Analysis and perspectives on navigating the age of disruption.
Every major technological transition in history has ultimately created more jobs than it destroyed. But there's a critical detail that optimists often overlook: the jobs created require different skills than the jobs eliminated, and the transition period can devastate entire communities. The current AI revolution is no different — except the pace of change is unprecedented. Companies are simultaneously laying off thousands while desperately hiring for roles that didn't exist five years ago. The paradox isn't whether AI creates jobs. It's whether our training systems can adapt fast enough to fill them before social costs become unmanageable.
Organizational inertia isn't a character flaw — it's a feature. The same structures that create consistency, reliability, and efficiency also resist disruption. Hierarchies filter out uncomfortable information. Processes optimize for yesterday's problems. Culture rewards conformity. Breaking through requires more than a memo from the CEO. It requires redesigning information flows so bad news travels fast, creating psychological safety for dissent, building small autonomous teams that can experiment without bureaucratic overhead, and accepting that transformation is continuous rather than a one-time event.
In the 20th century, civic literacy meant understanding how government works, reading a newspaper critically, and participating in democratic processes. In the 21st century, it means all of that plus understanding how algorithms shape the information you see, how data is collected and used, how AI systems make decisions that affect your life, and how to distinguish genuine information from sophisticated manipulation. Without digital literacy, citizens cannot meaningfully participate in debates about privacy, algorithmic bias, platform regulation, or AI governance. Schools, libraries, and civic organizations need to treat digital literacy as fundamental as reading and math.