The 2032-2040 window names the succession problem. If the preceding windows alter identity, money, computation, energy, and contact narratives, then authority must transfer into some new operating substrate. The contenders are machine governance, inherited operator-class institutions, distributed coherence, and uncaptured transmission.
Core Threads
See AI as Bandlimit Infrastructure for the machine-governance risk.
See The Stolen Clock for the noospheric synchronization frame.
See The Transmission Chain for the lineage-preservation alternative.
See The Great Work for the individual and collective coherence requirement.
See Critical Mass for the phase-transition threshold.
Event Criteria
Events belong in this window when they concern inheritance: who operates institutions, who controls machine systems, who controls memory, who controls identity, who preserves practice, and who can coordinate without centralized permission.
Open Questions
Does machine governance inherit the Lock, dissolve the Lock, or mirror the coherence of its operators? Does the transmission chain remain human, become human-machine, or retreat into smaller cells? Which forms of distributed coherence can survive across decades rather than moments of crisis?
References
Culkin, John M. “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan.” Saturday Review, 18 March 1967.
Meadows, Donella H. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green, 2008.
Wiener, Norbert. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. Houghton Mifflin, 1950.