How the “workplace” has evolved over 300,000 years, and why the Age of Becomingmay be humanity’s next civilizational leap
OP-ED by Liviu Tudor, President and Founder of Genesis Property
Few concepts are as deeply embedded in our lives as work.
It shapes our status, our daily rhythms, our professional identity, and often our sense of meaning. We spend decades preparing for it, performing it, and eventually retiring from it. Our cities are organized around it. Our calendars bow to it.
But if we step back and view the history of our species through a wider lens, something remarkable emerges:
Work, as we know it today, is a historical anomaly.
For the vast majority of human existence, there were no jobs, no careers, no resumes, no “work-life balance.” These are recent inventions, artifacts of specific economic structures that emerged only in the last few centuries.
And now, with the rise of artificial general intelligence (AGI), we stand at the threshold of another transformation – not a gradual evolution, but a fundamental shift in the relationship between humanity and labor.
To understand where we are heading, we must first understand how we arrived here.
1. THE HUNTING ERA: When the Entire World Was the Workplace
300,000 BCE – 10,000 BCE
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans lived as hunter-gatherers.
Their workplace was not an office, a factory, or a field. It was the natural world itself – forests, savannas, coastlines. Work was inseparable from life:
- No schedules
- No specializations
- No economic hierarchies
- No jobs in the modern sense
People moved with the seasons, followed animal migrations, gathered what the land offered. Labor was communal and immediate. There was no abstraction between effort and survival.
For 95% of human history, people did not “go to work.” They simply lived.
This was not a paradise – it was often harsh, uncertain, and short. But it was also the baseline condition of human existence: work as an integrated part of being alive.
2. THE WORKSHOP ERA: The Birth of Specialization
10,000 BCE – 3,000 BCE
The Agricultural Revolution changed everything.
As people settled into villages and eventually cities, food surplus allowed some individuals to dedicate time to activities beyond survival. This gave rise to humanity’s first true workplace: the workshop.
An indoor space where tools, pottery, textiles, and weapons were crafted. Where knowledge was passed from master to apprentice. Where creativity met functionality.
This was the beginning of:
- Specialized labor (the potter, the blacksmith, the weaver)
- Economic exchange (goods traded for other goods or services)
- Professional identity (you were what you made)
The workshop was a symbol of human ingenuity – a space where raw materials became artifacts, where skill became culture.
3. THE FACTORY ERA: The Revolution of Mechanized Work
1760 – 1900
The Industrial Revolution fundamentally reshaped the nature of work.
Factories introduced:
- Imposed rhythms (the clock, the shift, the productivity quota)
- Strict measurement of time (hourly wages, efficiency metrics)
- Productivity as a central objective (output over craftsmanship)
- Integration of humans into mechanical systems (the worker as a component)
The modern concept of a “job” emerges here. If the workshop was a symbol of creativity, the factory became a symbol of efficiency.
Work became formalized, standardized, and separated from the worker’s identity. You no longer made something from beginning to end – you performed a task, repetitively, within a larger system you did not control.
This was both liberation (from subsistence farming) and alienation (from the fruits of one’s labor).
4. THE OFFICE ERA: The Factory of the Mind
1900 – 2020
The 20th century brought a new kind of worker: the knowledge worker.
The office became the place where information was processed, decisions were made, and economic value was generated through cognitive effort rather than physical labor.
For more than a century, the office was the center of professional life:
- Hierarchies formalized into org charts
- Collaboration structured into meetings
- Productivity measured in reports, emails, presentations
If the factory was about making things, the office was about managing complexity.
Then, within a single generation, the paradigm began to shift.
The pandemic accelerated an already visible trend: work can happen anywhere. The office, once the unquestioned center of professional life, became optional.
But something deeper was already in motion.
5. THE AI ERA: The Automation of Mind
2020 – present
Artificial intelligence brought a transformation far more profound than remote work.
For millennia, humans automated physical labor – levers, wheels, engines, robots. But cognitive labor remained uniquely human. Thinking, creating, diagnosing, deciding – these were the tasks machines could not touch.
Until now.
With systems capable of:
- Analyzing vast datasets
- Writing code
- Generating creative content
- Diagnosing diseases
- Making strategic decisions
We have entered the automation of cognitive labor.
AGI – artificial general intelligence – represents a civilizational inflection point. Not in 5 years, perhaps not even in 30, but likely within the next 50 to 100 years, we will witness machines capable of performing virtually every task humans currently do: designing, building, innovating, managing, creating.
The physical world is governed by algorithms of immense complexity. Life itself follows objective laws—physics, chemistry, biology – that AGI will increasingly decipher and manipulate.
When machines can do nearly everything we now call “work,” a profound question emerges:
What does work become?
6. THE CHALLENGES OF TRANSITION: Realism in the Face of Transformation
This shift will not be smooth, inevitable, or universally beneficial.
History teaches us that technological revolutions create winners and losers, disrupt social structures, and often intensify inequality before new equilibria emerge.
The transition to an AGI-driven world presents serious challenges:
Economic disruption
How will people sustain themselves when jobs disappear faster than new ones are created? Will wealth generated by AGI be concentrated in the hands of a few, or distributed broadly?
Mechanisms like Universal Basic Income, public ownership of AI infrastructure, or new models of value distribution will need to be debated, tested, and implemented.
Psychological displacement
For many, work is not just income – it is structure, community, identity, and purpose.
The sudden loss of this can be traumatic, not liberating. Not everyone will immediately embrace a life of “becoming.” Some will feel adrift, obsolete, or resentful.
Power and governance
Who controls AGI? Will it serve humanity broadly, or become a tool of centralized power?
The risk of surveillance, manipulation, or authoritarianism amplified by superintelligent systems is real.
Cultural friction
Societies valorize productivity, achievement, and “hard work” as moral virtues.
A world where work is optional may face resistance from those who see idleness as vice, or who derive deep meaning from labor.
Unequal access
The benefits of AGI may arrive unevenly – some nations, communities, or individuals may be left behind.
The gap between those who can leverage AI to “become” and those who cannot may widen dangerously.
These are not trivial obstacles. They are existential challenges that will require wisdom, foresight, and collective action.
But if humanity can navigate this transition – if we can build systems that distribute prosperity, preserve dignity, and protect freedom- then what lies on the other side is extraordinary.
7. THE ANSWER: Human Talent
Every child is born with natural talents.
Creativity. Logic. Music. Empathy. Inventiveness. Expression. Physical grace. Curiosity.
The issue has never been a lack of talent. The issue has been a lack of time and space to develop it.
Most people spend their lives in survival mode – working to pay bills, fulfill obligations, meet deadlines. Talent remains latent, unexplored, a parallel life that could have been.
If AGI handles the tasks required for survival and societal functioning, humans can return to their core strength: the cultivation of their unique capacities.
This is not about eliminating contribution. It is about shifting the nature of contribution—from economic necessity to creative expression.
8. THE AGE OF BECOMING: The Next Stage of Civilization
Viewed through the lens of work, history unfolds as a sequence of eras:
- The Hunting Era – survival
- The Workshop Era – artisanal creation
- The Factory Era – industrial production
- The Office Era – information processing
- The AI Era – cognitive automation
What comes after automation?
The Age of Becoming.
An era in which people do not live in order to work, but work – if we still call it that – in order to become what they are capable of becoming.
Meaning is no longer imposed by necessity.
It is chosen.
This is not idleness. It is not leisure. It is not retirement.
It is the deliberate cultivation of self – a lifelong project of discovery, mastery, expression, and evolution.
In the Age of Becoming, the central human activity is not production but self-actualization. Not in the shallow sense of “finding yourself,” but in the profound sense of building yourself.
9. THE BECOMATOR: The “Workplace” Without Work
If every era had a signature space – the workshop, the factory, the office – then the Age of Becoming will have its own:
The Becomator.
A space (physical, virtual, or hybrid) where people:
- Discover their talents through exploration and experimentation
- Develop those talents through practice and guidance
- Express them through creation, performance, or collaboration
- Amplify them through tools, networks, and AI mentorship
The Becomator is not a place where you produce objects for others.
It is a place where you produce yourself.
Imagine:
- A musician composing with an AI that understands harmonic theory better than any human teacher, but follows the musician’s creative instincts.
- A scientist exploring questions driven purely by curiosity, with AI handling data analysis, simulation, and hypothesis testing.
- A storyteller crafting narratives in immersive worlds, with AI as co-creator and editor.
- A philosopher engaging in deep dialogue with systems that challenge assumptions and surface contradictions.
AGI becomes mentor, collaborator, and amplifier.
The Becomator is not about replacing human effort – it is about removing the barriers that prevent people from dedicating themselves fully to what they find meaningful.
10. A Civilization of People Who Become
In a society where people are no longer bound to production but freed for becoming, new norms emerge:
- Exploration becomes valued over efficiency
- Expression becomes valued over output
- Creativity becomes the default, not the exception
- Collaboration is chosen, not mandated
- Continuous learning replaces credential accumulation
- Personal meaning replaces imposed purpose
- Evolving identity replaces fixed roles
Talent becomes a resource – not in the economic sense, but in the cultural sense. A society rich in developed talents is richer in every dimension: art, science, philosophy, community, innovation.
This does not mean everyone becomes an artist or a polymath. It means everyone has the space to pursue what calls to them, whether that is deep mastery in a narrow domain or broad exploration across many.
Some will still choose structure. Some will still value contribution to collective projects. Some will find meaning in service, teaching, or caregiving.
The difference is that these will be choices, not obligations.
11. An Era in Which the Central Question Changes
For centuries, when we meet someone new, we ask:
- What do you do?
- What is your job?
- Where do you work?
These questions assume that work defines identity.
In the Age of Becoming, these questions will fade.
They will be replaced by one that is far more profound:
Who are you becoming?
Not “What have you accomplished?” – though accomplishment may still matter.
Not “What do you produce?” – though creation may still bring joy.
But: What are you cultivating in yourself? What are you growing into?
It is perhaps the most human question of all.
Because unlike productivity, which can be measured and compared, becoming is infinite. There is no endpoint, no final achievement, no retirement from the project of self. You can always go deeper, explore further, evolve more.
CONCLUSION: Work as Preparation
Work does not disappear.
It transforms into something deeper and more human.
Looking back across 300,000 years, we see how each stage of work prepared the next:
- Hunting taught us survival and cooperation.
- Workshops taught us skill and creativity.
- Factories taught us systems and scale.
- Offices taught us abstraction and coordination.
- AI is teaching us that labor itself is not the essence of being human.
Looking forward, a trajectory becomes visible:
- An era in which people are no longer defined by economic activity but by creative potential.
- An era in which survival is secured, and existence becomes about exploration, mastery, and meaning.
- Maybe work was never meant to be the destination.
Maybe it was the preparation – millennia of learning to organize, create, and build – so that one day, we could turn those capacities inward.
Toward becoming.
The challenges ahead are real. The path is uncertain. The transition will test our wisdom and our institutions.
But if we navigate it well, we may discover that the Age of Becoming is not a distant dream.
