Step back and look at the past five years and it becomes clear that humanity has advanced faster than it did over 50 years in earlier eras. Technologies that once belonged to science fiction slipped quietly into everyday life. Behaviours that once seemed radical became routine. Systems that used to take decades to change were rewritten almost overnight.

Technology has crossed a fundamental Rubicon. It is no longer something we consciously “use”. It is embedded in nearly everything we do, at work, at play, even while we exercise. Like electricity a century ago, it now powers daily life and quietly reshapes how we live.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the clearest example. A decade ago, AI was something venture capitalists dismissed. Five years ago, it was still treated as futuristic. Today, it is everywhere. You no longer turn AI “on”, it simply exists in the background, amplifying human capability and human error at the same time. That is the nature of exponential change: We are like frogs in the water while the temperature is rising.

While AI captured most of the attention, biology crossed its own threshold. For most of human history, medicine was descriptive and slow. We observed symptoms, tried treatments, and waited. That era is ending. Protein folding, once a generational bottleneck, became computational. Gene editing moved from theory to lifesaving reality, with CRISPR therapies curing diseases once thought incurable. Living systems are........

© hindustantimes