Revolution, evolution, or endgame?

The world is an uncertain and unnerving place right now. Technological advancement is creating a perfect storm of disruption, changing the way we shop, eat, work, and communicate. The traditional structures that underpin Western society are all unraveling, identity politics is running rampant, and there is a heightened sense of victimhood with demands for the state to intervene.

These seem like unparalleled times - or are they?

Sean Culey's new book, Transition Point, begins with an examination into why human progress suddenly exploded in 18th century Britain, rather than in larger, better placed, or more culturally advanced civilizations. Culey explains why the societal structures and individual freedoms that developed in Britain allowed the population's innovative capabilities to flourish while the political structures that existed elsewhere held them back, and explains why our technologically driven progress is cyclical, not linear.

Culey then explains why we are now in the transition point between the fifth and sixth technological waves, in a time the old and new co-exist, creating a society with one foot in the past and one in the future. This is a time of winners and losers, of people with capital and those with just labor. People with desired new wave skills and mindsets, and those with redundant old-wave ones.

In part two of the book, Culey details the technological advancements contained in this new wave. Innovations capable of not just replacing jobs, but also capabilities such as vision, hearing, and speech, creating a future where humans are no longer the cheapest or smartest workers around.

The third and most substantial part of Transition Point examines the impact this new wave is going to have on the nature of business practices, on our scientific and technological advancement, on the economy and, most controversially, on society. It explains what actions are needed to prevent the economy from transforming into a nightmare of uncaring corporatism; a world where the wealth flows into the technocrats, establishment, and capital owners, and the modern-day John Henry's are left behind, outperformed by AI systems, robots, and algorithms that work for electricity and never take a break.

Transition Point also explains why, during this disruptive period, control is likely to be retained via the rolling back of the freedoms and liberties that made this period of progress possible in the first place. As China increasingly utilizes technology to gamify life, creating a surveillance society designed to ensure its citizens comply with the rules passed down by their omnipresent government, the West will do likewise, only without the same level of openness and honesty.

As Western society continues to self-implode through a lack of belief in itself, its heritage, or its traditions, these new wave technologies will become instruments of control and much as convenience. Once the citizens realize that their hard-fought freedoms no longer exist, there will be resistance, but it will be too late. New generations will be born into a world of basic income bread and virtual circuses; a life of entertainment, enhancements an,d limited responsibilities. And knowing no different, they will just accept it, mourning not for that which they never experienced.

Finally, the book explains why the collapse of the sixth wave may tear away the last threads holding together society, creating social disruption on a global scale.