07 · Unlearn
Put down the maps that no longer describe the territory.
Steam, electricity, and the internet were general-purpose too. This wave cheapens expertise and restacks coordination. Reaching for the last revolution is how you miss the phase change. Hierarchy, job titles, and ‘AI strategy’ are three maps to set down so Purpose can load.
Peter H. Diamandis names the trap: the failure of analogy. Brains evolved for a local, linear world — news at walking pace, change in generations. Exponential change produces cognitive vertigo; looking for a prior cycle is how you miss what is actually cheapening. Steam, electricity, and computing were general-purpose technologies. The analogue is not foolish. It is incomplete.
Four general-purpose waves
Same family. Each cheapened something different, and each demanded a new complementary invention. The analogue is not useless. It is incomplete.
01
Wave
Steam
Cheapened
Muscle
Coordination
Craft into the factory.
A working generation, then another.
02
Wave
Electricity
Cheapened
Power at the point of use
Coordination
The shop floor, redesigned.
Decades of complementary invention.
03
Wave
Computing · internet
Cheapened
Moving information
Coordination
Platforms instead of physical intermediaries.
A working generation.
04
Wave
AI
Cheapened
Expertise · inference
Coordination
Domains compose without a meeting.
The model is months. The organism is the lag.
Sangeet Paul Choudary: every great wave reorganizes how economies coordinate people, resources, and decisions. Steam centralized the factory. Electricity let production decentralize. The internet replaced physical intermediaries with platforms. AI takes coordination past a meeting — legal, code, finance, and operations can compose because translation cost falls. That is not a faster intern. Emad Mostaque names four inversions of the source of value: land, then labor, then capital, then intelligence. The fourth is final. A scarcity dashboard will misread plenty as poverty. Intelligence, scarce inside skulls, becomes copyable capital.
Salim Ismail: the complementary invention this time is not a new mill or a rewired shop floor. It is the organism. Coase justified the firm because coordination was cheaper inside than outside. Agentic execution inverts that. The org chart becomes a tax. Bolting models onto it is the electricity-without-redesign error. The navigable ExO 3.0 book is explicit: the model arrives working; the organization doesn’t.
You do not need an AI strategy. You need a strategy for the conditions AI creates. Task-identity — résumé keywords for a single employer’s chart — is the identity the unbundling will take from you whether or not you consent. Retraining for a cheaper task is the old analogue. Purpose is what you rebundle around.
The future won’t be built by those who fear what’s coming, but by those who know how to turn chaos into creation.
This is the secret to exponential system change: not compounding acceleration, but cascading coordination.
The hard part isn’t the technology. The model arrives working. The organization doesn’t.
You don’t need an AI strategy. You need a strategy for the conditions AI creates.
When Cultivation is done correctly, Execution is nothing more than the strategic organism going about its daily business the way it was cultivated to do. If you want to see what the strategy is, look at the daily rhythms and behaviors of the strategic organism.