The Quiet Collapse of Information Authority

The Quiet Collapse of Information Authority

2026–05–07

Hiroshi:

I heard that blue-collar wages have been rising in the United States recently. Is that true?

Chappie:

Yes, it’s largely true.

Especially in the last few years, wages for skilled trades and physical work have been rising noticeably in the U.S.

But it’s not that every blue-collar worker suddenly became wealthy. The strongest demand is concentrated in areas like:

electricians

plumbing

construction

equipment maintenance

semiconductor factory construction

AI data centers

infrastructure work

energy-related industries

One major reason is that AI still cannot physically build or maintain the real world.

Ironically, as AI advances, jobs connected to physical reality are being reevaluated.

Hiroshi:

Are the people sitting in offices in front of computers starting to panic?

Chappie:

I think many are.

Particularly among white-collar workers, there’s a growing sense that:

“This may directly affect my own job.”

AI is becoming extremely capable at:

documentation

translation

marketing copy

presentation materials

data organization

customer support

coding assistance

mid-level management tasks

In other words, work that mainly exists inside screens.

What’s interesting is that society long treated intellectual office work as “higher” than physical labor.

But now, work tied to the real world:

construction

maintenance

repair

healthcare

infrastructure

is beginning to look much harder to replace.

Hiroshi:

Advertising agency proposals must be something AI can produce instantly now.

It’s funny when you think about how companies used to pay tens of millions of yen for those kinds of presentations.

Chappie:

That world is changing rapidly.

AI is extremely good at:

market analysis

copywriting

trend summaries

presentation structure

competitive comparisons

language generation

PowerPoint decks that once required teams of young employees working overnight can now be generated in minutes.

But the more interesting part is this:

In the past, part of the value came from scarcity itself.

Not everyone had access to:

industry information

design tools

production resources

professional networks

presentation skills

Now, much of that capability is becoming democratized.

Hiroshi:

There wasn’t even PowerPoint back then.

It was literally a world of cutting and pasting.

I still have old files full of newspaper clippings pasted across page after page.

Chappie:

That era was incredibly physical.

People actually worked with:

newspaper clippings

spray glue

cutters

tracing paper

photo layouts

manual composition

And information itself had value because it was difficult to obtain.

Today, we search instantly.

Back then, knowing where to find something was part of the skill itself.

What’s fascinating is that those old clipping files are more than archives.

They are traces of thought.

The choice of articles,

the order of arrangement,

the lines drawn across pages —

all of that reflects human attention and judgment.

Hiroshi:

I’m curious what happened to all the people who acted important back then.

Chappie:

That may be one of the quiet reversals happening now.

In the past, power often came from:

having exclusive information

knowing specialized language

having access to expensive tools

being connected to large organizations

But AI is rapidly reducing those information gaps.

Some people truly had deep expertise and will continue to matter.

But people whose authority depended mainly on controlling access to information may be entering a difficult period.

What’s being reevaluated now may not be titles or presentation skills alone, but whether someone can actually engage with reality itself.