By Futurist Thomas Frey
Seventeen columns. Seventeen sectors. One unmistakable pattern.
From graft and corruption to healthcare, education, financial services, insurance, defense contracting, supply chains, utilities, real estate, media, pharmaceuticals, nonprofits, taxation, homelessness, criminal justice, and student loans—we documented how systems designed to serve the public evolved to serve themselves. How complexity became camouflage. How information asymmetry became a business model. How extraction disguised itself as service.
AI is ending this era. Not through revolution but through persistent illumination—making visible what was always present but impossible to quantify at scale. And once these patterns become undeniable, the systems built on opacity become indefensible.
But revelation alone doesn’t create change. It creates possibility. What determines whether The Awakening becomes genuine transformation or merely more sophisticated extraction is what we do next.
Continue reading… “The Awakening Series: Final Thoughts—The Awakening and What Comes Next”