The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future

by Mustafa Suleyman

Stonework and fire were proto-general-purpose technologies, meaning they were pervasive, in turn enabling new inventions, goods, and organizational behaviors. General-purpose technologies ripple out over societies, across geographies, and throughout history. They open the doors of invention wide, enabling scores of downstream tools and processes. They are often built on some kind of general-purpose principle, whether the power of steam to do work or the information theory behind a computer’s binary code. The irony of general-purpose technologies is that, before long, they become invisible and we take them for granted. Language, agriculture, writing—each was a general-purpose technology at the center of an early wave. These three waves formed the foundation of civilization as we know it. Now we take them for granted. One major study pegged the number of general-purpose technologies that have emerged over the entire span of human history at just twenty-four, naming inventions ranging from farming, the factory system, the development of materials like iron and bronze, through to printing presses, electricity, and of course the internet. There aren’t many of them, but they matter; it’s why in the popular imagination we still use terms like the Bronze Age and the Age of Sail.

Invisible Engines of History: The Ripple Power of General-Purpose Technologies