ALL THE SCREENS A STAGE: THE HYPERLUDIC UNFOLDING
You probably noticed another exponential shift in AI development last week, Continuing evidence of AI being the fourth hyperludic. A particularly fascinating aspect is how hyperludics trigger further explosive adoption once people experience their playful potential—when they realise that wonder and apprehension can happily coexist - it is after all the genuine original meaning of the word ‘awesome’.
"You can only laugh at that of which you are not afraid"
Just as the the last and current hyperludic; the printing press allowed the distribution of Shakespeare's works to ‘all the world’, so now we're witnessing AI's true creative capabilities beginning to capture the imagination of the wider general public. It’s this heady admix of fear and fascination that further propel adaption and adoption at an ever more unprecedented pace - just as it was the hive of activity of the curious drawn to the original print workshops that drove the growth of print almost as much as the technology itself.
A Legacy of Two Dimensions
For many centuries, the third hyperludic of print has reigned supreme as the ultimate amplifier of ideas. It has standardised how we read, write, and distribute knowledge. From Gutenberg’s Bible to newspapers and glossy magazines, it transformed communication into tidy, uniform blocks of black text on white pages. Even to this day our computers mostly mimic that same format: old-school Word docs, rigid web pages, an an internet still predominantly based on type.
And so, the printing press’ legacy lived on—until now.
Rise of the Fourth Hyperludic
AI is upending the older regime in much the same way the printing press once completely demolished the power and utility of scribal manuscripts. We’re right now in the midst of finally leaving behind a nearly six-hundred-year-old legacy of linear, static communication for something far wilder and more dynamic.
Almost all AI models with increasingly just an intuitive and simple prompts can spin any text into bespoke iterative images, it can produce tailored integrated audio accompaniments, or simulate entire 3D designs across an increasingly bedazzling array of styles and do so totally on the fly. In purely media terms we are witnessing nothing short than a creative “big bang” unheard of since the Renaissance - itself a result of the Printing Press.
Where the printing press gave us mass production, AI is giving us mass metamorphosis. Take the explosion of generative models like this weeks GPT-4 advanced graphic capabilities or new Gemini mode or XAI folding in X - all hailed as being new variants on “true multimodality.” They no longer spit out reams of text: they can simultaneously generate images, parse diagrams, create soundscapes, or translate instantly across languages. The result?
An entirely new dimension of communication, where ideas no longer sit still on a page but spin and weave across all of media at will.
“All the Screens a Stage”
This shift is bigger than just fancy features. Think about how society reoriented itself around the printing press:
Standardised Literacy: Gutenberg turned reading into a widespread skill, eventually empowering newspapers and novels—and controlling who got heard.
Gatekeepers: Editors, publishers, and academics became the gatekeepers, deciding what got printed and what stayed silent.
AI is now deconstructing that legacy at the atomic level. Instead of static, black-and-white pages, we have interactive interfaces, streaming text-to-image creation, real-time language translation, and digital “puppetry” that collapses the old media lines.
The phenomenon of anyone conjuring 3D models or producing entire documentary-style videos from a single prompt rewrites entire creative power structures.
Muscular Multimodality and the Decline of Scarcity
We praised the printing press for giving words “wings”—making them fly far. Now AI can make them dance, sing, and morph. The old gatekeepers will find themselves being side-stepped at lightning speed.
That’s going to increasingly become the new normal and yes, many of those born inside the Gutenberg Parenthesis will lament the fading smell of ink on paper or chunter on and on about the flood of AI-generated slop. And it is true we will be losing what the poet beautifully described as “the solemn black-on-white hush.”
But sadly that hush never came with a guarantee of permanence—it was a legacy of the printing press. And another trait of the hyperludics is that they inevitably subsume and succeed over the previous dominator. The original disruptor is in turn doomed to be the first casualty of the next.
AI is simply the next hyperludic accelerant, and it is inheriting all of print’s empire and swallowing it whole.
The friction is very real. Journalists rightly worry about deepfakes; educators worry about AI-ghostwritten papers. Copyright, which once hinged on controlling text, is at war with AI’s wild capacity to remix anything and everything. The old world is being left reeling in its wake.
The Ever Shifting Shape of Things to Come
With the very latest twist of xAI merging with X we see the rise of new “hyperludic nerve centres”- what were once printing houses or publishers now become generative models that can fuel constant present-tense multimodal conversation: paving the way for new forms of media platforms that shape-shift in real time, with ideas flowing and growing - creating, for good or ill - a vast, spontaneous, perpetual, global late night bull session.
“Entropy With a Steering Wheel”
There is a playful way to see it: AI is “chaos we can surf.” Sure, it can feel frenetic—but we also get to harness all that new found entropy, guiding it toward new forms of expression, collaboration, and business innovation. It’s the difference between a meltdown and a renaissance, between letting the waves wipe you out or learning to ride them.
If the printing press democratised access to the written word, AI is democratising the production of everything: images, music, code, business strategies, interactive 3D worlds. The magic emerges when humans stop viewing it as a threat and start collaborating with it, using it as an amplifying force to break creative blocks, prototype at scale, or unify far-flung teams.
In this hyperludic unfolding, the winners aren’t necessarily the biggest incumbents but the most playful adapters—those who see AI’s “multimodal muscle” as an invitation to experiment, rather than a machine to fear.
From Pages to Perpetual Possibilities
We must brace ourselves to soon deliver the elegy of the page as the final destination for ideas. The printing press bestrode our world for nearly six centuries. AI is its worthy successor ushering in a new era of infinite possibilities
This hyperludic unfolding isn't merely a technological shift but a fundamental reimagining of how we humans express, share, and build upon ideas. That old black-and-white hush is rapidly giving way to a symphony of colour, sound, shape, and new forms of storytelling—a creative new renaissance that democratises production while challenging almost all our frameworks that were founded on its predeccesor .
Those who thrive won't be those who resist this transformation, but those who learn to collaborate with it—surfing the chaos rather than being wiped out by it.