{"id":242432,"date":"2026-08-09T09:02:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T14:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/the-great-progression-peter-leyden-on-ai-and-the-next-25-years"},"modified":"2026-08-09T09:02:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T14:02:29","slug":"the-great-progression-peter-leyden-on-ai-and-the-next-25-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/the-great-progression-peter-leyden-on-ai-and-the-next-25-years","title":{"rendered":"The Great Progression: Peter Leyden on AI and the Next 25 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

80 years, America tears itself down and rebuilds. 1776. 1865. 1945. And now, according to Peter Leyden, 2025.<\/p>\n

A couple of months ago I sat down with Peter for SingularityFM. He\u2019s the guy who co-wrote the 1997 \u201cLong Boom\u201d cover story for WIRED, and he\u2019s spent three decades trying to map where this civilization is actually headed. His new book, The Great Progression (HarperCollins), makes an audacious claim:<\/p>\n

AI, clean energy, and bioengineering are converging into a change on the scale of the Enlightenment. And Trump, in his framing, isn\u2019t the future. He\u2019s the wrecking ball that clears the ground for whatever comes next.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t let him off easy. I pushed him on the human cost every one of these reinventions has demanded in the past. I pushed him on the myth of golden ages, using Ada Palmer\u2019s work on the Renaissance. I pushed him on Denmark and Norway ripping devices back out of classrooms after being early adopters. He had an answer for all three. Whether they hold up is for you to decide.<\/p>\n

What we get into:<\/p>\n

The email from Kevin Kelly that pulled Peter into WIRED\u2019s founding years What the Long Boom thesis got right, and what it missed Why he calls Trump a wrecking ball, not a builder The coming \u201cabundance politics\u201d coalition The strange pessimism about AI unique to English-speaking countries How writing this book with AI made him 2 to 3x more productive.<\/p>\n

Continue reading \u201cThe Great Progression: Peter Leyden on AI and the Next 25 Years\u201d | ><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

80 years, America tears itself down and rebuilds. 1776. 1865. 1945. And now, according to Peter Leyden, 2025. A couple of months ago I sat down with Peter for SingularityFM. He\u2019s the guy who co-wrote the 1997 \u201cLong Boom\u201d cover story for WIRED, and he\u2019s spent three decades trying to map where this civilization is [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":737,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,32,6,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-education","category-robotics-ai","category-singularity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/737"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}