Longing for the Diamond Age

Every time we get a new Large Language Model version I get very excited that we might be about to enter The Diamond Age. For me that would be the payoff from all this investment in AI.

Written in 1995, The Diamond Age is a book by Neal Stephenson. It features a young girl, Nell, born into poverty, who receives an AI in the form of a book, the ‘Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer’, diverted into her hands by an act of rebellion.

Using the medium of story, the Primer educates Nell out of poverty and into a position to change the hierarchical society she was born into. Knowledge becomes Power.

And apart from that knowledge being used to change an unjust culture, what happens to Nell is what really makes my heart sing. Because in receipt of that education, she doesn’t become someone else, she becomes the fullest version of herself.

This is one of the founding principles behind my life’s work:

First, everybody needs to be treated as worth developing and educating. Then, if we take them seriously and give them access to the right tools, people can become everything they are capable of being.

One key part of what Nell does is to build a team. She brings together the usual story-like assortment of strangers and slightly strange people.

I don’t know if Stephenson intended it to, but the story also says to me that we can’t become the absolute fullest versions of ourselves on our own. That it’s not just purpose and meaning that are found with others, in teams, but also who we really are.

That’s part of why I love my coaching with leadership teams. When it works, they don’t just become a synergistic team together, they become the best versions of themselves.

The Newfield School, who I did some of my coaching training with, once put it something like this:

 “We can only become who we really can be in the presence of others.”