The Future Might Be Composted

As AI reshapes the world, what breaks down now could feed the roots of something entirely different

Companies across industries are laying off workers by the thousands. Tech CEOs claim their AI systems will soon replace most human jobs, and some are already acting on it. But reading about these sweeping changes has caused something to stir in me. I'm not convinced things will go the way they expect.

Much of the tech industry has been shaped by the belief that the world is mechanical, that humans are systems to optimize, and the body is a machine. But that framework can only take us so far. There are things humans are known to do that are relational, intuitive, and often subtle, hard to track, or invisible. These ways of knowing can’t yet be replicated.

They live in places that can’t be fully mapped, which is what makes them human. AI might get better at sounding empathetic or responsive, but presence is more than tone or phrasing. It’s something felt. A way of being. Relational intelligence arises through context. It shows up through what’s at stake in the moment. It means sensing and responding to others and the environment with awareness and care. For example, it’s the subtle way a skilled teacher reads a student’s body language and adjusts their approach, or how a seasoned team member picks up on unspoken tensions during a meeting and helps ease them. For now, that kind of knowing still lives with us.

I don’t know exactly how this will unfold, but I have a sense that some of these companies will find themselves in trouble. They may lose the trust of their users, watch customers drift away, and eventually realize they need to bring people back. Some may disappear altogether.

Many are encouraging these workers to become solopreneurs: starting businesses, consulting, or building personal brands. That path may work for a small percentage of people, especially those with financial stability, skills that are in demand, or high visibility. But for most, it’s not so simple. Self-employment can be liberating for some, but it shouldn’t be the default survival strategy for a collapsing job market. Not everyone wants to market themselves. Not everyone has the time, energy, or support to start something on their own. It’s important to be honest about that. Reinvention isn’t always a solo act, and the future likely won’t be formed by individual resilience alone. The future may ask for more collective strength and ways of working, grounded in relationship and interdependence: through cooperatives, mutual support, and sharing power that pushes back against today’s hyper-individualism.

Worker-owned cooperatives like the Arizmendi Bakery collective in Berkeley, CA, where profits and decisions are shared among employees, offer glimpses of what this could look like in practice.

To understand what models like these are offering, it helps to see what they stand in contrast to.

When lords in late medieval England discovered that sheep were more profitable than serfs, they began evicting people from the land. They took land that had once been shared by local communities and claimed it for private use, pushing out entire villages to expand wool production.

It wasn’t just a shift in economics. It marked a deeper transformation. What once ran on relationships like mutual obligation, shared land, and seasonal rhythms gave way to systems organized around wages, profit, and ownership. As Heilbroner and Thurow describe in Economics Explained, this was the beginning of capitalism. It wasn’t only about how goods were exchanged, but about how life itself was structured.

It made short-term economic sense but created a large class of landless workers who flooded into cities. These displaced people didn’t disappear. They became the foundation for something entirely new: wage labor, industrial capitalism, and urban markets. It wasn’t visionary or designed. It was emergent.

What began as displacement and privatization in medieval England now plays out on a new stage. Today’s technological and economic systems reshape access, power, and belonging by centralizing control, limiting who gets included, and reinforcing patterns that have persisted for centuries.

Which makes me wonder: what’s forming now, beneath the surface of mass displacement?

There’s a lot of talk about changing the system, about building something better. It’s essential work and it’s already underway. But if we’re not paying attention, we run the risk of putting new names on the same old structures. We’ve seen it happen before, again and again: after revolutions, changes in policy, even after so-called technological breakthroughs.

We often expect change to mean something new, yet history reveals power follows old patterns:

Kings become presidents: In theory, the French Revolution ended the monarchy and ushered in democracy. But just a few years later, Napoleon declared himself emperor. And today, some countries still use the title of president, even though power remains concentrated in the hands of one person or party. The names may change, but the deeper structure often stays the same.

Lords become landlords: In England, starting in the late Middle Ages, nobles began taking land that had once been shared by local communities and claiming it for private use. They evicted peasants who had lived and worked there for generations. Those peasants became tenants, now paying rent instead of owing loyalty. Today, landlords in cities often hold similar economic power, deciding who stays, who goes, and at what cost. The relationship is still extractive, though now it's backed by law.

Corporations become platforms: Uber profits from drivers without employing them. Airbnb earns from hosts without owning properties. These companies facilitate relationships and extract value, while sidestepping responsibility for the lives and wellbeing of the people who make their platforms work. It’s a more decentralized kind of control, but the power still flows upward.

So the real question goes beyond just what we build next. It’s what it carries in its DNA.

I don’t write this as a rejection of the new systems people are working to create. I support the shift toward a wellbeing economy, toward something more relational, regenerative, and life-affirming. But we also have to tend to the soil it grows from. Without that care, we risk replicating old dynamics under new language. A better system can’t just look different. It has to feel different. It has to move differently. It needs to be grounded in a different relationship to power, time, uncertainty, and each other.

Systems won’t change at the root until we do. Not just in our theories or models, but in how we actually meet power, and one another, and the unknown.

This is the part I keep returning to. Real change doesn’t always come through design. Sometimes it happens through breakdown. Something dissolves. Something ends. And instead of rushing to replace it, we stay close to it and listen. We wait for the next right step to reveal itself.

Not everything begins as a vision. Sometimes it starts from necessity, from proximity, or from the simple need to adapt. Like the casual carpool system that operated for decades in the San Francisco Bay Area. Drivers would pick up two passengers at specific spots so they could all use the carpool lane from the East Bay into San Francisco. There was no app, no sign-up sheet, no central coordination. Just a shared understanding that arose from repetition, trust, and mutual benefit. It worked because it met a need, and because people respected the unspoken agreement that held it together.

Or the two UC Berkeley students, Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez, who discovered that mushrooms could grow in used coffee grounds. They began collecting waste from local coffee shops and explored mushroom cultivation, then sold both the mushrooms and the nutrient-rich compost. What started as an experiment became a thriving small business called Back to the Roots. Rather than following a rigid plan, they worked with what was available: used coffee grounds that others discarded. Their approach embraced uncertainty and adaptation. Later, they created mushroom growing kits that allowed people to cultivate mushrooms at home, inviting a wider community to engage directly with food production. This was not a top-down invention but an unfolding collaboration with nature and people. Their journey shows how paying attention to overlooked resources and community needs can lead to regenerative, collaborative models that grow from what is already here.

These aren’t strategies or traditional solutions. They are subtle signs of intelligence that emerge when we are willing to look beyond the usual.

There is wisdom in what’s breaking down, if we know how to listen. But that kind of listening asks something of us. It asks us to be different than we were. To stop rushing toward resolution. To slow down enough to feel what is shifting and allow that to guide the next steps.

Despite appearances, the future may not be something we can fully engineer. It might be grown from what we’re letting go of now.

And if that’s true, then what matters most isn’t the plan. It’s the soil.
Systems won’t change at the root until we do. Not just in our ideas, but in how we relate to power, to each other, and to uncertainty.

What are we growing now, beneath the surface?
And what stories will live in its roots?

What we water, grows

Of course, vision and structure are necessary. But they need roots. And that’s what we’re nurturing here.

As we witness systems breaking down, we are invited to slow down and listen deeply. To the subtle signs, to the needs emerging in our communities and environments. Each of us can tend the soil in our own way, nurturing what wants to grow beyond the patterns of the past. What small acts of attention and care might you offer today to help shape a future rooted in connection and interdependence?

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Photo by Stefany Andrade on Unsplash

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References:

Arizmendi Bakery. Worker-owned cooperative in Berkeley, CA. arizmendibakery.com

Back to the Roots. Founded by Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez. backtotheroots.com

Heilbroner, Robert, and Thurow, Lester. Economics Explained. Updated ed., Simon & Schuster, 1998.

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