By Futurist Thomas Frey
When Everything Changes at Once
January 1, 2026 won’t feel like a typical New Year. There won’t be the usual hopeful optimism, fresh-start energy, or sense that this year will be incrementally better than the last. Instead, 2026 arrives carrying the weight of recognition: we’re entering a year of disruption so profound that the world on December 31, 2026 will be unrecognizable from the one we’re leaving behind.
This isn’t hyperbole. Multiple exponential curves—AI capability, automation deployment, job displacement, economic restructuring—are converging simultaneously in 2026, creating compound effects that individually they could never achieve. Let me show you what makes January 1, 2026 fundamentally different from every New Year before it.
Continue reading… “January 1, 2026: The New Year Unlike Any Other”