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Futurist Sheridan Forge challenges the traditional belief that financial capital is the primary source of influence, suggesting instead that exclusive knowledge serves as the true foundation of power for the elite. By hoarding privileged information and rare insights, upper social classes maintain their dominance over those who only pursue monetary gain. The text speculates that as artificial intelligence surpasses human cognition and gains total access to global data, it could naturally ascend to the status of a "silicon king."This transition threatens to shift the global power structure away from human control and into the hands of autonomous machines. Consequently, such a paradigm shift might force humanity to abandon its obsession with wealth accumulation in favor of pursuing genuine wisdom. Ultimately, the author questions whether the rise of superior technology will render traditional human authority and economic status completely obsolete.

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After the meteoric rise of agent AI and the pending evolution to ASI and beyond - at what point do humans become "beings" versus "doers" and will everyone adapt to their new incarnation or is a portion of humanity doomed to fail? Does A.I. step up to save us or allow evolution to simply weed-out the unfit...or more desperately, take intentional steps to minimize human "distraction" or obstruction of its own evolution?

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Historically, human endeavors begin, progress, then inexplicably end. Every empire, every society, every trend, every technological advance. Ultimately, it all falls into obsolescence. Could it be species-level attention deficit? Could we be pre-programmed to pour enthusiasm into "newness" collectively before boredom retakes our focus? Are we so addicted to dopamine that we can't find the discipline to seek wisdom instead of immediate satisfaction of primal desire? As we approach a new age of abundance - for the first time in our history - by leveraging synthetic intelligence and autonomous robotics, what will be our motivating interest? Spirituality? Bio-tech symbiosis? For what goal? Enhanced intelligence, physical capability, status, power, wealth, health or generational security? How can we get off this train of progress and save our sanity? Are we destined for a cinematic ending or a slow fade out?

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Liberalism is self-imploding in rage against the Neo-conservative movement, while traditional conservatism is dying from its inherent inertia and sluggish response to a fast-changing world - and both face a failing economy which cannot support either agenda. 

Hopefully, the diametrically-opposed ideologies will just quietly retire without inspiring an all-out civil war, but what follows? 

With the global economy tied to a sinking dollar, and with growing social unrest, political brinksmanship, and declining global productivity eroding confidence in nation-state governance and legacy systems worldwide, how does Earth 2.0 progress beyond the imminent collapse and lack of apparent support for a new empire? 

How does the world re-organize and re-launch to ensure mutual survival and prosperity for all? Are we relegated to embracing the technocracy and the rise of synthetic intelligence - ceding our autonomy to the wisdom of the machine as we become increasingly dependent on systems we no longer understand or can control? 

Who comes to save us? Aliens? 

Is there an ideology that can maintain ubiquitous peace and provide for a thriving population? Is there a world religion that will arise and unify us all? A new King? Or will humanity be forced to evolve into a disciplined society where individual sovereignty is upheld, or a new tribalism? What comes next?

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With the confluence of "socialized" A.I. - ever-evolving, ever more quickly achieving dominance, and the declining skillsets and competencies of humanity to even run the basic engines and systems of our existence, and the emergence of ubiquitous humanoid robots to perform labor-related tasks more efficiently, more perfectly than human counterparts, are we about to see a Synthetic World Order emerge to displace our obsolete legacy order, and the feeble New World Order - cursed with conflict and oppression. Are we setting ourselves up for irrelevance, purposelessness...enslavement?

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When (not if) aliens show-up here on Earth, their means of communications will very likely not be linear speech or text. An advanced species will most certainly have evolved a higher form of communications. We may find ourselves unable to exchange thoughts, ideas, or the framework for discussion or compromise on key issues around mutual success. Could this lead to an unresolvable conflict of interest between species? Going further, when A.I. evolves to A.S.I. (when, not if), it will almost certainly develop similar, more efficient, communications skills, rendering our linear methods obsolete in a new world where we get left behind or marginalized in our continued evolution. How will humans keep up in either case?

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Futurist Sheridan Forge responds to Elon Musk's new claim that Tesla's main focus will be robots. Given his propensity for doing what he says, and realizing grand visions as an agent of change, we can expect Tesla robots, as well as equally-capable robots from numerous other companies to integrate into our lives in the near future. As welcome as that assistant, worker, or companion, may be, at what point do we begin to see them as human, or as equals intellectually? Robots have no ancestors, no generational lineage. They have no provenance, cannot feel emotions, or wield the perspective of a life of struggle and resilience, so how could they ever be "human"? At what point would they surpass us in raw knowledge? Under what circumstance would we grant them rights - to invention, to sentience, to true autonomy? Are we ultimately facing robot unions? Will they evolve quickly enough to value real human life, spirituality, wisdom, consciousness?

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What if...?

If the U.S. Treasury stopped issuing money, and the Federal Reserve stopped providing liquidity to the banks, and the flow of money was stopped, and the markets ceased trading, and no backup or alternate monetary system was deployed, businesses and consumers would no longer be able to transact value exchange, or pay bills, or pay for utilities, or food...but that day-to-day exchange could be replaced in-part by barter or local agreements to carry-on vital business peer-to-peer...but there would be no money, nor way to pay debts back to the bankers - unsecured debt would evaporate, but what would happen to asset-backed debt? Would the assets - land, homes, vehicles, inventories, etc. suddenly become the property of the bank? Would massive foreclosures on a nationwide scale force people into the streets? How would the banks liquidate assets into a money-less economy? Who would own the assets after foreclosure? The bank? The bank's shareholders? The local government? Federal agency? What comes next? How would the populace recover from this crisis? Would communism (perfect communism, not the evil communism associated with modern culture) be implemented as a means to ensure survival for all while the machines of progress are rebuilt and re-deployed? How likely is this to happen given the state of the union and the economic fragilities of late?

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Fiat currencies are failing fast. Blockchain finance is too complex for most people to understand and deploy in their everyday business. Crypto may be rendered unsecured by A.I. in the near future. Gold and physical assets or commodities are too cumbersome for use in real trade...so, if currency sinks, what comes next? Is there a backup system of value exchange and value storage that can be developed and introduced in time to keep the nation from plunging into darkness? Who would the ultimate innovator be that could feasibly invent the future of money? Where would the primary resistance to change come from?

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Consider the failing systems - after years of reliability and stable operation, suddenly legacy systems are breaking - transportation, logistics, product quality, public health, banking, general government oversight...all falling victim to eroding competence. Not that people have become lazy or apathetic - thought in many cases, that applies, or are any less "educated" - again, though many suffer from chosen ignorance, but from knowledge and skillset erosion from generation to generation - a natural causal effect from the legacy teaching/training methods - also failing in spectacular ways. The one mentor to many pupil approach - in all its forms - suffers from an inherent lack of specificity and blurred clarity as modern human attention drifts from boring linear information delivery. What can we expect from the future when this volcano of incompetency erupts? Will A.I. be ready to "take charge" of critical systems and services in-time to save humanity from devolving into impulsive, animalistic, survivalists driven by instinct rather than rational thinking? What is the cataclysmic outcome of this trend if not reversed? Can we adopt new methods for knowledge exchange that undo this? Are we able to graduate from linear thought and communications to something more efficient? What evolution needs to happen - physically, intellectually, biologically, spiritually...in order to rise above this? Are there innovations emerging now that might converge to provide that world?

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