Civilization’s great shifts are the moments when continuity fails and a new order takes shape. Each historical age reached a point where the old logic could no longer hold, and pressures converged into a transformative release. By examining four major transitions – from Hunter–Gatherer to Agricultural, Agricultural to Axial, Axial to Renaissance, and Renaissance to Industrial – we can see how rising Total Systemic Domain Score (TSDS) and changing Activation Dispersion (AD) signaled that a threshold was near. Some transitions unfolded slowly over millennia, while others struck within a few centuries. In each case, the build-up of energy and imbalance hit a critical point, and society crossed into an irreversible new configuration that only in hindsight feels inevitable.
Continue readingIndustrial Revolution
The Three Drivers That Push Civilizations Across Thresholds
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.
Why No Single Force Changes The World
RECAP FROM THE SERIES SO FAR
In the first post, I described the sense that the world’s operating logic is turning over. In the second, I explored what that feels like in daily life — the tightening, the pressure, the sense that everything is connected. The third post revealed the pattern beneath these moments: a four-stage rhythm of accumulation, compression, instability, and reordering that has shaped every major transition in history.
This post turns to a deeper question. If these shifts are so powerful, what triggers them? The answer is rarely what we expect.
Continue readingHow Big Shifts Unfold — And Where We Are Now
RECAP FROM THE SERIES SO FAR
In the first post, I explored why so many parts of life feel unsettled at the same time: all seven domains of civilization are active and amplifying one another. In the second post, I described the tightening that happens before major shifts — the compression that makes events feel more connected, faster, and harder to absorb. This post turns to the deeper structure beneath these shifts. When we look at history, we see a repeating pattern in how civilizations change shape.
Continue readingThe Next Human Revolution: Will Technology Change Who We Are?
Throughout human history, there have been only a handful of moments so transformative that they redefined what it means to be human. These tipping points were not merely technological breakthroughs or changes in societal norms – they were profound inflection points, moments when the trajectory of civilization bent so sharply that the “before” and the “after” became fundamentally different worlds.
Continue readingLearning From The Early 19th Century
One of the more eye-opening narratives in the story arc of my presentation is the comparison of our current era to the 1920s. Given the catastrophic period that followed, lessons can be learned. A great period of invention ran in parallel, helping to establish our modern standard of living. But there was another period of invention that is also very instructive. That period dates to the early 19th century and is closely associated with the Luddite movement and the birth of the factory system. In a book released this September, Brian Merchant explores this period in history and its similarities to our current era. If the 1920s sowed the seeds of the conflicts that followed, the early 19th century sowed the seeds of labor movements, the modern welfare state, and of all things, science fiction.
Continue readingThe Journey Of Humanity
Continue readingSince the dawn of the nineteenth century, a split second compared to the span of human existence, life expectancy has more than doubled, and per capita incomes have soared twenty-fold in the most developed regions of the world, and fourteen-fold on Planet Earth as a whole
Oded Galor – The Journey of Humanity
What Does 250 Years of Innovation History Say About Our Future?
“Without good stories to help us envision something very different from the present, we humans are easily stuck in our conventional mental programming.”
Per Espen Stoknes
That quote captures a phenomenon that has plagued humans throughout history. In a recent article, Per Espen Stoknes looks at 250 Years of Innovation and what it reveals about the future. History is indeed very revealing, a fact that explains why Futurists spend so much time in the past. Whether it is the Uncanny Similarities to the 1920’s or other Lessons from History, applying history is very instructive. That quote speaks to a status quo bias that has existed in every age. As the article’s author describes, we have a strong emotional bias that prefers the current state of affairs over change. That bias now hampers our response to an ecologically destructive future. The article views the topic through this lens.
Continue readingThe Growth of Knowledge
Knowledge is the engine that drives human development – and it has been throughout history. Knowledge expanded in the hunter-gatherer days with the invention of fire. In those days, a human obtained all its food by foraging. Although the source of food did not change, fire allowed humans to cook food and consume more calories. The human brain expanded with this caloric increase, and soon we invented language – the first in a series of innovations that drove the growth of knowledge.
Reimagining the Future 