Introduction

1. —Getting StartedDedication, disclaimer, the essay that prompted the book, and how to read it.

The Acceleration Thesis

1. 01From AI to AGI to ASI: Why the Next Decade Is DifferentWhy AI compounds on itself, what that does to the pace of discovery, and the constraints that still bite.

Biology and Medicine

1. 02Biology & Medicine, 1926–2026: The Century That Made Life LongerA century in which a scratch stopped being fatal — antibiotics, vaccines, imaging, CRISPR.
2. 03The End of 'Disease' as Society Knows ItContinuous sensing and multi-omics move medicine from treating symptoms to intercepting causes.
3. 04Beating Cancer, Heart Disease, and NeurodegenerationWhat AI-accelerated research might do against the three conditions that kill most people.
4. 05Repairing the Body: Spinal Injuries, Blindness, and RegenerationRegeneration, organ replacement, and restoring function that used to be lost permanently.
5. 06Brain Interfaces, Brain Copying, and 'Sleeves'Where brain-computer interfaces actually are, and what mind copying would require.
6. 07Human Augmentation and OptimizationGenetic, physical, and cognitive enhancement — and the jurisdictions that will permit it first.
7. 08Longevity and the Extension of HealthspanCompressing morbidity: more healthy years, and why maximum lifespan has not moved.

Energy

1. 09Energy, 1926–2026: Electrification to the Climate EraCoal to oil to nuclear to solar, and the emissions the whole arrangement produced.
2. 10Solar, Storage, and the Cheap-Energy FlywheelThe cost collapse that made clean electricity the cheap option rather than the virtuous one.
3. 11Fusion, Advanced Nuclear, and the 'Always-On' FutureFusion, SMRs, and the gap between demonstrated physics and delivered power.
4. 12Instant Charging and the New Mobility StackBatteries, charging infrastructure, and the bridge from gasoline to electric.

Transportation

1. 13Transportation, 1926–2026: From Mass Motoring to Platform MobilityMass motoring to global logistics, and the costs the system externalised.
2. 14Self-Driving Cars and RobotaxisWaymo's lead, Cruise's collapse, and what the unit economics actually say.
3. 15Autonomous Trucks, Warehouses, and Automated DeliveriesDriverless freight arrives on the highway first, and takes the warehouse with it.
4. 16Nonstop EV Trips: Charging, Swapping, and the End of Range AnxietyCharging, swapping, and the point at which refuelling stops being a consideration.

Space

1. 17Space, 1926–2026: Rockets to ReusabilityFrom Goddard's cabbage patch to reusable boosters and a satellite constellation.
2. 18Beyond Ion: Electric Propulsion, Nuclear Propulsion, and New DrivesNuclear thermal, electric, and sails — what the rocket equation does and does not permit.
3. 19Space Infrastructure and Off-World IndustryStations, servicing, lunar resources, and the bootstrap problem of building off Earth.
4. 20Living Through the Journey: Cryopreservation, Hibernation, and RadiationRadiation, bone loss, and the unglamorous biology of keeping humans alive in transit.
5. 21Subspace Communication and Faster-Than-Light Travel: What Physics AllowsWhy faster-than-light communication is almost certainly impossible, and what to do instead.

AI and Robotics

1. 22AI & Robotics, 1926–2026: Computing to Machine CreativityA century of confident predictions, most of them wrong, ending in transformers.
2. 23Generalist AI: From Tools to Autonomous AgentsAgents that plan and act, and the reliability gap that keeps them supervised.
3. 24Robots Do the Dangerous Work (and the Dirty, Dull, and Distant Work)Robots take the work that maims people — mining, disaster response, deep sea.
4. 25Androids Indistinguishable from HumansHumanoid robots stop being demonstrations and start having a payback period.
5. 26Android Warfare, Autonomous Weapons, and DeterrenceAutonomous weapons are already deployed, and eleven years of negotiation have produced nothing binding.
6. 27AI Security, Alignment, and the Race for ControlThe alignment problem, the techniques that partly address it, and the staffing ratio that reveals priorities.

Education

1. 28Education, 1926–2026: Mass Schooling to Digital LearningMass schooling, standardisation, and an institution unusually resistant to change.
2. 29Personalized Education: One Tutor per Student, AlwaysBloom's two-sigma problem, and what happens when tutoring costs almost nothing.
3. 30Accelerated Education: Compressing Time-to-SkillCompressing time-to-competence, and the credentials that stand in the way.
4. 31Education at Scale: Global Access and New InequalitiesReaching the students without teachers — and why the last four technologies did not.

Government

1. 32Government, 1926–2026: Bureaucracy, Rights, and the Administrative StateAdministrative growth, legacy systems, and the digital-government efforts that worked.
2. 33Regulation as Code: Immediate Permits and Instant ComplianceMachine-readable rules, automated compliance, and who audits the encoding.
3. 34Courts, Justice, and 'Minority Report' TemptationsCase backlogs, risk assessment tools, and the prediction that shades into pre-crime.
4. 35Identity, Voting, and Civic Trust in a Deepfake WorldProvenance, deepfakes, and the infrastructure a shared reality would require.
5. 36Property and Paperwork: The End of Title Insurance (and Other Frictions)Title, registries, notarisation — the unglamorous records that everything else rests on.

Media and Reality

1. 37Media & Entertainment, 1926–2026: Broadcast to AlgorithmsBroadcast to algorithmic feeds, and the collapse of the business that funded reporting.
2. 38Instant Crowd-Based Journalism and the New Public SquareVerification, open-source investigation, and the economics that broke before AI arrived.
3. 39Synthetic Celebrities, Celebrity Clones, and Identity MarketsVoice and likeness cloning, identity licensing, and who owns a face after death.
4. 40Augmented Reality, Spatial Computing, and the End of ScreensThe overlay on the physical world, and the question of who controls what it shows.
5. 41Erotica, Intimacy, and the Synthetic Relationship RevolutionAI companionship, the demand that is driving it, and the loneliness underneath.
6. 42Full-Sensation Cameras and Recorded ExperienceCapturing and replaying experience, from spatial video toward something closer to memory.

Quantum Computing

1. 43Quantum, 1926–2026: The Weird Rules That Built the Modern WorldA century of quantum mechanics, from theory to the technologies it quietly underwrites.
2. 44Quantum Computing: The Practical RevolutionError correction, qubit modalities, and the distance to a machine that does useful work.
3. 45Quantum Communication, Sensing, and SecurityKey distribution, post-quantum migration, and sensing precise enough to see through rock.
4. 46Quantum Frontiers: From Foundations to SpeculationWhere the theory is still open, and which experiments would settle it.

Materials and Manufacturing

1. 47Materials & Manufacturing, 1926–2026: From Assembly Lines to AutomationSteel, plastics, semiconductors, and the supply chains that concentrated in few hands.
2. 48Materials, Manufacturing, and the Rise of 'Push-Button Industry'Additive manufacturing, digital twins, and production that reconfigures on demand.

Food and Water

1. 49Food & Water, 1926–2026: The Hidden Infrastructure of CivilizationHaber-Bosch, the Green Revolution, and a food system that feeds billions while depleting its own base.
2. 50Food, Water, and the End of Scarcity (or a New Kind of Scarcity)Fermentation, cultivated meat, vertical farming, desalination — four technologies, four different verdicts.

Cybersecurity

1. 51Cybersecurity & Privacy, 1970–2026: Connected Everything, Secured NothingThe internet was built on trust, and everything since has been retrofit.
2. 52Cybersecurity, Privacy, and the Weaponization of IntelligenceAI on both sides of the exchange, and the one domain where the outcome is genuinely undetermined.

Finance

1. 53Finance & Money, 1926–2026: From Paper to PixelsPaper ledgers to instant interfaces over settlement plumbing that never modernised.
2. 54Finance, Money, and the New Economic Operating SystemInstant settlement, programmable money, and who keeps the value that friction was hiding.

Climate

1. 55Climate, 1926–2026: Industrial Growth Meets Planetary LimitsThe physics has been understood for 150 years; the response cost thirty.
2. 56Climate Engineering and Planetary RepairCarbon removal, solar radiation management, and a governance vacuum around a cheap lever.

The Human Question

1. 57Work After Work: UBI, Job Redesign, and DignityWhat the social contract becomes when machines do most of what people were paid to do.
2. 58Longer Useful Life: Later (or No) RetirementRetirement systems built for shorter lives, and the arithmetic that is about to force the issue.
3. 59Near Unlimited Lifespan: Ethics, Population, and PowerIf aging becomes treatable, the mechanism that removes entrenched power stops working.

Risks and Choices

1. 60The Great Risks: Misuse, Accidents, and Existential ThreatsMisuse, accidents, and structural harm — calibrated by which are actually tractable.
2. 61For Individuals: Skills, Wealth, Identity, and SanitySkills, career, money, identity, and sanity for people living through the transition.
3. 62For Businesses: Strategy in an Era of Infinite CompetitorsWhich competitive moats AI erodes, which it does not, and the junior pipeline nobody is replacing.
4. 63For Governments: Guardrails Without Stopping ProgressSix things governments could do now, none of which require resolving what AI becomes.
5. 64Choosing the Future: What Humanity Should Build and What It Should NotWhat should be built, what should not, and the closing window in which the rules get written.

Conclusion

1. —Conclusion — The Decade That Writes the CenturyWhat is settled, what is not, and why the framing of AI as a force rather than a decision is the costly error.

Reference

1. —AppendicesGlossary, risk taxonomy, scenario worksheets, and further reading.