Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside leaders who think deeply about the structural forces shaping our future. Michael Wright is one of them. I had the pleasure of keynoting his Biomimetics conference in Minnesota — an event grounded in the idea that nature’s architectures still hold lessons for navigating modern complexity. That experience left me with a deep appreciation for Michael’s ability to connect technology, governance, human behavior, and leadership into a single systemic frame.

In my recent systemic change series, I explored how convergence across foundational domains — science, technology, economics, geopolitics, society, environment, and philosophy — is creating new forms of acceleration. We examined how tightening feedback loops, compressed response times, and institutional lag generate what I’ve described as coordination strain. The system is not just moving faster; it is reorganizing itself under pressure.

Michael approaches this same reality from a complementary angle. In Surviving Speed and Complexity, he turns the lens inward. His argument is that while our external environment now operates at exponential speeds, our internal biological context — shaped over millions of years — remains largely unchanged. We are attempting to navigate nonlinear systems with brains optimized for linear survival. The result is cognitive friction at civilizational scale.

What makes Michael’s essay particularly valuable is that it does not treat speed and complexity as abstract concepts. He grounds them in biology, behavior, governance, and institutional design. He asks whether our mental models, our language, and even our political cycles are misaligned with the velocity and interdependence of the systems we have built.

As you read his perspective, consider it as a companion to the systemic convergence discussion we’ve been having. If convergence explains why the system is accelerating, Michael helps explain why it feels destabilizing. Together, they illuminate both the structural forces reshaping our world and the human constraints that will determine how we respond.

I’m pleased to share Michael’s work here.