When Knowledge Outruns Wisdom: How I’m Trying to Help Us Catch Up

In 1988, Isaac Asimov wrote: “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” I’ve been haunted by that sentence ever since I first read it. It explains so much of our moment: the anxiety, the overwhelm, the sense that reality is updating faster than we are.

AI is now pouring jet fuel on the fire. More content, less context; more dashboards, less direction. We skim. We scroll. We save links we never read. We confuse being informed with being prepared. And that gap between knowledge and wisdom? It’s widening.

Everything I build, my keynotes, my new book Now What?, and Futurwise, attacks the same problem from different angles. They’re my attempt to turn the flood into a current you can ride instead of a wave that wipes you out. It is my attempt to help you understand how the world is changing, because only once you are aware of what is happening, can you make the right decisions.

The lens I look through

I’m a strategist by training, an optimistic dystopian by nature, and an Architect of Tomorrow. I’ve spent the last decade-plus on stages, inside boardrooms, and deep in the weeds of emerging tech. I’ve also done weird things, like launching a real-time, multilingual digital twin of myself so leaders can ask hard questions at 2am and get a straight answer in their own language. The point isn’t the novelty; it’s reducing the friction between a question and a useful insight.

I believe clarity beats certainty. I believe ethics is a feature, not a compliance checkbox, or a bug as some big tech companies seem to think. I believe it is valuable to have multiple perspectives and to accept that a 3, can also be an E, M or W, depending on how you look at it. And I believe leadership in the Intelligence Age is less about having the right answers and more about upgrading the questions you ask.

The moment we’re in

We’re drowning in inputs and starving for synthesis. Every day, you and I are faced with:

• Endless streams of articles, podcasts, papers, and posts, most of it written by AI to sell you something (an idea, a service, or a product)
• Increasingly competent AI that can generate infinite “stuff” on demand
• Shrinking time to make decisions that matter

The result is predictable: decision fatigue, shallow understanding, and a creeping sense that we’re always catching up. This is not a content problem. It’s an attention, meaning, and practice problem, and it can have grave consequences in the age of AI.

As Tristan Harris said in a 2023 talk called The AI Dilemma, “Without wisdom, without a deep, global understanding of advanced digital tools, the problems our species faces will aggravate exponentially as we move from the age of social media to the age of AI.”

What I’m trying to build (and why)

I thought it would be wise to share with you what I am trying to build as a futurist, but more importantly, why I am building this. I am not your standard futurist (if that is even a thing), but I think, I write, I build, I explore and I share, to help the world move into the Intelligence Age with the wisdom to build a thriving (digital) future.

1) Keynotes: plant seeds of awareness

I have been a global keynote speaker for 14 years. On stage, my job isn’t to predict; it’s to reveal patterns people can’t unsee, and do it in plain language. From $5,900 robots to AI mapping every square meter of Earth to the weird fact that slime mold can outperform corporate hierarchies, the goal is to stretch your time horizon and sharpen your instincts.

Inspiration is cheap unless it drives action, so I focus on usable signals and practical next steps. (Also: no doom, no hype, just reality with receipts.) My job is the Architect of Tomorrow, not because I build your future, but because I help you design it with intention.

2) Now What?: a living system for navigating change

My new book is not a victory lap for a futurist. It’s a field guide for anyone who needs to make sense of exponential change. Most business books explain the future. This one includes a digital twin that coaches you through it. Text +𝟭 (𝟴𝟯𝟬) 𝟰𝟲𝟯-𝟲𝟵𝟲𝟳 right now. Ask it anything about navigating exponential change.

What makes this book unique: A sci-fi story from 2051 woven through every chapter. Not metaphors, actual scenarios showing how convergence really plays out. Plus TidalShots and hand-drawn illustrations throughout: 280-character insights with QR codes you can share instantly. Because wisdom locked in paragraphs helps nobody.

At its core is the WAVE framework:

• Watch: see signals early and often
• Adapt: align your strategy with reality (not hope) and long-term purpose
• Verify: test assumptions before they cost you, especially in a deepfake era
• Empower: turn insight into momentum across your team

The WAVE methodology comes from real patterns I've observed advising leaders through disruption. Every technology trend, from AI, robotics, synthetic biology, to quantum computing and 3D printing, is accelerating simultaneously. The leaders thriving aren't the ones with more information. They're the ones with better frameworks for navigating uncertainty.

There’s a personal reason for the tone: years ago I cycled 14,122 kilometers around Australia in 100 days to raise money for children’s cancer research. It taught me that bold outcomes are the sum of small, disciplined steps taken daily, exactly the mindset WAVE tries to encode for leaders.

3) Futurwise: daily intelligence, minus the overwhelm

Futurwise exists because “be more informed” is not a strategy. We curate high-quality, human-written sources and transform them into hyper-personalized insights that help you be in the know, without being out of time.

Futurwise helps you cut through the noise by turning articles, videos (podcasts to come soon), and even PDFs into smart, personalized summaries. Blazing fast, distraction-free, no ads and free forever.

It’s designed for people who want to stay informed but don’t have hours to spare. You get distilled insights in >25 languages, tailored to your interests and reading style, in seconds. It is free to start at Futurwise.com

Best of all, this is only the beginning as we aim to become the intelligence layer for the world’s trusted content. 

We are engineering a paradigm shift from clickbait noise to ROI-driven journalism, delivering data-backed, high-value insights that keep decision-makers ahead of fast-changing trends. By harnessing collective intelligence to unify fragmented information streams, we provide deep, nuanced, and ethically curated content optimized for measurable impact.

Our vision is to spark a transformative ripple effect across the global media landscape, driving scalable growth, enhancing human potential, and redefining responsible digital citizenship in a quantifiable, data-centric era.

We deliver insights in your language, at your level, matched to your role, and timed to when you can actually use them. Think: “Read less, know more.”

Two design choices that will be implemented into Futurwise:

• Digital Dialogue: a short, AI-guided conversation that helps you integrate what you just consumed. It’s Socratic, not spoon-fed; you leave with clarity and a bias for action. For enterprises, these dialogues also unlock collective intelligence, surfacing hidden expertise and turning employee insight into strategy.
• Build with, not against, creators: we aim to pay or license content and give publishers new revenue streams, global reach (multi-language summaries), and deeper reader analytics. We don’t scrape; we partner. The future of knowledge needs vibrant, independent journalism, and smarter ways to make it pay.

We aim to flip AI from shortcut machine to thinking partner: curated feeds, structured prompts, progress dashboards, so we compress the time from signal → decision, turning chaos into ROI.

The worldview under the work

A few principles guide everything I do:

• Humanity first, always. Tech is a tool. The measure is whether it expands human agency, creativity, and dignity. If it concentrates power, narrows perspectives, or externalizes harm, it’s not innovation, it’s extraction.
• Complexity is not the enemy. Pretending the world is simple produces brittle strategies. Embracing complexity, with better mental models and better questions, produces resilience. Resilience is crucial in exponential times.
• Wisdom scales through practice. You cannot outsource judgment. You can improve it, daily, with better inputs, structured reflection, and shared language. That’s why I built a continuum: Keynotes to create urgency; Now What? to provide frameworks; Futurwise to sustain momentum.

What this looks like in real life

A CEO stops treating AI as a moonshot and starts using the WAVE framework to run weekly, low-risk experiments. A policy team uses Futurwise to separate signal from noise on synthetic media regulation, in the right language, with dissenting perspectives included by design. A university stops banning AI and starts grading for thinking: show your sources, show your prompts, defend your choices.

This isn’t about being “future-ready.” It’s about being future-literate, able to read weak signals, translate them into strategy, and do it again tomorrow. That literacy is what turns disruption into advantage.

Why I’m hopeful

I am hopeful because I’ve seen what happens when people get the right scaffolding. Leaders stop reacting and start designing. Teams stop doom-scrolling and start building. Creators stop shouting into the void and start reaching the audiences who value them.

And individuals, regardless of language or location, gain access to trusted, relevant knowledge and the tools to turn it into agency. That’s the point. Not more content. More wisdom in motion.

The invitation

If Asimov was right, and I think he was, then our task is simple, hard, and urgent: close the gap between knowledge and wisdom before it closes on us.

• Keynotes: plant the seeds of transformation
• “Now What?”: give yourself (and your team) the frameworks and an AI coach for the journey
• Futurwise: make wisdom a daily practice

When knowledge accelerates faster than wisdom, you have two options: drown in information or learn to surf. I’m building the board, the map, and the practice. If you’re ready, let’s ride.

Read less. Know more. Do the right thing faster.