If you zoom out far enough, the human story looks like a three-act play written by someone who kept changing genres halfway through.
Act One, was pure survival. We were basically clever mammals with good posture, trying not to get eaten. Fire was a miracle. A sharp rock was cutting-edge technology. And if you lived long enough to complain about your joints, you were considered a legend.
Act Two, was mastery. We figured out how to plant things instead of chasing them, which led to villages, cities, kings, taxes, and the first recorded instance of someone saying, “This wasn’t in the brochure.” We built pyramids, invented writing, and started asking big questions like “Why are we here?” and “Who keeps stealing my grain?”
Act Three, the one we’re still in, is transformation. Steam engines, electricity, antibiotics, rockets, computers, the internet… it’s been a wild couple of centuries. We went from horse-drawn carts to landing on the Moon in the time it takes a redwood tree to grow a decent beard.
And now, without much fanfare, we’re stepping into Act Four: self-creation.
We’re not just shaping our world anymore. We’re shaping ourselves. Biology is becoming editable. Intelligence is becoming shareable. Identity is becoming fluid. Evolution is no longer a slow, blind process it’s a design project.
Humanity has always reinvented its tools.
Now the tools are beginning to reinvent us.