I just had a realization based upon what I’ve been seeing happening online on platforms like Substack.
The old “expert model” of social media was built on stability, where you mastered a topic, established credibility, and then broadcast your expertise outward. It assumed a relatively stable world where knowledge had lasting value.
Then came “learning in public” which was a response to accelerating change. The idea was that transparency and curiosity mattered more than authority. Yet even that model assumed a kind of linearity: you’re on a knowable path of learning something specific, and the social experience is about documenting that path as it unfolds.
But in today’s world, change is not just faster, it’s nonlinear and emergent. What we’re dealing with isn’t just learning new information but learning how to learn in the midst of instability. So the social experience that fits this era might not be “sharing expertise” or “sharing learning,” but something like “sharing emergence” which is about being in visible dialogue with uncertainty itself.
That would mean showing how sense-making and meaning-making happen before learning stabilizes, so when it’s still messy, ambiguous, even contradictory. It’s not about “Here’s what I know” or “Here’s what I’m learning,” but rather “Here’s what’s trying to form through me in real time, even though I don’t yet know what it means.”
That kind of presence fits a world where transformation, not transmission, is the real work.
And this type of presence is what I continually struggle to outwardly express as my mantra of “the adventure of your life,” even though it is a daily inner experience for me.
In closing, I just want to highlight one of the best examples I’ve seen so far that actually embodies this sharing of emergence. It feels a bit messy and chaotic, yet at the same time it’s real and authentic, as though the person is stumbling through a wilderness, trying to make sense of their inner terrain in the present moment.