The earlier posts introduced the sense that the world’s operating logic is beginning to shift, explored what compression feels like in daily life, and laid out the four-stage pattern that has shaped every major transition in history. Post Four explained why those transitions do not come from singular breakthroughs but from the interaction of multiple domains moving together. Before we can measure that interaction in today’s world, we need to understand the deeper forces that give convergence its power. These forces have shaped every civilizational transition across the long arc of history. They determine when pressure accumulates, how tightly systems couple, and what pushes society toward a threshold.
Hunter Gatherer
Work
Conversations about work take many forms these days. Is remote work here to stay? What will a hybrid work model look like? Will we need to work in the future? In the short term, the pandemic has driven a focus on different models of working. In the long term, the polarized discussion centers on the impact of automation. That discussion is explored in incredible detail in a recent book titled Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots. Anthropologist and author James Suzman sets out to answer several questions. He does so by looking at the history of work and the lessons we can learn.
Continue readingTo answer these questions, James Suzman charts a grand history of “work” from the origins of life on Earth to our ever more automated present, challenging some of our deepest assumptions about who we are. Drawing insights from anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, zoology, physics, and economics, he shows that while we have evolved to find joy meaning and purpose in work, for most of human history our ancestors worked far less and thought very differently about work than we do now.
James Suzman – Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots
Reimagining the Future 