It is normal to feel this way. We are adapting since inception. We should not fear this AI Boom TBH. The same people who opposed Cars during the Horse Era were driving around Ferrari's. We should make the most of AI as long as it brings value to Humanity.

At 24 this feeling is nearly universal across generations. Every cohort encounters the scale of the world right around that age and finds it staggering.

If I may suggest some books for you that can help you get answers on some of these themes:

"Was it always like this"?

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. About 14th-century Europe: plague, schism, war, economic collapse, social breakdown. Tuchman wrote it partly to show her own generation that calamitous centuries are a recurring feature.

"Meaning"

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Written by a Holocaust survivor. The core insight is that meaning is something you construct, not something the world owes you. Can land hard if you are feeling crushed by macro forces.

Humans are terrible at predictions.

Close thread.

The rate of change in overall scenario has risen atleast 10% since 1680 never in the the history did we move so fast as a race when engines and watches were invented and early industrial revolution started. Before that we as a species lived relatively sedimentary lives in the world.

Each industry created a new way to do same things, things moved faster and more faster. And now we are at the inertial momentum that is accelerating so fast in overall turn of events in the world that all this happening was faster than world war 1's duration

Its always been like this, I think some of it is perspective. When you reach your early twenties you are likely exiting a childhood and schooling bubble where your focus has been friends, family and school. Once you emerge from that and start interacting with the workforce you become more attuned to things going on locally/globally where before it wasn't really a concern. Probably more so for your generation because of the internet and social media the speed of information sharing is much faster and more readily available.

My opinion on how things could progress in 5-10 years is it depends on how much the average people push back. It could be pushing back on AI data centers, loss of freedoms, CEO pay ratios, etc. The intensity of the push back could impact events.

I think there will be a renewed interest in offline, analog life, and simple things like noticeboards with flyers at the supermarket to find services and people, in-person events, in-person job applications and interviews, and single-use devices like ipods, dumbphones, maybe radio and tv.

As AI "improves", people will realize that everything "online" is likely to be either fake, manipulated, centrally controlled, a scam, and generally garbage.