Paradigm 2099

The Technological Triumvirate of our Future

This essay is predicated on the assumption, dare I say truth, that Napoleon Hill articulated in his book deemed too controversial to publish titled Outwitting the Devil: The future belongs to those with the greatest definiteness of purpose. As proof, the defining technologies of past eras were those that enabled leaps and bounds in agency for those with clear visions and uncompromised execution on them. For example, the compass enabled a new generation of explorers, gunpowder for conquerors, the printing press for communicators, electricity and engines for manufacturers, and the internet for curators and influencers.

Here we will attempt to gaze into a crystal ball by exploring three technologies that could dramatically accelerate Napoleon Hill’s observation, bringing about paradigm shifts in the way the world operates, governed by those that wield their technology-enabled agency. These fundamental technologies are:

• Blockchain

• Generative Artificial Intelligence

• Additive Manufacturing or 3D Printing

Technology #1: Blockchain

Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies carry a poor reputation since the space is currently filled with rent-seeking behavior, those trying to take advantage of the hype around a technology to enrich themselves at the expense of others. While bad actors have tainted the tech, there is reason for the hype. Blockchain technology carries a promising new approach to financial services for many since it has two innate characteristics that satisfy one growing trend: declining trust in existing institutions. Actual instances of fake news, de-platforming, censorship have all contributed to this sentiment, regardless of whether you believe the sentiment is justified or not.

The first characteristic is transparency. Blockchain technology is by definition a public ledger of transactions that cannot be tampered with by today’s computing technology. Placing government spending on such a transparent technology might be highly appealing to a population that just voted for one of Trump’s major campaign promises: auditing and bringing light to previously esoteric federal spending. Transparency means any interaction is auditable, so a bad actor can be sniffed out, especially with the help of AI tools.

The second major characteristic is trustlessness since the tech does not require third parties for known financial functions or newly accessible functions. “Trustless” is a bit of a misnomer since in reality, trust shifts from an individual-to-individual basis to an individual-to-system basis.

For those that do not trust the powers-that-be to maintain the public’s, it may be more appealing to place trust in faceless applications and systems rather than trusting people with cognitive biases to serve them. There is no need to worry about whether my banker will refuse service based on my race, gender, sexual orientation, or political affiliation if my banker is a faceless system that cannot know these things about me. I can also trust the speed and reliability of a system executing repetitive yet critical financial functions like lending and borrowing more readily than an unpredictable person through simple audits. The failure points of a blockchain system can be categorized quite simply as well, lending to greater future predictability of financial functions:

All three categories can be mitigated through the creation and maintenance of the right system. Of course, since we are in the early days of this technology, the failure points aren’t so easy to predict. Many applications have ended in catastrophic failure due to an inability to adequately solve this three body problem of security, supplier incentives, and user incentives. Perhaps this will never happen and the current financial system has the right balance. But growing distrust in the existing institutions seems to indicate a new system will eventually emerge.

What might all of this look like in the future? Perhaps I’m finding myself frustrated with the banking industry, either because my money earns minimal interest no matter the bank or because they charge me inordinate fees to take out a mortgage. I decide to move my money into a crypto wallet sitting on the Ethereum blockchain since I learn it has a lending application with superior interest rates for lenders. I engage in an automated smart contract that places my money into a pool earning 5% interest since anyone in the world can e-sign a contract to borrow from this pool at a better rate than their bank, so long as they hold a collateralized position. People are already doing this today on lending applications like Aave. Maybe the incentives for holding my money on this application decrease, so I decide to use an automated market maker like Uniswap to exchange my assets onto a different blockchain with better incentives for liquidity suppliers. All possible today, yet price volatility driven by the rotation of capital from areas of underperforming to outperforming liquidity provider incentives has created risk and uncertainty around my returns.

Maybe I decide this game isn’t for me since it exceeds my risk tolerance. I wait a few years and find an application that handles my mortgage and titling for me. Perhaps assisted by an AI agent, the application can understand my debt repayment history from the blockchain and can make a decision on whether I am credible enough for a loan. Or maybe it is even connected to my payroll so that the smart contract automatically deducts my loan amount from my payroll. As for titling, I need not worry since the title to my house is documented in a non-fungible token (NFT) that serves as cryptographic proof of ownership and an AI algorithm can quickly see if any liens exist on the title by scrubbing the blockchain ledger. All completed at a fraction of the time and cost from traditional lenders and titling companies.

After I move into my home, I learn that the homeowner’s association lives on the blockchain as well. Rather than voting on HOA directors whom I know nothing about, I’m pleased to find the HOA is governed by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) in which decisions are made by those who contribute the most to the HOA. Your contribution to the HOA is determined by how many DAO tokens you hold, all distributed on the blockchain based on a handful of factors:

1) Everyone with a title (NFT) in the neighborhood gets a token for being a member of the community

2) HOA dues are variable, those that pay more have a greater say in how the capital is allocated

3) Active members of the community are rewarded (e.g. those that propose and vote on changes)

Since my HOA is governed by a system that measures and rewards those that contribute the most to the system, I no longer need to worry about my HOA being infiltrated by nepotism or accidentally voting for someone who sounds like a great HOA director but actually leeches off the HOA in parasitic fashion.

On a macroscopic scale, we may see governments adopt blockchain technology to regain trust with their constituents. In such a transparent financial system, taxpayers can see exactly where their dollars are allocated with different administrations, so they can validate whether the elected government officials put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. And if governments use a financial system governed by a DAO, decisions on the economy shift from elected officials who appear to contribute the most to individuals who actually contribute the most, validated by cryptographic means.

The tradeoff to this is the erosion of privacy - it becomes a privilege rather than a right in a financial system living on a public ledger. For individuals that value privacy, significant precautions need to be taken to protect this privilege, more so than already in our world of data mining. Those that choose the path of privacy may find significant drawbacks operating within a financial system heavily reliant on transparency. Perhaps they would be denied certain services because they refused to tie their identity to their interactions on the blockchain.

A world with decreased privacy inevitably leads to a world of increased personal accountability. When your financial activities live on a full auditable public ledger, you’d think twice before engaging in nefarious behavior. Further, in the absence of services like banks that protect consumers from fraud and mistaken transactions, the blockchain requires further personal accountability from its users. For example, if you mistakenly send your money to the wrong address, you cannot reverse the transaction on the blockchain. Hence, personal financial accountability increases.

Until clear winners emerge in the marketplace of cryptocurrencies, users interested in the space hold the additional responsibility of assessing blockchain systems for their cybersecurity, incentive structures for liquidity suppliers and users, how they interact within an emerging market, and how they compare to broader financial vehicles.

Likewise, these same skills become important for the producers attempting to build a secure financial system with strong incentives. It is exciting to be in a world where anyone can create the next-generation financial system, not just rulers of nation-states. One can imagine this prospect will lead to an intellectual arms race of building the right system and amassing influence for convincing the public to adopt a new model.

If you are interested in learning more about blockchain technology, I have a crash course on decentralized finance (DeFi):

Technology #2: Generative Artificial Intelligence

Unless you’ve lived under a rock, you should have a general idea of what AI is, so we will forego any in depth explanations of the technology or discourse surrounding the pros and cons of automation. Hint: increased automation almost always helps business owners and consumers to the detriment of the labor force that supply those services that become automated. Here we will focus specifically on generative AI since this opens up a new class of possibilities beyond automation of simple tasks.

Quite simply, generative AI involves the creation of something new, whether in the form of writing, images, audio, or video - all based on curated inputs from the developers. The number one use case for a tool that can create anything digital you need, is the ability to share information as well as the user can articulate what they need. This role of providing niche knowledge is currently inhabited by white collar knowledge workers such as digital marketing specialists, software writers, designers, and financial services specialists.

Our current education system revolves around this paradigm, training people to find niche sets of knowledge to supply to employers and consumers since blue collar labor exported dramatically beginning around the 1970s. This trend accelerated with The North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s, China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, and advancements in automation technology. The promise of the white collar knowledge worker reached its pinnacle in the COVID pandemic with the promise of a high paying salary and the work-life balance of remote work.

The reason for a peak rather than continued acceleration of this trend is because of the promise of AI. If I need specialized knowledge, I can open chatgpt.com and have any question answered in a fraction of the time it takes me to find a reputable specialist. Like blockchain technology, the tool needs to be validated as reputable, but anyone who works in process engineering knows that investing the time up front to validate a tool that can replace a person pays dividends down the road. I suspect future R&D engineers will shift their focus from creation of new things to validation of things created by more efficient generative technologies.

If there is such a technology that can provide any specialized knowledge, it stands to reason that our labor paradigm will shift to the question askers, those that can best harness this new tool. Who asks the right questions?

Those that ask the right questions are the autodidacts of this world, the highly curious who are self-taught on a breadth of subjects. In short, they are the curators of knowledge. They syncretize information from many sources, drawing connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.

I have no data to support this, but I’d speculate autodidacts find themselves allured by the humanities. While versed in hard sciences, they select the humanities that spur further curiosity since their lessons come not from empirical data, but from the contemplation of various narratives. They encourage us to speculate and remember that the world is in fact governed by multiple interacting narratives rather than one capital T empirical Truth. The humanities and their various narratives encourage us to think in terms of probabilities rather than black and white empirical facts. Aristotle summarized the autodidact well, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

It’s a shame the humanities are looked down upon for not being rigorous sciences since understanding the operations of a complex world requires us to step away from the scientific method to a speculative place where individual variables cannot be isolated. Only from such a vantage can we become systems thinkers that sort through our gray world of differing narratives to understand the right questions to ask. This shift to gray also encourages us to invert our focus on continually asking why rather than attempting to explain the how. A black and white world can always be explained while a gray world encourages curiosity. As more people and technologies enter the world, adding to the complexity of organizations composed of people and machines, we can safely state that the world is becoming grayer.

This same quality that puts autodidacts ahead in the labor market is largely because it enables self-reliance when interfacing with generative AI. On a small scale, the autodidact can call BS when an algorithm provides incorrect information. And on a large scale, their agency to influence the world increases rapidly. Let’s say an autodidact has a great idea for a product. Rather than spending time finding a reputable specialist to create visuals for marketing his product, he can use a series of prompts to generate the exact image he needs in a fraction of the time and money, enabling him to execute on his vision much more rapidly. Of course, the generalist who knows the problems to solve, but never takes the initiative to solve them will be in no different spot. Generative AI gives the generalist the key to any locked door, but it cannot unlock the door for them.

Generative AI is great for the generalist with conviction in a vision, a defined purpose that requires several skills to achieve, but what of the specialists who make a living supporting the autodidactic generalists on their missions? What of the creators attempting to earn a living through their creations? We can expect an acceleration of neo-luddism. This trend can already be seen in some circles of the internet where people earnestly discuss how unhappy they are with the side-effects of smartphones and social media, going as far as to encourage each other to embrace analog lifestyles. The irony of this trend is that these individuals need the technology they so badly disdain to connect with like-minded individuals. With the advent of generative AI technology like ChatGPT, I see many creators, particularly writers, jumping on this bandwagon, complete with knee-jerk revulsion to use of the technology and anyone who embraces it. This is probably because they recognize it for what it is: an existential threat to those expecting to earn a living through writing. Of course, those that write for personal reasons remain unperturbed. As with any topic on the internet, an individual’s opinion on generative AI is a Rorschach test, a looking glass into any hidden motives. As generative AI is adapted for specific use cases beyond indexing information, I’d expect many more specialists to jump on this bandwagon.

In this paradigm where machine creations flood our collective consciousness, many will rightfully mourn the loss of culture and taste. However, I anticipate an old profession will explode in growth to alleviate such grief: curation. Pretentiousness will rise from its current position as a vice to a pedestal of virtue. Those that believe their taste to be superior to the “AI slop” they see on their timelines, those curated by social media algorithms may find themselves with great amounts of followership and influence over those seeking curation from a trusted source rather than social media algorithms with corrupted incentives.

Lastly, with the rise of machines answering questions and our gravitational shift towards question asking, more people may turn to the omnipotent machine for answers that they alone can answer, accelerating our meaning crisis. Those with poor self-images may find themselves talking with LLMs, asking for definitive answers on the direction of their life, outsourcing their life choices to a machine that only responds to the inputs provided. This is different from a therapist since they are trained to ask the questions, encouraging the client to reach a conclusion themselves even if they’d prefer definitive answers. Perhaps an AI algorithm can be trained by licensed therapists to mitigate this, but product development is almost always governed by what the customer wants, and there is no shortage of people in search of quick, definitive sources of meaning in today’s world, let alone a world where automation encroaches further into the labor market of specialized knowledge.

Today, this meaning crisis is alleviated by organized religion, secular spiritualism, and a resurgence in ancient philosophies like stoicism. Some of the most influential actors on social media offer meaning to the modern man by teaching the tenets of these belief systems. With generative AI, we may see new religions emerge, where people worship at the altar of the chatbox to answer questions about their spiritual malaise. For some, this may resemble an organized religion complete with ministers while for others it may resemble the agnostic secular spiritualism in action and way of thought. New philosophies will certainly emerge and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some individuals make lots of money off connecting AI to ancient wisdom. As with any paradigm shift, especially one that disturbs the identity of many specialists, we can expect people to retreat back to existential questions like: “Why are we all here?” and “What is my purpose?”

Technology #3: Additive Manufacturing or 3D Printing

The elder of the previous two technologies, 3D printing has been used for simplistic prototyping for a few decades, but its technological advances have enabled the creation of more and more robust products. In this instance, robustness has a variety of interpretations: in terms of physical strength for aerospace applications, in terms of complexity for the manufacturing of lethal weapons, and in terms of precision for the placement of living cells.

3D printing offers the promise of creating almost any structure you can visualize. In today’s world, this involves modeling your vision in software programs like SolidWorks, AutoCAD, or even my favorite: the simplistic TinkerCAD. This model is deconstructed and sent to a machine that adds layers of filament on a plate until the model is completed. Filament can range from any number of materials, so long as it can be extruded out of a tube controlled by a robotic arm. Today that list of materials is small, but that list could rapidly grow with AI algorithms trained on material science running 24/7 to brainstorm the integration of new materials. Perhaps Star Trek was onto something with their replicator - maybe you too could 3D print your favorite burrito some day.

In its current state, 3D printing is a bit of a boutique manufacturing process since it is great for a variety of complex designs, but scalability for mass production is a challenge due to higher costs at scale, longer production cycles, and inconsistency between production batches. However, 3D printing offers a cost-effective approach for manufacturing small lots or several different designs in a small footprint - an ideal solution for the autodidact looking to create various designs a few times when compared to the mass producer creating one design many times.

Since the success of 3D printing largely depends on the quality of your design, it has several barriers for adoption today:

1. It requires the ability to visualize an object that meets a need¹

2. It requires the ability to model that object in a computer program

3. It requires a sufficient understanding of the manufacturing process (e.g. temperature control), materials science, and mechanical engineering principles to design something that can be feasibly built OR enough patience for trial and error

Learning these skills is a significant time investment for limited gains at this point in time, but if the learning curve decreases or the benefits of 3D printing increase, we may see the use of 3D printing accelerate. As we discussed, AI’s partnership in materials science can greatly improve the latter, but it could dramatically decrease the learning curve at any roadblock:

1. It could assist with design quality by providing feedback during the modeling process - like a mechanical engineer reviewing your design before you print.

2. It could assist with modeling based on your prompts - like a draftsman guiding you as you create your design

3. It could automatically create a model and design based on your needs - like a mind-reader solving your problem in a way you couldn’t imagine.

If the benefits of 3D printing increase while the learning curve decreases, we could see a transformation of the manufacturing world. Gone would be the days of mass produced finished goods. We’d enter an era of personalized production - where each home has a 3D printer capable of producing each household’s needs.

By cutting out a step in the process, we can expect improved supply chain efficiency, which drives down costs for the manufacturer/consumer. Lower costs enable the creation of new inventions for more minds. For example, if I had an idea for inventing a new widget, I would currently need to research manufacturing methods, select a manufacturer, and order a minimum quantity of my widget to test whether my widget meets my or my customer’s needs. Following this process is a deterrent to many who lack manufacturing knowledge, the ability to adequately assess manufacturers, or the capital to experiment. With production capabilities in-house, the inventor’s feedback loop is dramatically shortened.

In a world where each individual has advanced manufacturing capabilities in-house, we can expect the rise of the amateur inventor - someone can create many things without dedicating their life to it. The 3D printer enables a golden age similar to that of the amateur scientists such as Benjamin Franklin, Gregor Mendel, and Charles Darwin. These gentlemen allowed their intellectual curiosities to roam freely within the scientific method to progress our understanding of the natural world. And the conditions of their times cultivated their inventions:

1. Information flowed freely through the new printing press

2. Scientific materials were not cost-prohibitive

3. Science was not a profession at the time. In other words, scientific inquiry was viewed as a respectable and aristocratic leisure activity rather than a career that required credentials.

Compare the conditions of the golden age of amateur scientists to a world with advanced 3D printers:

1. Information flows freely through the internet, aided by AI algorithms indexing highly specific needs

2. Additive manufacturing becomes highly cost-effective due to economies of scale for raw materials

3. A cultural shift can be observed in which more and more people reject traditional institutions and their credentials and openly advocate for industriousness and entrepreneurship.

The election of Trump is a consequence and further catalyst of the cultural shift in point #3. It is a consequence since his election reflects the people’s sentiment, sentiment that traditional institutions and regulatory bodies need to be shaken up, and sentiment that there is no hope in achieving the American Dream by following the traditional career path. Trump’s policies are yet to materialize at the time of writing this piece, but his promises of deregulation may catalyze further industriousness and entrepreneurship since a complex regulatory pathway can deter the autodidact’s curiosities by requiring extra capital and knowledge to turn their dreams into reality.

The rise of gambling is another symptom of this sentiment - many, particularly young men, have lost hope in the script they were taught and turned to contemporary lottery tickets as a way to “make it”. We can expect a distribution curve with fat tails, the left end inhabited by people who failed the marshmallow test, choosing the thrill of gambling and chase of fast money enabled by evermore addictive and sophisticated betting apps on their smartphones, while the right end will be inhabited by the autodidacts with definiteness of purpose, embracing new technologies like 3D printing for long term games - like creating new products to satisfy the needs of themselves or others.

Concluding Thoughts

All in all, each of these technologies are inevitable in their ability to enable the autodidact on a mission, fulfilling Hill’s everlong prophecy: the future belongs to those with the greatest definiteness of purpose. With this, we can expect further consolidation of wealth - with a specialized middle class losing their jobs, we can expect a minority population controlling evermore wealth as they depend less and less on specialists trained in the domains of economics, knowledge, services, and creation.

In such a world where influential individuals can impact the world while relying less and less on others, the future painted in William Rees-Mogg’s The Sovereign Individual may play out. With enough devotion, the technology exists for a single individual to create his own economy and form of governance, acquire knowledge to solve any problem, and create just about anything without relying on another individual besides a computer manufacturer and those he wishes to influence. And in this case, we may see a world governed not by nation-states, but by individuals with large amounts of capital and influence.

Such a future may not be so hard to imagine with recent examples of individuals who have influenced the world more than many nation-state leaders: Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, George Soros. And these individuals achieved these results at the very front-end of this technological curve. We can only imagine how their predecessors will shape the world.

The introduction of additional geopolitical actors beyond heads of state brings about additional complexity. The airwaves become filled with further narratives, some completely contradictory despite supportive data, creating more echo chambers and inhabitants of isolated realities.

Those caught up in these echo chambers can find themselves extremely isolated if their physical community is disconnected from their digital community. For example, someone living in a rural area may feel extremely lonely if their digital life is inundated with values contradictory to those of their family members or friends. With propaganda spreading from more individuals with the capability to do so, this environment can become overwhelming for those caught in the crosshairs - bombardment of advice, opinions, and narratives intended to mold their beliefs, all generated with a simple prompt.

We can expect marketing to become evermore sophisticated, as individuals seek sovereignty by influencing the masses. Killing two birds with one stone, this marketing, or better described as propaganda, will be masked as personalized entertainment, offering pacification to unpleasant feelings of isolation while advancing the agenda of the wannabe sovereign individual in search of influence.

We can expect two arms races to fork from this trend of individual influencers: the race for data to enable sophisticated marketing and the race for faster computing technology to support the creation of marketing collateral/propaganda.

There is another word for data collection for the sake of influence: surveillance. We previously discussed how surveillance can be used to monitor ethics in a financial world governed by the blockchain, but those same measures can lead to unique insights on individuals targeted for the sovereign individual’s messaging, enabling more targeted messaging, which increases the sovereign individual’s effectiveness in building influence.

That same data can then train AI algorithms to build new 3D printed products, marketing collateral, or financial services - all advancing the interests of a single influencer. Those AI algorithms of course need to be efficient to support more players, so we can expect an arms race of computing technology to support transactions on the blockchain, AI algorithms, and hyper-efficient 3D printers. Those focused on computing technologies would essentially be the ones selling shovels in a gold rush of influencers.

We will close by building upon Hill’s prophesy about definiteness of purpose with a new maxim:

Any technology that sufficiently advances the interests of producers will become mainstream regardless of how it impacts consumers.

In other words, anything that helps builders build is inevitable even if its use case carries a monkey’s paw for consumers: the promise of better entertainment at the expense of fulfillment. And most of these innovations like social media seemed positive for consumers on the surface level. It wasn’t until they were well-integrated into society that we saw their unintended consequences. This is largely because the consumer typically doesn’t always know what is best for them - many think they want more advanced forms of entertainment but is that what’s best for us?

With all of this prophesying and pontificating, we’ll conclude with some valuable skills and knowledge domains to nurture if these technologies lead to a new paradigm in 2099. If I were to design a curriculum of skills for the remainder of the century, it would look something like this:

• Principles of Cybersecurity

• Game Theory and its Applications

• Systems Theory and its Applications

• Cybernetics

• Emotional management - how to direct yourself to use tools rather than letting tools use you.

• Problem Solving Principles:

  • Market research

  • Root cause analysis

  • User experience / usability

  • Needs articulation & prompt engineering

  • Process engineering

• Influence:

  • Marketing principles

  • Mimetic theory

  • Behaviorism

  • A survey of propaganda

  • Storytelling (Literature)

• Curation:

  • Data science

  • Statistics & Probability

  • Personal curation (psycho-cybernetics)

• Anything that nurtures self-reflection, imagination, and curiosity for you specifically

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1. Some studies have shown 2-5% of the population cannot visualize objects in their mind, let alone manipulate objects in their mind