Gradually, and then suddenly

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It’s true in high school, it’s true in Nationwide insurance commercials, and it’s especially true today, as we continue to “fight the last war” (the Industrial Revolution) but also the next one (the Information Revolution).

Before you read any further, a note: if you thought the Industrial Revolution was over, it’s only because you (and your parents) have enjoyed the relative blip of post-WWII western stability, which is now coming to an end.

For billions more, The Industrial Revolution is just beginning, and for those folks, it’s inextricably entangled with an Information Revolution even the most online of us can barely wrap our heads around.

You don’t have to read a hell of a lot of history to understand how much industry transformed our societies and economies, how we built cities like Manchester, London, Pittsburgh, and Osaka adjacent to invaluable deep-water ports, employing millions, creating all new trades, and both metaphorically and literally electrifying the stock market.

Now imagine that same process, but in West Africa or South Asia, but at the same exact time as satellite internet, GPT-4, WhatsApp, and social media, and where the newest coastal cities — growing by leaps and bounds as millions migrate to them, just like in the West — are already threatened by sea rise, despite a legacy of energy poverty and thus having contributed almost nothing to historical emissions.

These are not the same thing, and we really don’t know how it’s going to go.

We couldn’t always measure human progress the way we do today.

That’s in part because life didn’t always come at us (as a species) quite so fast. As a single early-human, yeah, sure, circumstances changed almost immediately. Got a cold? You’re fucked. Infected tooth? That’s it. Sprained ankle? You’re leopard food.

Real measurable, society-altering change took thousands of years and progress was often one step forward, six steps back.

Early humans were constantly at the mercy of disease, predators, weather, natural disasters, and more, having basically no idea why any of that shit actually happened, much less how to predict it, or survive it. It must have been exhausting, and very, very confusing.

So we invented religion.

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