The future creeps up on us slowly. But when it leaps dramatically, we notice.
One spam phone call a day is an irritation. 1,000 of them destroy the utility of the phone.
One photographer undercutting our rates is a threat. 1,000 of them means we can’t make a living at it any longer.
We’re facing several 1000x cliffs right now.
The most obvious is AI. (Or possibly not). Entire systems are going to be replaced. New careers are developing overnight, and old ones are going away. When an AI can read a standard x-ray 1000 times faster and 1000 times cheaper than a radiologist (and get better results) then something is going to have to change.
The more urgent one is the change in the climate. One freakish storm is something many economies and communities have a chance to recover from. But 1,000 days of weird weather is more than we can handle.
Systems are networks, and widespread changes compound exponentially.