What Technology History Predicts About AI
Every technology revolution feels new. None of them is unprecedented. Steam, railways, electricity, the automobile, the computer, the internet — each reshaped work, capital, and society along patterns that repeated with surprising regularity. This collection uses that historical record as a forecasting instrument: nine modules, each isolating one recurring pattern, testing it across old and recent technologies, and then asking what it implies for AI. The reader finishes with a reference-class toolkit for judging any AI claim — a bubble warning, a productivity forecast, a jobs prediction, a regulation debate — by placing it inside the pattern, naming the closest precedent, and stating what would have to be true for AI to break it.
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Why technology history is the steadiest baseline for judging AI claims.
Why technology history is the steadiest baseline for judging AI claims.
How technologies spread — and where forecasts go most wrong.
How technologies spread — and where forecasts go most wrong.
Financial frenzies that ruined investors and still built the infrastructure.
Financial frenzies that ruined investors and still built the infrastructure.
Why powerful technologies take decades to show up in the statistics.
Why powerful technologies take decades to show up in the statistics.
The human cost of technological transitions — and who actually pays.
The human cost of technological transitions — and who actually pays.
When new technologies reorder who wins — firms, industries, and nations.
When new technologies reorder who wins — firms, industries, and nations.
Moral panics, regulation lag, and the standards wars that lock in the future.
Moral panics, regulation lag, and the standards wars that lock in the future.
Powerful capabilities that worked and still failed — the patterns AI must avoid.
Powerful capabilities that worked and still failed — the patterns AI must avoid.
Three analogies, three futures — and the signals that reveal which one is unfolding.
Three analogies, three futures — and the signals that reveal which one is unfolding.
“The steadiest thing written about AI this year treats it as a pattern, not a prophecy.”
Most AI commentary oscillates between rapture and panic. This collection stays in the middle — not by hedging, but by placing every AI claim inside the historical record of steam, railways, electricity, the dot-com era, and nuclear power, then asking what the pattern predicts and where AI actually breaks it.
AI is the New _____ is a LearningFirst editorial series that examines AI through the lens of other transformations — industrial, financial, social, institutional — asking what history's recurring patterns say about AI's trajectory and what is genuinely new.
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How AI, trade fragmentation, aging, and debt are rewiring the world economy
