What wheat, smartphones, and AI have in common

Yuval Noah Harari makes this argument in Sapiens that wheat domesticated humans, not the other way around. Nobody decided to become a farmer. A group scattered some seeds near camp, came back next season, found more growing. So they stayed longer. Started weeding. Watering. Protecting the crops. Each small step made sense on its own. But over generations, they were locked in.

The trap was that farming produced more calories per acre, so populations grew. Once you have 50 people in a settlement instead of 15 in a nomadic band, you can't go back to foraging. The land can't support it. More mouths means more farming means more mouths.

And here's the thing - life got worse. Hunter-gatherers worked a few hours a day, ate varied diets, moved constantly. Farmers worked longer hours, ate less diverse food, got sicker from living close together with animals. The species "succeeded" by every collective metric - more humans, more territory, more surplus. But the individual human was worse off.

We didn't domesticate wheat. Wheat domesticated us.

The same pattern keeps repeating

Each age transition follows this and accelerates:

• Hunter-gatherer to agriculture (thousands of years)
• Agriculture to industrial (centuries)
• Industrial to technology (decades)
• Technology to AI (years)

Every transition dramatically changes human habits and behaviour. But it's not always a better version of life compared to what came before.

Technology domesticated us too

We have internet everywhere, any video on any device, we can see what friends are doing, video chat, short videos during dinner. But is this actually better than the 1980s? Families sitting down for dinner together, going out and genuinely enjoying each other's company, renting a DVD on Friday night.

We're more connected and more lonely. More informed and more anxious. More busy and less productive. By most measures, we're less healthy and less happy than the generation before us. We didn't choose this. The technology chose us - the same way wheat chose the first farmers. Each small step made sense. Email was useful. Smartphones were convenient. Social media was fun. And now we can't go back because everything is built around it.

We didn't domesticate technology. Technology domesticated us.

The AI age is next

We're barely 30 years into the technology age and already transitioning to the AI age. The time span keeps shrinking. And each transition pushes our discomfort to a new level. Scroll through LinkedIn or Twitter right now - everyone's excited about what AI can do, but they're also working more hours than ever. Sound familiar?

The Telstra store moment

I walked past a Telstra store today and had this flash of something. An older couple sitting on stools inside, behind a big sign that read "Get mobile internet on the go." They weren't there for mobile internet. They were just trying to sort out a SIM card issue. Maybe so they could call their kids. Maybe just so the phone would work again.

And for a second it felt like a scene from a sci-fi movie - except I wasn't watching it, I was seeing my future in it. That's me in 20 years. Sitting on a stool somewhere, overwhelmed by everything happening around me. Everyone talking about their AI personal assistant, their neural interface, whatever comes next. And I'll just be there trying to get my phone to do something simple.

The thing is, that couple isn't failing. They're not behind. They just want to call someone they love and have it work. Their needs are simple and real. The world just moved past them.

That's what each transition does. It doesn't make the previous way of living wrong. It just makes it invisible.

The transition is happening right now

I don't have a neat answer for what to do about this. I'm not sure there is one.

You can't opt out. The hunter-gatherers who refused to farm didn't preserve their way of life - they got pushed to the margins by the civilisations that did. You don't get to choose which age you live in.

But I think the starting point is just seeing it. Clearly. Without the hype and without the fear.

We're in the middle of a transition right now - from the technology age to the AI age. It's happening faster than any transition before it. And like every previous one, it will change how we live, how we work, how we relate to each other. Some of those changes will be genuinely better. Some will make us worse off in ways we won't notice until we're already locked in.

The pattern from Sapiens keeps repeating. We didn't domesticate wheat - wheat domesticated us. We didn't domesticate technology - technology domesticated us. And if we're not paying attention, AI will domesticate us too.

I don't know what the right response is. But I think it starts with understanding that this is what's happening. Not as something to fear or celebrate, but as something to see clearly, from both sides, with open eyes. Because the one thing every previous generation had in common is that they never saw the transition while they were in it.

We're in it right now.