The Nokia, The General, and the Algorithm

Why Context Will Become the Ultimate Skill in the Age of AI

“The future of AI is not about replacing humans, it's about augmenting human capabilities.” —Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google

When I was 14, I had an old Nokia phone. And in it was something that would shift the entire trajectory of my life.

Up until then, my reading habits were pretty standard. Fiction was my playground. My favorite book, still close to my heart, was The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I loved flipping through National Geographic magazines in the school library, hoarding history facts and random trivia like they were buried treasure.

Reading wasn’t about acquiring knowledge. It was about feeding my imagination. One minute I was walking the streets of New York, the next I was front row at Marie Antoinette’s beheading.

So when I finally got a phone on my 14th birthday (classic African style: my mom buys a new one, hands the old one to my brother, and he passes it to me), I was ecstatic.

For 17 minutes.

That’s how long it took to realize I had no friends to text.

But then I found something.

Tucked away in the audio folder was a leftover file from its previous user: The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

It took me a few days to get through it, funny, considering how short it actually is, but I was hooked. It was my first taste of something I didn’t yet have a name for.

Philosophy.

Polymathy: My Guilty Pleasure

Let’s pin that thought for a second. We’ll come back to it.

I’ve since diagnosed myself as a polymath. Sounds fancy, but really, it just means I fall down rabbit holes for fun.

One day, I’m knee-deep in how to balance camshafts on a naturally aspirated V8. The next, I’m neck-deep in research papers on RAG pipelines and vector databases.

I know. I need a social life.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve noticed: the deeper I go in any field, mechanics, computing, art, war, the closer I get to the same place.

Philosophy.

Mastery has a shape. And at its peak, it always looks suspiciously like poetry.

carcinization: the process by which different species independently evolve into a crab-like form.

In knowledge, the carcinization is philosophy. No matter where you start, you eventually circle back to the same big questions.

That’s what hit me when I listened to The Art of War. On the surface, it’s a tactical field manual for generals, how to win battles, manipulate terrain, capitalize on even the smallest advantage.

But to me it read like poetry. A deeply layered manifesto on power, presence, timing, and restraint.

It was beautiful.

And it cracked open a door.

The Missing Piece

There’s a catch, though.

Philosophy without grounding is just clever words. It’s empty. You can read all the Stoic texts you want and quote Marcus Aurelius at brunch, but if you haven’t lived enough to understand why it matters, it’s just noise.

The reason Meditations is loved is because Marcus didn’t just write it, he lived it. That’s the difference.

Context is everything. It’s what gives ideas their weight.

So yeah, I love philosophy.

But I’ve come to love context even more.

Now, about that Nokia phone story. On its own, the tale of a 14-year-old stumbling upon The Art of War on a basic phone might seem pretty dull. Similarly, just talking about AI in isolation can be dry. But together, they give each other context and room to breathe.

And that’s what the new age of artificial intelligence will require most from you: the ability to infer context.

See, everyone’s talking about how AI will steal jobs, but they’re wrong. Kind of. AI won’t replace jobs, it will augment them.

“Most jobs will change more slowly than most people think, and I have no fear that we’ll run out of things to do (even if they don't look like ‘real jobs’ to us today)” —Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

A designer becomes an AI designer.

A teacher becomes an AI teacher.

A ghostwriter becomes an AI ghostwriter.

And if you weren’t any of those things to begin with? AI won’t magically make you one.

It might help you teach, write, or design. But it won’t make you good.

That’s still reserved for the ones who already had context. The ones who lived it. Practiced it. Failed in it. They know where AI fits, where to trust it, where to ignore it, where to bend it to their will.

That’s their competitive advantage.

See, natural language is no longer just how we talk to each other. It’s how we talk to machines. It’s the interface between thought and execution. Between imagination and action.

And the ones who will thrive are the ones who understand both worlds.

The human world of nuance, emotion, and lived experience, and the digital world of logic, data, and infinite processing power.

And it's not enough to be good. AI isn't a crutch, you have to be great

We have already seen the fallout of this assumption. Vibe-coded apps are riddled with security risks, AI-written newsletters are emoji-riddled dumpster fires, and don't even get me started on ADs.

Context still wins. Taste still matters.

And those who’ve lived it will always be a step ahead.

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That’s it from me this week. If you liked this, I think you’ll love the companion piece I wrote on why Taste is the talent of the future, and how it might be the most important skill in the age of AI. You can read it HERE.

In the meantime, have a great week, and I’ll catch you in the next one.

“To see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight. To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength.” — Sun Tzu.