What the Kids in 1966 Got Right

In 1966, a group of British schoolchildren were asked to imagine the year 2000.

They didn’t talk about flying cars or time travel.
They talked about video calls. About food arriving without cooking.
Machines doing your homework. A world where people might not even need jobs.

One said people would stop going outside. Another imagined we’d be completely dependent on machines.

But what stood out wasn’t the accuracy of their predictions.
It was how the future made them feel.

They weren’t excited. They were uneasy.
They said it might be lonely. That people might stop talking to each other.
That everything could feel distant and disconnected.

They didn’t just predict the tools, they predicted the emotional cost.
And they were right.

Sixty years ago, a group of children saw where we were headed.
The question now isn’t whether they were right.
It’s what are we failing to see today?

You Already Know the Pattern

We’ve been here before, just in different forms.

For most of the 20th century, Kodak was photography. They actually invented the first digital camera in 1975. But they buried it. They were afraid it would cannibalise their own business. They couldn’t imagine a world where people no longer bought film. So they protected what they had instead of building what was coming.

By the time they realised digital was the future, it was too late. Smartphones had already turned every consumer into a photographer, and Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. They saw the future. They even invented it. But they chose comfort over courage.

Kodak didn’t lack vision, they lacked courage to evolve. That’s the same trap many people, industries, and institutions are in today with AI.

The same thing happened in the early nineties when everyone panicked that tech jobs were going offshore to India. People assumed that meant the end of opportunity in the West. What actually happened was the rise of the internet. Suddenly every company needed a website. Then a mobile app. Then an internal system. India didn’t just take jobs. It became a tech hub. So did Eastern Europe. So did entire regions of Africa.

People who saw the change early enough built companies and careers. People who didn’t were left behind.

That’s how these shifts always work. Technology kills the job you thought you’d have and replaces it with something no one trained you for. But if you’re paying attention, you’ll realise that change is just disguised opportunity.

What’s Different Now

AI is doing the same thing. It’s just doing it faster.

Startups are launching without developers. Content is being written, edited, and distributed without writers. Solo creators are building global brands with no team, no funding, and no code. Managers are being outperformed by 20-year-olds who know how to automate workflows using tools like Zapier and GPT.

And still, people are pretending the change is coming in five years. It’s already here. If you feel a sense of instability in your job, your industry, or even your own confidence, you’re not imagining it. You’re experiencing the early phase of a collapse that hasn’t fully hit yet.

We’re still training people for jobs that won’t exist by the time they graduate. Still building school curriculums around workflows that are already being overtaken by AI. Still rewarding experience in systems that have already shifted beneath us.

The most dangerous thing isn’t AI. It’s nostalgia. It’s the belief that if you just keep your head down and work hard at what used to work, things will eventually go back to normal. But the system that used to reward that behaviour doesn’t exist anymore.

The Shift Is Global

This isn’t just about Silicon Valley. In fact, it might be about everywhere except Silicon Valley.

In places like Nairobi or Dhaka, AI isn’t a threat to some high-paying desk job. It’s a shortcut to something better. It’s a way around broken systems. Around bureaucracy. Around gatekeepers. Around decades of underinvestment.

Where the internet gave people access, AI gives them leverage.

It collapses the cost of building something. It removes the friction from launching ideas. It gives anyone with a phone and a prompt the power to generate, to solve, to lead. If the internet gave us permission to participate, AI gives us the power to produce.

But that only matters if people actually use it. If they stop waiting to be told what to do, and start learning how to do it themselves.

The Real Work Now

We love to talk about what AI will replace. What it will kill. What it will make obsolete. But that’s not the interesting question.

The interesting question is what AI has just made possible that wasn’t possible before.

Because that’s where the next careers, companies, and economies will come from. From people who stop defending the past and start building what couldn’t have existed until now.

The best jobs of the next ten years won’t go to the people who double down on what they already know. They’ll go to the people who realise the rules have changed, and adapt before everyone else.

You don’t need to code any more to build software. You don’t need a production team to create video. You don’t need permission to be influential, or institutional access to be educated. You need imagination. And urgency.

It’s much easier to think about which jobs AI might kill, but much harder to imagine entire new ones it’s going to make possible.

So the smart move now isn’t chasing hype, it’s building the kind of skills that stay useful, even as everything shifts. Not just technical skills, but adaptable ones. Transferable ones. Skills that make you valuable no matter what tools come and go.

It really isn’t about staying relevant. It’s about learning how to move when the ground moves.

I Guess My Point Is…

In 1966, a group of kids predicted our future. They did it without degrees, funding or pitch decks. They just observed the world, named what they saw coming, and had the guts to say it out loud.

They predicted the tools. They predicted the consequences. They even predicted the loneliness.

What they didn’t predict was how few of us would listen.

Now it’s your turn. The future isn’t coming. It’s already here.

The question is whether you’re still clinging to a version of yourself that no longer fits, or whether you’re ready to imagine and build the next one.