Introduction
Imagine navigating a world where economic volatility swings like a pendulum, geopolitical tensions fracture long-held alliances, personal identities feel increasingly siloed yet globally amplified, and technologies evolve faster than our instincts can adapt. This is the reality many face today—a raging river of change that leaves people disoriented, swept along without control over their direction or destiny. Polarisation in politics and media, relentless market cycles driven by debt and inflation, addictive social platforms rewiring our brains, and breakthroughs in AI and blockchain reshaping infrastructure: these forces intertwine, creating a complexity that defies easy understanding. Yet, piecing them together offers not just clarity, but agency—a boat to ride the currents and a rudder to steer through them.
As a UK-based independent researcher born in 1971, living in Totnes after completing a BA Honours degree in design, I’ve spent over two decades founding and operating businesses in retail, e-commerce, and photography, witnessing firsthand the shift from industrial scarcity to digital abundance. In recent years, my focus has pivoted to exploring the intersections of AI, cryptocurrency, consumer identity, and human behaviour, drawing from observations of how technology nudges our primal drives amid macro trends. This essay presents a four-pillar framework I’ve developed to decode society’s mechanics: the Economic Model, Governance and Information, Human Behaviour, and Technology and Infrastructure. These pillars form the backbone of how the world operates, from resource allocation and power structures to instinctual patterns and enabling tools.
We stand at an inflection point—the intelligence revolution, propelled by AI and decentralised systems, is accelerating a profound paradigm shift set to unfold rapidly between 2025 and 2035. Economically, we’re moving from scarcity’s constraints to abundance’s possibilities; in governance, from centralised bundles of authority to decentralised networks; behaviourally, from collective “we” instincts to hyper-individualised “I” pursuits; and technologically, from mere digital connectivity to intelligent autonomy that blends human cognition with machine potential. These shifts don’t occur in isolation—they create a feedback loop, where technological advances fuel economic plenty, which in turn unbundles power and amplifies personal agency, compressing historical cycles that once spanned centuries into mere years.
The urgency is clear: past revolutions, like the industrial era, disrupted societies over generations, but this one outpaces them, risking widespread displacement. Grasp the framework, however, and it becomes a tool to thrive—turning chaos into navigable opportunity. What follows explores why these pillars matter and details each shift, illuminating paths forward.
Why These Four Pillars?
With the framework laid out as a map for the intelligence revolution, a natural question arises: why focus on these specific four pillars—the Economic Model, Governance and Information, Human Behaviour, and Technology and Infrastructure—amid countless ways to slice society’s complexities? The choice stems from my own vantage point, shaped by experiences I outlined previously. These pillars emerged as the ones that consistently intersect in my observations, forming a practical lens rather than an exhaustive one: economics for how value and incentives flow, governance and information for structures of power and narrative, human behaviour for the instincts driving it all, and technology for the tools that enable or upend the rest.
This selection isn’t random; it draws from patterns in how societies function and evolve. Economies allocate resources, governance bundles or fragments authority, behaviour roots decisions in primal wiring, and technology scales capabilities—together covering the core dynamics without sprawling into derivatives like pure environmental factors, which often play out through these channels. Their strength lies in interconnection: for instance, technological leaps in AI can flood economies with abundance, which erodes centralised governance and heightens individual behavioural pursuits, creating loops that accelerate change.
Empirically, similar distillations appear in historical analyses—think of how thinkers like Yuval Noah Harari in his work on human history emphasise myths (behaviour), cooperation (governance), and tools (technology) alongside resource struggles (economics), or how global reports from bodies like the World Economic Forum highlight AI’s reshaping of jobs (80-90% impacted by 2030) across these domains. Inferentially, I see these as pivotal for the 2025-2035 window because they pinpoint leverage points: in a low-trust era, decentralised tech could empower behavioural agency, but without understanding the loops, we risk amplified chaos. Visionarily, mastering them turns passive drift into directed exploration, where abundance meets autonomy.
This intentional focus sets the stage for examining the shifts themselves, revealing how each pillar is transforming and why grasping their interplay equips us for what’s ahead.
The Four Pillars: Explaining the Shifts
Having established why these four pillars provide a focused lens on society’s core dynamics, let’s examine the transformations underway in each. These shifts, unfolding between 2025 and 2035, reflect broader patterns where technology’s pace compresses what once took generations, creating both upheaval and openings for those attuned to the flows.
Pillar 1: The Economic Model – From Scarcity to Abundance
The Economic Model encompasses how value is created, distributed, and incentivised, shaping everything from daily transactions to global growth. Historically, it has been anchored in scarcity—limited resources clashing with infinite human wants, fuelling cycles of debt, inflation, and boom-bust patterns. Dollar-denominated debt, for example, has dominated since post-war eras, acting as a global stabiliser but also a vulnerability through currency debasement, where inflation erodes purchasing power like a slow tax. Productivity has relied on demographics and efficiency gains, often borrowing against the future to sustain expansion, as seen in multi-decade debt loops where government spending overrides central bank restraint.
Now, the pivot is towards abundance, where AI-driven productivity surges make supply effectively infinite in many domains, reorienting value around scarce elements like attention and intelligence. Humanoid robots, scaling in production by the late 2020s, could function as “infinite demographics,” offsetting ageing populations in places like Europe and Japan by providing endless labour equivalents. Token economies, meanwhile, unlock illiquid assets—think farmland or royalties fractionalised into tradeable digital forms, boosting liquidity without traditional intermediaries. Facts show compute costs halving every 18 months, extending Moore’s Law and slashing barriers to innovation; inferentially, this could end scarcity paradigms by 2040, birthing flywheels where AI amplifies personal wealth-building through iterative knowledge loops. Opportunities lie in mental models for navigating volatility, like hedging with crypto alternatives amid fiat weaknesses, but risks include sharper wealth concentration as AI assets funnel resources to early adopters. This abundance, in turn, pressures governance structures by reducing reliance on centralised fiscal dominance.
Pillar 2: Governance and Information – From Centralisation to Decentralisation
Governance and Information involve the structures of power and how narratives flow to influence decisions, from state policies to public discourse. In centralised forms, power has bundled into institutions like the post-World War II order—the IMF or UN enforcing unified rules and information channels, often through government-curated media that maintained cohesion but stifled direct participation. The iron law of oligarchy has held sway, where elites inevitably concentrate control in bureaucracies, leading to voter apathy; recent data reveals trust in Western governments dipping below 40% in surveys, with geopolitical frictions like Ukraine conflicts accelerating the liberal order’s unwind. Information asymmetry has compounded this, as centralised outlets once gatekept facts, but now platforms fragment narratives into echo chambers.
The emerging decentralisation unbundles authority, shifting to networks where individuals and communities hold sway amid eroding trust. Blockchain could enable direct democracy, reviving participatory models through secure voting or aid distribution in displaced regions, as projected for third-world crises by 2035. Regulatory pivots, such as stablecoin frameworks in 2025, might supercharge peer-to-peer systems, countering elite distrust by empowering grassroots alliances like network states—digital communities transcending borders. Facts include a 300% rise in decentralised finance adoption since 2020, per transaction volumes; inferentially, in abundance-driven worlds, low-trust environments favour these setups, potentially stabilising social cohesion but risking further fragmentation if truth decay persists through manipulated algorithms. This ties to behaviour, as decentralised info flows amplify individual voices while challenging collective norms.
Pillar 3: Human Behaviour – From Collective “We” to Individual “I”
Human Behaviour centres on the instincts and patterns that motivate actions, rooted in our neurological core. In collective “we” modes, forged through scarcity, survival hinged on tribal bonds—primal limbic drives like fear and belonging steering group decisions, from ancient rituals to mid-20th-century nationalism. System 1 intuitive thinking dominated, with negative bias amplifying threats for protection, while myths and shared narratives provided meaning in uncertain times. Status symbols evolved communally, but digital expansion has siloed us, heightening the need to be seen; social media usage averages 2.5 hours daily, rewiring dopamine loops and contributing to mental health dips of 50% among younger groups in recent studies.
The transition to hyper-individualised “I” sees tech amplify self-focus, where identity becomes the endgame in a connected yet isolated landscape. AI algorithms mimic and nudge these urges, curating personas from 1950s consumer myths to 2050s virtual twins, as objects like iPhones signal personal status in marketing-driven worlds. Recombination—remixing ideas in chaos—fosters creativity, but addictive platforms hijack instincts, clashing with abundance by perpetuating stockpiling behaviours even in plenty. Facts point to individualism indices rising 30% globally since 1980; inferentially, AI superintelligence might preserve agency by subtly guiding choices, yet risks deeper isolation unless balanced with emergent “we” through VR communities. This interconnects with technology, as autonomous systems reshape primal echoes, influencing economic demands for personalised value.
Pillar 4: Technology and Infrastructure – From Digital Connectivity to Intelligent Autonomy
Technology and Infrastructure refer to the tools and systems underpinning progress, from energy grids to computational frameworks. The digital era emphasised connectivity, linking humans via networks like the internet, which scaled access and information exchange since the 1990s, hitting over five billion users today. Blockchains emerged as decentralised ledgers for trustless transactions, while energy and compute bottlenecks limited scope, often tying innovation to centralised infrastructure. Programmable money through smart contracts began automating agreements, but the focus remained on human-centric links.
Now, the move to intelligent autonomy sees AI systems augment or surpass cognition, blending biology with tech for goal-pursuing agents. Quantum chips, ramping production in 2025, could boost computation exponentially, addressing bottlenecks and powering token economies worth trillions by 2030. Humanoid robots and digital twins integrate with crypto, owning data in peer-to-peer markets, while agentic AI handles strategic tasks independently. Facts include AI training demands doubling yearly, per efficiency metrics; inferentially, AGI by 2030 might unlock universal intelligence, revolutionising productivity but mirroring societal dark sides, like ethical collapses in content generation. This pillar propels the others—driving economic abundance, decentralising governance, and rewiring behaviour—compressing cycles into years.
These examinations reveal the pillars not as isolated changes but as woven threads, setting up the feedback loops that define the revolution’s speed and scope.
The Interconnected Feedback Loop
The shifts in these pillars gain their true power when viewed not as separate threads, but as a woven system where each reinforces the others, accelerating the overall transformation. At its heart, the feedback loop begins with technology’s pivot to intelligent autonomy—agentic AI and quantum scaling that propel economic abundance by slashing costs and unlocking infinite productivity, as humanoid robots address labour shortages and token systems fluidify assets. This plenty, in turn, erodes centralised governance, fostering decentralisation where low-trust networks like blockchain-based democracies empower individuals over institutions, fragmenting information flows into personalised narratives that challenge unified authority.
Human behaviour amplifies the cycle: as abundance frees us from scarcity’s collective survival instincts, hyper-individualism surges, with AI-curated identities heightening the “I” through status pursuits and recombination in chaotic digital spaces. Yet this individualism feeds back into economics, demanding personalised value in attention-driven markets, while decentralised governance provides the tools—direct participation and peer networks—to express it without traditional gatekeepers. The result is a self-reinforcing spiral, compressing historical timelines: what took centuries in agricultural shifts or decades in industrial ones now unfolds in years, with projections showing AGI integration reshaping 85% of global work by 2030.
Facts vs. Inference: Empirically, tech adoption rates have doubled per decade since the 1990s, per usage metrics, mirroring how internet connectivity sparked early loops in the 2000s. Inferentially, by 2035, this could yield utopian agency—humans steering hybrid systems—or dystopian drift if unchecked, like amplified isolation amid unchecked algorithms. Understanding these connections turns the river’s currents from overwhelming forces into navigable paths, leading us to practical ways forward.
Conclusion: A Call to Navigate
The feedback loop binding these pillars underscores a singular truth: the intelligence revolution isn’t a distant abstraction but an accelerating force reshaping our world in real time, from 2025’s regulatory pivots to 2035’s potential AGI horizons. Together, the shifts—from scarcity to abundance in economics, centralisation to decentralisation in governance, collective “we” to individual “I” in behaviour, and digital connectivity to intelligent autonomy in technology—form a comprehensive map, illuminating society’s hidden mechanics and the paths through disruption.
From my vantage in Totnes, UK, where I’ve observed industrial echoes fade into digital hums, this framework distils decades of patterns into actionable insight. Facts like AI’s doubling efficiencies highlight the speed; inferentially, it could yield empowered hybrids of human and machine, where abundance meets agency in unforeseen ways. Yet the key lies in application: reflect on your own behavioural instincts amid social silos, experiment with token economies for personal value, or engage decentralised communities to rebuild cohesion.
Don’t let the river carry you—steer it. For deeper explorations, visit aronhosie.com or follow on X @aron__hosie to join the conversation. In this storm, understanding interconnects chaos into opportunity, transforming passive drift into purposeful journeys ahead.