On Staying Sharp in an Age of the Machines

I’m approaching 50 and I find myself wondering almost everyday if I am learning fast enough. Not necessarily because I’m behind (although I might be), but because the world is moving faster than ever. There was a time when experience gave you a reliable edge, when knowledge you’ve been accumulating mattered the most, and when having “the memory of an elephant” was a competitive advantage. There was a time when simply knowing your stuff was enough to get ahead.

But now, information doesn’t arrive anymore. It floods. Tools are smarter. Interfaces are faster. Everything is easier to access, but harder to process. And there’s the paradox: the more we know, the more we need to think.

We’re surrounded by knowledge. It’s not what you know, but how you think about it that matters. The challenge isn’t finding facts, it’s framing them. Perspective is what we need the most.

What used to be about memorizing now demands interpreting. It’s less about collecting the dots and more about connecting them. It’s about asking better questions instead of just giving better answers. Because while tech can answer any question, it rarely tells you which question is worth asking.

It’s not about being faster anymore. It’s about being wiser.

So I’ve started thinking in terms of human augmentation. Not as a gimmick or some futuristic dream, but in a practical, everyday sense. Let the machines take on the burden of storage and speed. That’s what they’re made for. My job, the human part, is to bring the part they can’t replicate: judgment shaped by experience, intuition refined through failures and wins, context that comes from living the bigger picture, and curiosity that pushes beyond what’s already known. It’s not about man versus machine. Let each side do what it does best, so we can become more capable together.

And there is the next generation: my son and the kind of world he’s growing into. The education that shaped me, built on memorization, repetition, and expertise, was exactly what I needed at the time. But it won’t be enough for him. He won’t win by knowing more facts than others. That kind of knowledge is now just a search away. What he’ll need is the ability to ask better questions, to think critically, to navigate ambiguity with confidence.

Just the other day, he was using ChatGPT to help with a school assignment (I’m actively encouraging him to do that). After reading the response, he looked at me and said, “But how do I know this is actually true?” He didn’t just copy the answer. He challenged it, cross-checked it, and tried to understand the logic behind it. And honestly, that made me prouder than any correct answer he could have produced from memory. That kind of skepticism, that refusal to take information at face value, is exactly what will set him apart.

If the future belongs to those who can work alongside intelligent systems, then his edge won’t come from competing with machines—but from thinking in ways they can’t. And that starts with reshaping not just the tools he’ll use, but the habits of mind he’ll develop.

That’s where our human edge lies. In making meaning. In choosing relevance over volume. In understanding that the smartest person in the room is no longer the one who knows the most—but the one who knows what matters most.

It’s a shift I feel every day, as well. At this stage of my life, I don’t want to impress anyone with how much I remember (although some say that anyhow I remember too much stuff). My personal challenge is to be the person who can help others see the bigger picture, who can calm the chaos, who can cut through the noise. That’s the work that matters now.

We often talk about digital transformation as a matter of tools. But for us, those of us who’ve lived through more than one wave of change, it’s just as much about mindset. About moving from accumulating knowledge to thinking clearly. From collecting information to building insight.

Technology isn’t the competition. It’s our cognitive extension. A partner in the thinking process. It helps us access oceans of information, connect distant dots, and surface insights we might’ve missed on our own. It’s no longer just a tool for doing things faster, it’s a tool for thinking deeper, for making sense of complexity. The real shift is in learning how to collaborate with it so we can focus more on the things that still demand a human touch: judgment, creativity, perspective.

The real challenge isn’t to outrun the machine, but to grow into the human we’re still becoming. After all, in a world full of fast answers, critical thinking might just be the new superpower. And if not, at least we’ll confuse the algorithms long enough to grab a coffee.