AI is not new. That may sound strange coming from someone who just posted “AI is BS.” But I’ve always been fascinated by first iterations.
The first abacus.
The first algorithms.
The first programmable machines.
The first search engines.
Maybe it’s an occupational hazard… Or an obsession…
But I keep coming back to the same question: Are we really looking at something entirely new?
…Or are we watching the latest chapter in a very old human story?
Humans have been building tools that extend human capability for thousands of years.
The abacus extended arithmetic.
More importantly, it created a shared visual representation of quantity that traders could agree upon, even across languages and cultures.
Writing extended memory.
Humans had already developed extraordinary ways of preserving knowledge through story, chant, ritual, and performance. Writing allowed that knowledge to persist independently of any one person’s memory and to travel across both time and distance.
The printing press extended knowledge.
When Gutenberg mechanized printing, information ceased to be scarce. The widespread printing of religious texts transformed literacy, scholarship, and eventually the structure of European society itself.
Algorithms extended reasoning.
When Al-Khwarizmi formalized methods for solving mathematical problems over a thousand years ago, he created a framework we still use today—the word “algorithm” literally derives from his name.
Search engines extended retrieval.
Libraries, catalogs, and classification systems had already organized human knowledge. Search engines made access to that knowledge immediate, global, and available to almost anyone.
AI extends understanding across boundaries.
For the first time, we can interact with vast bodies of knowledge regardless of the language, culture, or discipline in which they were created. A technical paper written decades ago in German, Polish, or Japanese can now be translated, summarized, questioned, and connected to other ideas in seconds.
That’s not just faster search. It’s a new way of navigating human knowledge itself.
That’s not a break from history. That’s history continuing….
The more I think about the current AI conversation, the more I wonder if we’re making a category error.
Are we evaluating a tool? …Or are we reacting to a story about a tool?
Because those are very different things.
So I’m curious: Which of these best describes how you see AI?
- A revolutionary break from previous technology?
- The next step in a long history of human tools?
- Something else entirely?
