Good evening. My name is Michael Loomis, and I’m coming to you from the virtual Chew Digest studio. It was about 7:52 p.m. on Sunday, March 8th, and today turned out to be a surprisingly hot one here in Southern California. Because of the daylight-saving time change—spring forward, fall back—I ended up starting my walk about an hour later than usual. That simple shift made a noticeable difference. By the end of the walk, after covering about four and a half miles, the heat had caught up with me and it felt much more difficult than usual.
There were not many people outside, which was understandable. In the modern world we have become creatures of comfort. Air conditioning, shade, and climate-controlled environments make it easy to stay indoors rather than face the elements. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is difficult to say. The more I study and learn, the more I realize how little certainty I truly have. Knowledge tends to humble you. It teaches you that you have been wrong in the past, that you will likely be wrong again in the future, and that the best you can do is hold your current understanding loosely—always ready to revise it when better evidence appears.
While walking today I listened to several lectures, and one realization kept coming back to me: we are no longer living in the industrial age, yet most of us continue to live as if we are. Many of the structures that shape our lives—our schools, our jobs, even our ideas about success—were designed during the era of factories and assembly lines. They were built for a world that measured productivity by hours worked rather than by ideas created. That world has largely disappeared, yet the cultural pageantry of the industrial age remains.
The world has shifted toward ideas, knowledge, and personal platforms. You can see this transformation in the evolution of media. There was a time when music came on records, tapes, or CDs, and building a collection was expensive. Owning fifty or sixty CDs might cost around a thousand dollars. Today, for only a few dollars a month, services like Spotify or YouTube give people access to nearly all the music in the world. What was once scarce and costly has become abundant and inexpensive.
This pattern—where commodities fall dramatically in price as technology advances—may extend far beyond entertainment. It is not difficult to imagine a future where many necessities are delivered through extremely inexpensive subscription models. Food, shelter, clothing, and medical care could one day be bundled into systems that cost far less than they do today. While such ideas may sound radical, technological change repeatedly drives costs downward and expands access.
To understand how dramatically the economic landscape has changed, consider the example of housing. My father and grandfather lived during the peak of the industrial era after World War II. At that time, a person working a full-time minimum-wage job could realistically afford a home. In the early 1950s, minimum wage provided a monthly income of roughly $220, while a typical house payment might have been about $39 per month. Housing consumed less than one quarter of income.
Today the situation is entirely different. In parts of Southern California, housing prices have risen so dramatically that a similar affordability ratio would require a minimum wage exceeding $100 per hour. Very few professions—perhaps specialized surgeons or anesthesiologists—earn that level of income. This illustrates how the economic structures built during the industrial age no longer align with modern realities.
In the modern knowledge economy, value increasingly comes from ideas, communication, and systems thinking. Individuals can now build audiences and share intellectual frameworks without relying on centralized institutions. Over the last twenty-five years we have watched this unfold through the internet: first blogs, then podcasts, then YouTube creators, Instagram personalities, and TikTok influencers. Each wave has changed the way people communicate.
I experienced part of that transition personally. Between 2009 and 2013 I produced podcasts—around fifteen hundred of them. Later, platforms like YouTube made broadcasting easier and essentially free. Many of today’s largest creators began building their audiences during that early period of online video.
At the same time, attention spans have shortened dramatically. It is now common to see people scrolling rapidly through short videos, searching for something that captures their attention within seconds. This raises an interesting question: what comes after TikTok? When content becomes so compressed that almost no attention is required, what is the next stage of communication?
One possibility is the emergence of AI-augmented creators and interactive knowledge systems. Technologies such as augmented-reality glasses could overlay information directly onto our field of vision, identifying objects and delivering context in real time. Yet alongside these developments, a counter-trend may emerge: the growing value of thoughtful, long-form human conversation. As depth becomes rarer, it may become more valuable.
Another idea that has been on my mind is the concept of becoming one’s own product. In the past, people mostly sold physical goods or labor. In the future, individuals may increasingly sell insight, perspective, and frameworks for thinking. Personal brands will revolve around ideas rather than objects.
Ultimately, the most convincing demonstration of an idea is the life that embodies it. My own long-term goal is simple: I want to understand the principles that allow a human being to remain healthy and functional for as long as possible. I often say my target is 120 years of life, with vitality maintained for most of that time. Achieving that requires understanding the hierarchy of science—from physics to chemistry to biology, anatomy, and physiology. When the foundational principles are respected, everything built on top of them tends to function more smoothly.
This perspective also shapes how I think about health and behavior. Many problems we classify as behavioral or psychological may ultimately have roots in deeper physiological processes. If the foundational systems of the body are functioning properly, many higher-level problems may begin to resolve themselves.
Looking ahead, I suspect the future will involve fewer physical possessions and more emphasis on knowledge and systems of understanding. Instead of accumulating objects, people may increasingly exchange ideas, perspectives, and ways of thinking. Technology may eventually reduce the economic pressure associated with meeting basic needs, allowing individuals to focus more energy on health, learning, and creativity.
In that sense, humanity may be transitioning from the age of industry to an age defined by knowledge, automation, and intelligent systems. It is a transformation that thinkers like Ray Kurzweil predicted years ago, and we are now watching it unfold in real time.
If the future continues in this direction, perhaps one day the stress of securing basic necessities will fade from everyday life. Freed from that constant pressure, people might have more time to ask deeper questions: How can we become healthier? How can we live better lives? How can we build societies that allow individuals to flourish?
Those are the kinds of questions that occupy my mind during long walks and quiet evenings. For now, that is today’s edition of “Mike’s Mental Moonshine.” I’ll be back again tomorrow to explore a few more ideas—self-actualization, the power of self-documentation, and the practice of expressing one idea in many different ways.
Until then, this is Michael Loomis signing off from the Chew Digest virtual studio.