Bitcoin at $220. $AAPL when people laughed at the Macintosh. Canadian liquor and maple syrup without tariffs. Coulda, shoulda, didn’t’a stock up. The Peace Dividend at the end of the Cold War. Earth Day. Regular landings on the Moon. Every IPO that screamed up as we watched and wondered if it would keep going. We pesky humans are so slow that we see so many opportunities and act on so few. We squander resources and social capital, but we also squander opportunities. Watch, wait, wonder and then try to act when it might be too late equals waste. Not very frugal.

And then there’s the flip side. Speculations and hollow sales pitches, hoping for a break that breaks the wrong way, doing the time-honored and proven right thing that becomes archaic because some new thing comes in and changes the rules. 

No wonder trying to decide what to do can be so frustrating and even existential.

Warning: I’m about to mention two US Presidents, but this is not political. 

I like Ike because Eisenhower saw the rise of the military-industrial complex and warned us against it. He was Supreme Commander in World War II, and yet he warned against the growth of that industry in the post-war era. 

I liked Jimmy C. He was a nuclear engineer, and yet was an early advocate of solar power and energy conservation. And he was ridiculed for it.

We keep ratcheting up the military as if ‘more’ is never enough, and are still fighting to free ourselves from burning unrenewable resources.

We might finally be going back to the Moon, but that is not certain.

We’ve wasted decades of progress and a significant fraction of our wealth wondering and wandering around the issues.

start-stop-repeat = waste

I wonder how many readers I’ve lost already, just as I turn this back inwards.

Several years ago (a decade?!) I tried to buy 2 Bitcoins and failed. (Shopping For A Coin) It was early in Bitcoin’s life; I only had cash from selling a house in Second Life (another throwback mention), and my computer hardware and software were incompatible with the process. I also had a lot of skepticism thrown my way but well-meaning friends. As I recall, when I started the process, the price was ~$220/coin. Soon after I gave up, the price was double that. A check of Bitcoin’s price for June 20, 2025 = $103,653. Oh, this is going to be sad and fun: 103,654/220 = a 471-fold increase. I could barely attempt to buy those coins then. To buy them now would cost over $200,000. Coulda, and tried, but didn’t’a.

I won’t list the long list of investments that ‘only’ lost 100%, but losing 100% = 0. Oops. Ah. So it goes, and so it went. Coulda and did, and should’t’ve. 

We make guesses. While getting ready to write this, a YouTube documentary was playing about science. Science seeks truth. (Engineering seeks solutions, but I’ll save that for another post, and may have already written one years ago.) Science seeks truth, and is still seeking it. Science is expanding the borders of truth, but beyond those borders, we guess.

That is frustrating. Having to rely on guesses is frustrating because it feels like we should know the answers, but we don’t. Our understanding grows, but we’re always living near guesswork. Hecklers live there. “You act as if you know everything, but you don’t!” Well, duh, yeah. Where’s the surprise? But the hecklers stop, divert, and sometimes reverse our progress.

I pause because I didn’t intend to dive into anything deep today. So much for that guess.

AI. So much of guessing about where we are going next comes back to AI, Artificial Intelligence. Other topics are as valid as ever: politics, social injustice, climate change, etc.; but my guess is that none of them are likely to operate at the pace of AI. Ai is progressing so rapidly that I’m not writing about it here because anything I write will already be out-of-date. (Which was the inspiration for the first two books in my sci-fi trilogy: Firewatcher and Fire Race, and that’s because those stories take place off Earth.)

Now I remember why I started.

Our history is defined by changes and our responses to them. We’re in an unprecedented period of change. I squandered so many opportunities as I watched technology advance. I bought AAPL, but sold it when they kicked out Steve Jobs. I was intrigued by AMZN, but bought their competitor (BNBN – the online version of Barnes & Noble) because it was cheaper. (I reflect on a friend who loved a new electric car company about a decade ago. I wonder what his emotional state would be as he tried to balance politics with a 25,000% gain in his stock.)

The changes AI is likely to induce or inflict are literally phenomenal. That also means that right now, currently, there are opportunities that are being squandered. Squandering an opportunity is fine. You can’t catch them all. But I worry about missing them all, too. 

Even if AI does not live up to expectations, it has already started an unstoppable societal shift. Jobs are already being redefined. Old folks like me can still remember how to get around without GPS, and can research something using books, but the mainstream is streaming (pardon the wordplay, but it took longer to avoid it than let it happen). The mainstream has accepted AIs as agents to run transactions and operations. Entrenched archaic systems that were guarded by social structures like old-boy networks may find themselves cut out and cut off by a new system unaffected by social considerations. 

I don’t think there’s a middle ground where AI only lives up to expectations.

I think it is more likely that AI will either exceed expectations or redefine them.

I suspect the opportunities to not squander are the ones that are going to be new approaches for humans and society to sustainably exist within the new AI environment, and that can adapt as AI adapts. 

I wish I knew what is. It is, however, what I’m watching and listening for. I don’t want to squander this opportunity.

Whew.

On a more practical level, next week’s post will probably have a slight delay as I prepare and publish my semi-annual portfolio review. I’ve been doing this for so long that I have to recharge old computers to find my original reviews. So, despite these thoughts about change, this is a process that I intend to maintain. Stay tuned.