🔮 The end of the fictions

I just got back to London after a week at the Annual Meeting at Davos. For the past few years, the World Economic Forum had become a kind of parody of itself, a place where billionaires flew in on private jets to discuss climate change and “stakeholder capitalism” while nothing much seemed to happen. But this year was different.

The AI discussion at the Forum alone was proof of change. It was practical, CEOs asking each other: what’s actually happening with your workforce? Which skills matter now? Why is that company pulling ahead while everyone else flounders?

And on politics, things moved to the heart of the matter: the fragmentation, the end of the old world order. But neither Davos woman nor Davos man felt a deracination in the face of the crumbling rules-based order. Rather, they used the simple fact that many of those who hold the world’s power were gathered in that one place: to speak and, in many cases, to listen.

The gathering met, nay exceeded, its purpose. Davos showed why it matters, why it is necessary in a world that is fraying rather than cohering.

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, gave a speech that will echo for a long time. He spoke of “the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality.” He was referring to the unraveling of the post-war geopolitical settlement, the fading authority of the rules-based order, the growing irrelevance of multilateral institutions designed for a slower, more stable world. If you haven’t seen it yet, I really recommend watching.

Carney was talking about treaties, trade, and power. But these aren’t the only norms that are unravelling.

Today’s reflection originates from the research I’m doing for my second book. There’s a long way to go before it lands on your shelf, but that work is already tracing a similar unraveling – in domains much closer to Exponential View’s home. So let’s get to it.

The three crossings

Between 2010 and 2017, three fundamental inputs to human progress – energy, intelligence and biology – crossed a threshold. Each moved from extraction to engineering and learning, from “find it and control it” to “build it and improve it.”

Energy became a technology. For most of human history, energy meant finding something in the ground and burning it. Coal