By Futurist Thomas Frey
Announcing The Relevance Gap — a new Substack on staying future-critical in an age of abundant intelligence
Something Is Happening That Most People Haven’t Named Yet
There’s a quiet divergence happening right now, in every organization, every industry, and every professional circle. On one side, a relatively small group of people are adapting — not just using new tools, but rethinking how they think, how they work, and what they’re genuinely for. On the other side, a much larger group believes they’re adapting, because they downloaded an app, attended a conference, or added “AI proficiency” to their LinkedIn profile.
The gap between those two groups is widening every month. And the dangerous thing about it is that you can’t see it from the wrong side. The people who are falling behind don’t feel like they’re falling behind. They feel informed. They feel engaged. They feel like they’re keeping up. The alarm that should be going off isn’t going off, because nothing obvious has broken yet.
I’ve spent decades studying how change actually arrives — not how it gets announced, but how it lands. And what I’m watching right now is not a technology story. It’s a relevance story. The people who will look back at this period with regret won’t regret missing a trend. They’ll regret not noticing that the very thing that made them valuable — their knowledge, their expertise, their professional identity — quietly stopped being scarce.
That’s the core of what I want to explore. That’s The Relevance Gap.
Continue reading… “You Won’t Lose Your Job to AI. You’ll Lose Your Relevance First.”