The Adaptation Inversion Theory & the Technology Boiling Point
A state change is coming.
There exists a critical threshold on the technology capability curve - corresponding to general human performance - beyond which further gains produce systemic, not incremental, change.
This is the technology boiling point: small additional progress results in a full state transition.
Technology has always been invented.
And at every step, technology increased efficiency - that is to say it has reduced the effort - the work - required to achieve an outcome.
That eliminated work was eliminated jobs.
Everyone accepts this.
And in the past - this was incredible. You now spent 5 seconds turning a tap - not 5 hours walking for your daily water needs. And those additional 5 hours helped you reduce your poverty and: do other work.
Because there has always been other work to do.
For as technology has replaced labour, it has created new work. Our bison-drawn ploughs were replaced by a combine harvester, but in this process created drivers, mechanical engineers, diesel refiners & more.
There may have been a human capability gap - a time it took for humans to up-skill and be capable of that new work - but, so the saying goes, there has always been new work. And those humans would learn, become capable, and compete for that new work in time.
But this will not continue to be the case.
I outlined this nearly a decade ago. I quote:
Unlike the industrial revolution — that led only to a shift in job type — we have reached a tipping point, now, where technology will not only eliminate jobs, but will learn to do the new jobs we are creating, faster than we can retrain humans.
As there will be nothing a human can do better than technology, there will be no human jobs.
I now call this the Adaptation Inversion Theory, and the point in history it brings the Technology Boiling Point.
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Go and boil a pan of water. Watch the water. Watch how it changes as you increase the temperature. From 0.9C, to 9.9C, to 99.9C. Just water moving around a little faster.
Those that assume that new jobs will continue to be created as we continue to eliminate old ones are assuming that as we move from 99.9C to 100C, the water changes in the same way. It is just a little bit warmer. Just moving a little faster.
But as we all know: at 100C there is a literal state change - water goes from constrained, to flying free. It enters an entire new world, unimaginable from its origin.
The water didn’t just get hotter at 100C. It vanished.
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You can imagine increases in technology capability as a curve. This curve has always continued up and to the right, and has been accelerating over time.
I am here to tell you there exists a critical threshold on this graph, where technology capability truly surpasses general human capability, beyond which further technology advances bring not gradual, linear, change, but an entire state and system upheaval.
We are reaching that critical threshold, right now.
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I gave a private talk shortly after I wrote that article in 2017 to a group of technology founders and investors. I told them they would be the first to go - that the marginal cost of replacing white-collar software workers with technology was 0, and this meant breakthroughs could be rolled out quickly across the globe.
Blue collar work requires significant capex to replace. Thus you still have humans hand-cutting lawns; human labour is still extremely cheap in vast parts of the world - far cheaper than the capex and maintenance of certain technologies like lawnmowers.
Regardless of who goes first - the age of robotics is after all, upon us - with fully functional human(oid) replacements entering the workforce at below minimum wage in all developed markets before the end of the decade - the point is technology is reaching human capability across (almost) every single area of human endeavour simultaneously.
But this is not actually the key point about the boiling point.
It is the Adaptation Inversion beyond this critical threshold: technology is also capable of performing all new work immediately, or is at least is capable of learning faster (and more cheaply) than humans.
That is to say, there is no more work left for us to do.
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Before, an incremental increase in technology created linear change.
At some point very soon, an incremental change will change everything.
This is the Technology Boiling Point Theory, and we are nearing that critical threshold.
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Next: how increases in technology capability are breaking institutions: The Law of Institutional Inertia.
Then: why increases in technology capability are compressing futures and destroying our ability to share reality.