Chapter V The Book of Life
Future & Vision
Where work, learning, cities and attention are heading, and what AI changes about each.
These essays look ten to twenty years ahead: which jobs and skills hold up, what remote work does to cities, and what attention will be worth. They are guesses, but each one starts from evidence available today.
6 essays in this chapter
- Which Jobs Will Still Exist in 2040? The Careers AI Won't Replace My honest guess at the jobs that will exist in 2040, and the hidden cost of the 'safe' career choice that nobody bothers to put a number on.
- Skills AI Can't Replace: What Kids Should Learn Without AI The data on skills AI cannot replace misses kids entirely. Here's what the research actually shows, and why it changes everything for parents.
- What Human Attention Will Be Worth in Ten Years AI is making content infinite while attention stays capped at 24 hours a day. The economics of that gap will reshape what focused thinking is worth.
- What Cities Become When Remote Work Is the Default Remote work didn't kill cities; it forced them to answer a question they'd been avoiding: what are you actually for when the job can go anywhere?
- What Learning Without AI Taught the Last Pre-AI Generation Learning without AI built deep understanding through friction: what the last pre-AI generation carries that AI-native learners may never develop.
- Splinternet: What Internet Fragmentation Means for Devs The splinternet is here. Internet fragmentation is splitting the global web into regional segments, and builders and users with the least power pay the most.