humans are on a continuum. we progress. we upgrade our basic skills. like how we came all the way till here from the stone age. let me walk you through a short story. in the late 19th century, there is a wholesale store where they sell all the essentials like rice, vegetables, cotton and so. they have employed people who are good at doing calculations, the additions, the subtractions, multiplications, fractions. who knew what numbers were and how to handle them. they're all helping each other out, cross-checking numbers, getting to the totals. everyone's busy. everyone's needed. then since the introduction of calculator in the early 20th century the in charge has given a thought of like, the work which is being done by these set of people manually counting and sometimes using pen and paper can also be done with this small plastic box with buttons. the work is similar, faster and accurate. so if i still employ everyone here, 1. i would look like i am not encouraging the new techniques to do the work 2. i may be not encouraging people to learn new skills which maybe useful somewhere else. 3. i may not do justice to my owner where i can get the work done cheaper but not letting it happen so he made a decision to let go and was left with only a handful of people. and the people who got unemployed, started to use the plastic box (calculator) and the unemployed folks, the people who needed the socially accepted tokens(money) to feed and experimenting new things with the new devices and techniques and have realized they could do even more with the new skills that they are learning and started working at places where calculations were more complex. like planning construction, risk management, calculating investment returns, military and so. the calculator didn't end their careers. it just changed what "being good with numbers" meant. the baseline moved. doing higher order calculations became the baseline and similarly, during world war II, there were rooms full of people (mostly women) called "human computers" they sat at desks calculating artillery trajectories, decoding encrypted messages, figuring out where enemy submarines might surface based on last known positions and ocean currents. the math wasn't just addition anymore. it was trigonometry, calculus, probability. they were solving equations that determined whether a missile hit its target or missed by miles. whether a convoy avoided an ambush or sailed right into it. then actual computers came along. the electronic ones. machines that filled entire rooms and needed teams to operate them. and those human computers built themselves on top of the baseline becoming programmers. they learnt how to talk to computers. they told the machines what to calculate. the skills shifted or adapted to the new normal. the baseline moved again. from understanding what math meant and doing calculations to interpreting them. then the spread sheets. they'd spend days building quarterly reports, manually updating every cell when one number changed. if you found an error on page 47, you'd have to recalculate everything that came after it. weekends were for reconciling accounts. late nights were for closing the books. then spreadsheets arrived. suddenly that same quarterly reports were being done quite quick. change one number and everything updated automatically. formulas cascaded through cells. the people who used to spend their time doing the calculations started building scenarios. running what if’s. they were showing what could happen next quarter if we changed pricing, if we expanded to new markets, if costs went up by 10 percent. the baseline moved again. working with spread sheets and building scenarios became the baseline then the internet and search engines. before google, being the person who knew and had information was valuable. and since the access to google, finding information took only seconds. connecting dots from the sea of information became valuable. the skill shifted. people who used to pride themselves on memorizing information started connecting dots instead. synthesizing information from multiple sources. asking better questions. knowing what to search for and how to evaluate what you found became more valuable than knowing the answers. the baseline moved again. having information became the baseline. then the mobile phones before smartphones, letters were the means of knowing whereabouts. staying connected meant planning. you'd have to coordinate meeting times and places in advance because changing plans mid way was nearly impossible. then the mobile phones arrived. suddenly you could text "running 10 mins late" or give a call to your pal and ask what’s up. coordination became fluid. with letters, you had to compose something you thought about, like an essay. because it was an event. with mobile phones, communication became continuous, ambient, always on. (i still remember that the letters i used to write to my parents around in 2009 were half filled with “how are you” kind of questions. haha. i was 11 then. lol) mobile phones were in the picture by then but i did not have access. the baseline moved again. always on connection became the baseline. then came cloud computing, iPhone & mobile apps. (these are inter connected) before the cloud, your work lived on one computer. if that computer crashed, your work might be gone. if you were away from your desk, you couldn't access your files. collaboration meant emailing versions back and forth like "final_report_v3_FINAL_actuallyfinal.doc" kinda things. then came cloud computing and mobile apps. your work lived everywhere and nowhere. you could access it from any device. multiple people could work on the same document simultaneously. changes synced automatically. the iPhone & the app store. before apps, you needed other people to get things done. you called a taxi company for a taxi. you went to the bank and talked to a teller. you asked locals for directions. you called restaurants to order food. there were humans between you and what you wanted. then apps arrived. suddenly you just... did things. tap a button, car arrives. swipe to transfer money. follow the blue dot on maps to get to anywhere. scroll through menus and food shows up. the baseline moved again. being able to do most of the things yourself became the baseline. like book a cab, flight, hotel, navigation, picking music on demand and so. then followed the social media, creator economy, the remote work, until the 30th november of 2022. the chatgpt moment. where machines started to talk back. since then, few months down, machines can understand images few months down, machines can browse the web for you few months down, machines write and execute code (to a basic level) few months down, machines can clone voice few months down, machines can act as ai assistants (the basic ones) that was all in just 2023. and few months down, machines can generate video from text few months down, machines can have real time voice conversations with us few months down, machines can use tools and browse the internet autonomously few months down, machines can control computers (move mouse, click, type) few months down, machines got better at writing code and can build full features few months down, machines can take longer context, like an entire book few months down, machines can reason. think step by step to give response or take step then comes the end of 2024. and 2025 is said to be the year of agents. multi agent systems takes birth. where machines coordinate with each other. (basic level) few months down, machines start to maintain persistent memory across conversations few months down, machines starts to do deep research. be on the web searching for few months down, real time real time conversation feels more natural. takes pauses and gives expressions almost like a human. this time, the baseline is moving so fast that we haven't even figured out what the new baseline even is yet. in every previous shift, there was breathing room. with this, the baseline is moving every few months. and i think the new baseline is to learning how to learn. side note: similarly, humans individually have baselines too. but they are visceral. they depend on your knowledge, expertise, area of work, and sometimes the upbringing. on an rough level, the higher the base line, the higher the value of an individual.