AI and the evolution of thinking: from storytelling to manipulating reality

AI is only an intermediate step—the real thing is yet to come.

I keep thinking about how our thinking is changing (and has changed)—and with it, what holds meaning for us

In the beginning, meaning was something alive. Stories told by the fire, paintings on walls. Meaning was shared, experienced—it existed only as long as we remembered it.

With stone tablets, meaning was fixed. Suddenly it lay outside of us. Immovable. Authoritarian.

Papyrus and paper made meaning mobile. It was transported, copied, became more negotiable. The printing press then blew apart all exclusivity, and suddenly everyone could take part in truth.

The typewriter accelerated all of that. Content became more important than form. Meaning lost depth and gained speed.

Computers took finality away from us. Nothing was fixed anymore; everything could be overwritten at any time. Meaning became fluid, provisional.

Today, AI generates knowledge in seconds. We no longer create, we only curate. Meaning is calculated, assembled, scaled.

But what if that is only an intermediate stage?

The next step could be that we no longer live in the now but act according to simulated futures. Reality emulation with predictive models. Meaning would then arise from probabilities before anything has happened at all.

And perhaps—someday—we will be able to change timelines themselves. Then not only will the future be written, but the past erased.

What will be left to us then? Who are we if what shaped us will never have taken place?

Perhaps we cannot stop any of this.
But we can decide how we live meaning now—
before it is someday taken from us or rewritten.

Stay with what is.
Make possible from it what is.
I will walk with you.