- Early factories swapped waterwheels for steam engines—modest gains
- Real breakthrough: decouple from rivers, rebuild around the new power source
- We’re still in “swap out the waterwheel” phase with AI
- Chatbots bolted onto existing tools
The real breakthrough came when factory owners realized they could decouple from water entirely. They built larger mills closer to workers, ports, and raw materials… We’re still in the “swap out the waterwheel” phase. AI chatbots bolted onto existing tools.
My Take
The question this raises: what are we currently tied to that we could decouple from? Synchronous time, geographic proximity, human bottlenecks, linear workflows?