Age of Infinite: The First Chapter

If you’ve been in the audience at one of my talks over the last year, you’ve probably heard me talk about the age of infinite. But if you are just joining me in this new newsletter format, you might be wondering—what is he referencing exactly??

An evolving set of ideas and conversations underpin the concept of the age of infinite:? evaluating human history through multiple lenses, understanding the present, and being intentional about the future of humanity. If your first thought is, “This sounds like a lot to go through in one article!” then you are correct. With this piece, my aim is to get to an initial common understanding of this complex idea—a jumping off point for us to revisit in future conversations as we explore the age of infinite from various viewpoints.?

Today, we start from the very beginning.?

Humanity’s history is a narrative arc

Let's start with an understatement: humans are meddlesome! In our many years on planet Earth, we have not been bystanders, existing as passive recipients in the world. Instead, we have been on a narrative arc—from the discovery of fire to the domestication of first animals, invention of democracy to the creation of AI, from that first wheel to the first quantum computer. This arc is characterized by the irresistible power of dreams and the unstoppable force of change. Let me explain…?

The irresistible power of dreams?

Throughout history, we have dreamt of the impossible and stood in awe of the indescribable. We looked at the stars and wondered if those were shapes painted in the heavens or holes in a tapestry. We marveled at the oceans and imagined fanciful creatures lurking in its depths. We envied the birds, our prose and poetry full of dreams of flight—soaring past the continents and even leaving the world behind, a speck in the distance. Even today, we dream of knowing all secrets and unraveling all mysteries. Our ability to dream has been the first major theme of our narrative.?

And from times forgotten through now, our dreams have compelled us to discover and invent. We discovered we could find resources of all manners hidden in the land and oceans and even in thin air, and we harnessed them. We discovered celestial orbits and invented ever-increasing reach of telescopes, so we could peer into the heavens, and see across time. We invented ways to dive deep and found that the depth of oceans are even wilder than our imagination. We invented the wheel, discovered the power that lies within an atom, and these allowed us to build industries and create machines that helped us think better, travel faster, and fly farther. We discovered and we invented so we could realize our dreams. We then dreamt some more. Our discoveries have been the second major theme of our narrative.?

Unstoppable force of change?

With each of those discoveries and inventions, we have been forever changed—willingly or unwillingly, sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse, but most of the time for both. The invention of fire allowed humans to see in the dark, to cook meat, to climb a rung on the evolutionary ladder; it was also the first weapon in our hands that multiplied our destructive potential beyond our physical capabilities. We continued to invent and change. And then we got to computers.?

Computers helped us do more in every aspect of our individual and collective lives—industrialize at an unprecedented scale, give rise to a global economy, go farther in space and deeper down to the subatomic world. But the same revolutions have also given us economic disparity, the surreal concept of mutually assured destruction, and brought us ever closer to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. Now, we are seeing this again with advancements in AI and robotics, where people are alternately thrilled and terrified by its capabilities (but more on this in an upcoming article).?

Each human discovery, each human invention, changes us through a complicated tangle of benefits and detriments, and that is another hallmark of our narrative.?

So what marks the age of infinite?

Generations of dreamers and doers have been driving us along this narrative arc—slowly at first, but now the distance on that arc’s trajectory between idea and reality is becoming shorter and shorter at an exponential rate. Thousands of years passed, for example, between the notion of flight and the ubiquitous accessibility and industrialization of flight. But AI went from the pages of science fiction to global inevitability in less than 100 years. Today we can turn a concept into reality in just a few clicks. Our ability to do is fast catching up with our ability to dream.

At the same time, our inventions are impacting and forcing us to adapt at an astonishing pace, leaving humanity breathless. This is being driven by the fact that we’re more interconnected than ever—particularly following the pandemic. We have seen new technologies—from life-saving vaccines to ChatGPT—reach and impact everyone on the planet in an increasingly short period of time. From farmers in India to developers in Silicon Valley, we’re all following the same path. Our individual arcs have converged.

We are barreling towards what appears to be the logical conclusion—a singular arc with an infinite speed, an infinite rate of change. An age of infinite!?

And what comes next?

I believe we are already living in this age of infinite, and what happens next will depend entirely on the choices we make. One choice is the route of pessimism, and we can sense it all around us. The collective mood of humanity is turning darker. Our science fiction stories have moved from the glorious future shown in the original Star Trek to the dark dystopian world depicted in virtually every sci-fi movie today. Major new advancements are met with skepticism and alarmism from famous people.

Or, we can choose the route of optimism. I believe that the age of infinite will not be the conclusion—like a vortex swirl increasing to the point of stopping—but a point of transformation, like nebulous gas coalescing to form a shining star! I believe humanity will write a new narrative arc, written not by our dreams but by our intentions. We can still write science fiction, but anchored in the choices of collective humanity—a choice to reverse the damage to the climate, eliminate disease, and finally move to a global society based on equitable co-thriving. We can be scared by inventions like quantum computing and AI, or we can view them as the modern day fire and wheel—the harbingers of a new reality, a favorable reality.?

The above might sound like a dream but it is not—it is an intentional choice. There will be challenges, there will be influential naysayers, and plenty of doomsday predictions will dominate the news cycle.?

But that is the beauty of a narrative arc—it’s never decided until it’s written. And this article is an invitation for you and I, together, to believe in positive outcomes. An invitation for us to influence the world around us, so we can start a new narrative arc for humanity, with the age of infinite as its first chapter.?