Hello friends,
Nearly 100 years ago, we underwent a massive inflection point in our ability to communicate with one another. Radio changed how intelligence moved through the world, initially through sound, and later with sight.
Public discourse at the time was eerily similar to today’s discourse around AI: it’ll worsen culture, children won’t be able to learn well, democracy will worsen, it would let undesirable ideas enter directly into our living room. One headline even read: “radio blamed for everything”. A man was killed by others who believed he was a witch after he showed off radio capabilities. The technology terrified people.
But radio had a profound effect on how we created common knowledge at scale. Broadcast mechanisms meant that millions of people heard the same words at the same time, and everyone knew that others heard them too. That shared reality is the foundation for effective coordination, the way groups, however small or large, agree on what’s true, who is doing what, and how they act together.
AI is another inflection point, but where radio was fixed, i.e. one voice, many listeners, AI is like clay. It carries any form of intelligence, however simple or complex, in any medium, at any pace, to one person or millions. Left to its default, it seems to be bending towards private, personalized realities.
It’s ultimately up to us to decide how we mold it to strengthen and even expand our capacity to cooperate and act together. If AI expands what individuals can do, radiofuture’s ambition is to expand what people can do together.
We're tinkering with what comes next. Come jam with us!