge: How We Trap Ourselves in Our Understanding
One of the greatest obstacles to predicting the future is our limited perspective, shaped by the knowledge we possess at any given time. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once posed a thought-provoking question in response to a claim that people in the pre-Copernican era were ignorant for believing the sun revolved around the Earth. Wittgenstein’s retort: “I wonder what it would have looked like if the sun had been going around the Earth.” The answer? It would have looked exactly the same.
This illustrates a crucial point: we interpret reality through the lens of what we already know. In scientific fields, researchers often design experiments based on their prevailing assumptions. If an astronomer believes the universe is made of cosmic omelets, they will create instruments to detect traces of intergalactic egg. When no such evidence appears, they blame instrument failure, not the validity of their theory.
The same principle applies to technological forecasting. Gutenberg envisioned his printing press as a means of producing more Bibles; he could not have anticipated that his invention would democratize knowledge, fuel the Reformation, and lay the groundwork for the scientific revolution. Similarly, the early leaders of IBM confidently predicted that only five computers would ever be necessary. Bill Gates of course claimed that 640KB of RAM should be sufficient for anyone—an assertion he has of course since disavowed.
This inability to foresee technological impact stems from our tendency to think inside established paradigms. Every generation assumes that its worldview is correct, even as history proves otherwise. We are all living inside Wittgenstein’s box, unable to see the future from outside its walls.
The Evolution of Knowledge: From Flint Axes to the Age of AI
The struggle to manage and distribute knowledge has shaped human civilization from its earliest days. The first major technological shift occurred with the invention of the flint axe, which transformed early human societies by enabling hunting and tool-making. However, it also established a hierarchical structure: those who controlled tool-making held power over those who merely used the tools.
This pattern repeated throughout history. The Greeks introduced logic and reductionism, breaking down problems into their simplest components to understand them systematically. This approach laid the foundation for modern science but also led to the compartmentalization of knowledge. As academic disciplines became increasingly specialized, cross-disciplinary collaboration diminished, making it harder to see the bigger picture.
Five hundred years ago, a profound shift occurred when Columbus’s discovery of the Americas upended traditional worldviews. The sudden influx of new plants, animals, and geographical knowledge threw existing scientific and religious paradigms into disarray. In response, French philosopher René Descartes proposed a new way of thinking—reductionism—which sought to rebuild knowledge from first principles. His influence still dominates education, science, and business today.
However, reductionism has also created a fragmented intellectual landscape where experts focus narrowly on specialized fields. This is why so many major innovations are surprising: researchers and inventors often operate in isolation, unaware of how their work intersects with others. The result is a world where unexpected breakthroughs arise from unforeseen connections—just like Admiral Shovel’s shipwreck leading to the modern toilet roll.
I can educate myself in any classroom on earth through an array of AI models. It is exposed to influences and information from a thousand different sources. What happens to my local cultural values when online AI agents working 24 hours a day to represent me go out onto the web and bring back what my profile tells the agent I want? Will I ever get anything other than self-gratification will I ever emerge from starring in my own utterly personal virtual reality paradise? And if all I hear is the news I want to hear what does that do to my political and social opinions and in any case how do you run a country when every individual’s AI agent is inputting every individual’s political opinion on every issue in every section of the country every second of the day and night 186,000 times a second?
The old pre-internet structures like the European Union or the United States shift when AI removes the limitations of time and space from international commercial and political relations and on the international level whose law operates in cyberspace moving from a culture of scarcity to a culture of abundance isn’t going to be easy to leave behind the comfort of believing that only specialists are valuable.
Living by standards established for you by somebody else, my guess is the first effects of that open access during that period of transition I mentioned will show themselves in some ways that are turbulent and perhaps negative at the artistic level during this transition will it be a world of TikTok videos and illiterate Reddit scribblings. How will the average person even with access to powerful AI and global databases make a meaningful contribution to whether or not to spend billions of dollars studying the moods of Mice while the standard of living declines, in other words, will open access and the closing of the gulf between the ordinary person and the world of information also bring with it at least temporarily a welter of mediocrity instability mindlessness and self-gratification the like of which has never been seen before?
We have entered a point in time no different than when the printing press began to proliferate and heretofore information and knowledge that was passed within small groups, became widely available. Information and knowledge changed every single aspect of society, from political change (the death of kings and queens) to religious change (the Reformation) to the industrial revolution and structured reductionist education to fuel it all. Curtains of obscurity would be built to separate those who know and those who do not.
Information
Causes
Change
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Otherwise
It Is Not
Information.
In this epoch the driving change force is AI and few are prepared for the pandamonium that has already begun. When the printing press was unleashed, most could not conceive of how democratizing information and knowledge would be so transformative. The glib would quip, “The unwashed masses can’t read”, perhaps that is the thing they wanted?. They felt safe in the way written language obscured the structures in society they erected. The “street” languages like English were held to the commoners as the powerful obscured their work in Latin. Francis Bacon aimed to change that with the Spearshakers Group to lift English, and the love of learning through allegorical stories for the common person. They left us with Romeo And Juliet and King Lear as some of the lessons. Access to a new language was no longer a curtain of obscurity.
If you survey the entirety of history this type of interplay of obscuring information and knowledge to gain or maintain position is a common and repeated pattern. Even the very device you are reading this on is a product that was once controlled by ordained priests and priestesses who controlled access to the holy halls of the mainframe computer. Two guys named Steve rebelled from a garage and lifted a lowly calculator chip into a personal computer.
It has happened before. If you look at history, you see that even in technologically advanced communities, there are periods following times like today when major advances in the ability to generate, store, and disseminate information occur. These moments trigger massive information surges, which are then followed by high innovation rates and significant social change.
There also seems to be a kind of shakeout period that follows such innovation surges—a phase of transitional confusion while people adjust to what the new technology allows them to do. Eventually, society settles down, codifies what the technology should be used for, and accepts the new shape it gives to society. This process, as history shows, is never easy.
For example, after the printing press came along, people no longer needed extraordinary memories or years of lived experience to know things. Within a generation or two of Gutenberg, young people who could read and learn began to take over, while older generations lost their authority and never regained it. With AI we have this aspect but now it’s not just memory but the very act of reasoning.
Today, in the United States, we are experiencing a similar societal shift, one that is often described as “dumbing down”. However, I argue that we are not so much dumbing down but Instead, for the first time, most of our community is being informationally enfranchised, and we are going through a long and massive learning curve as a result. This phenomenon is not new. In the 16th century, when the printing press spread literacy, critics lamented that it would make reading “the infatuation of people who have no business reading.” In the 18th century, Mozart was ridiculed by his contemporaries, who believed his music was nonsense. When I was in school, Latin was no longer mandatory, and critics at the time declared that our brains would turn to porridge as a result. Clearly, they were wrong.
Why We Struggle to Predict Change
Our generation is struggling to predict change for two key reasons.
- First, more people than ever before are involved in the process of technological development. The sheer number of participants means innovation moves faster than our old social models can handle.
- Second, the so-called AI revolution has not even reached first gear yet. If you look at it from inside the traditional system, the future appears daunting.
Even more staggering is the potential for AI capable of recreating a virtual human being—down to the cellular level. Above all, “write-your-own-ticket” AI software will emerge, enabling individuals to do everything from bridge-building to non-invasive surgery, from balancing financial accounts to painting better than Michelangelo or playing tennis better than a Pro. The coming technology will empower individuals in ways beyond anything we can even boast about today.
The Rise of the Consumer as a Designer
One of the hottest trends in business today is how culture is demanding customization of products like never before. People are waking up to what technology can do for them in ways they had never imagined. The logical outcome of this shift is an intriguing possibility: the consumer as the designer. Imagine a world where AI agents—AI assistants—actively participate in customizing goods and services for individuals. Supermarkets, universities, and other institutions may evolve into virtual warehouses, where the tools and materials are available, and the consumer’s electronic agent assembles a customized package to meet their needs. From products to information and perhaps whole societies.
These new AI tools ultimately mean the end of the intermediary.
The Decline of Intermediaries
For centuries, we lived in a culture of scarcity. There was limited access to knowledge, tools, and services, so if you needed something, you had to go to the specialist who had the skills. Whether it was a blacksmith for a horseshoe, a carpenter for a house, or a professor for an education, intermediaries were essential. Curtains of obscurity would be built to separate those who know and those who do not. Today, however, we still operate under this outdated model, even though we no longer need to. and the cracks are showing.
Consider representative democracy. It was a perfect 18th-century solution to an 18th-century problem—bad roads and no telecommunications. The best option was to send representatives to the capital to vote on behalf of their communities. Since return journeys were dangerous, elections were infrequent. Over time, these horse-owning representatives became politicians, and the process of elections became institutionalized.
Now, 300 years later, we have instant global communication and perfectly safe roads, yet we still rely on the same outdated system. Would we ever accept only two flavors at Baskin Robbins? Why do we accept only two political choices?
The End of Charismatic Leadership
As technology advances, centralized authorities based on simplistic ideologies will not survive. Charismatic leaders who rely on charming speeches and hidden track records struggle when AI agents can instantly fact-check them and the by-product of their work.
In our new AI world, persuasion has become much harder.
For centuries, people have been given only a small fraction of information—“an inch,” so to speak. But now, they have the full mile. The impact of this informational enfranchisement will lead to the biggest social changes in history. This means in the past we simply did not have easy access to the rules, regulations, and laws let alone how the funds of a government were actually spent. Perhaps a few with this direct knowledge existed, but clearly, this was not widely known.
“Science progresses one funeral at a time”
Very soon the reasoning power of AI will be pointed at every single government institution and business. The egalitarian and democratic power of AI in the hands of millions is taking place in real-time right in front of all of us. One example that strikes deeply to anyone in the US is the Department Of Government Efficiency or D.O.G.E., it is the precipice of a new continent of discovery.
Why Institutions Are in Trouble
If history is any guide, this transition will not be easy. Institutions will not willingly give up power. Many organizations today are dealing with this problem by ignoring reality. It reminds me of the classic story of the man falling off a skyscraper. As he passes the 77th floor, someone calls out, “How are you doing?” He shrugs and replies, “So far, so good!”. This is precisely the attitude of many institutions today. They are ignoring the inevitable impact of AI innovation—the equivalent of ignoring the sidewalk that is rushing up to meet them.
The Future Of AI Empowerment
Historically, most of the world has been excluded from accessing knowledge. The dominant Western model of education, business, and governance has been exported to diverse cultures, often in a one-size-fits-all manner. Now, however, technology is making it possible for different cultures to thrive on their own terms. Instead of being forced into centrally controlled ways, they will be empowered to express their unique identities.
This is a fundamental shift. For centuries, powerful nations colonized others, forcing them to adopt new languages, legal systems, and social structures. But now, the dominant force will not be colonial imposition—it will be AI empowerment.
Governments over time build a complex web of interconnections and complexities that are just about designed to confuse experts, let alone informed citizens. The reasoning abilities of AI are now in the hands of millions and we are beginning to see a revolution.
A small group of folks in their 20s, empowered by AI tools are now liberating information about the US government in ways no one just 3 years ago thought was possible. Once again as we have seen in history curtains of obscurity Each time curtains of obscurity are pulled society recoils. Few are ready to see what is behind the curtain. But we can’t look away. D.O.G.E. is showing connections and information that many only thought would come to light if encryption was broken. In many ways, it was, the curtains of obscurity have been a form of encryption from the start of recorded history. Like the spread of logic and other ways to see the world, the world changes when so many can see behind the curtain.
As we have seen in the examples above the cascading causes and effects when curtains are removed will lead to the most unexpected outcomes. Today our lens may only see the next few weeks, let alone the next few months. But what is taking place will impact the centuries and just about everything.
The Future Will Be Messy—But Worth It
It is hard today not to have so many emotions when curtains of obscurity are pulled back. In our epoch, many hide in familiar political silos and use familiar verbiage to find safety in what they are seeing. Change has never been easy, nor is new knowledge and information. Every technological revolution has sparked resistance, confusion, and upheaval. But the trajectory is clear: individuals will be more empowered than ever before. Institutions that refuse to adapt will collapse. And the way we create, access, and use knowledge will be forever transformed.
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This is not the end of history—it is the beginning of something entirely new.
And just like the printing press, the AI revolution will lead us somewhere we never expected.
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