Humanity’s Reckoning With Power, Progress, and Presence

Preamble

In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt stood before a crowd in Paris and offered a timeless challenge—not to the powerful, nor the critics, but to the doers. “It is not the critic who counts,” he said, “but the man who is actually in the arena.” More than a century later, that arena has multiplied—expanding beyond blood and soil into bits, atoms, and algorithms. This is a call to all of us—to engage, to risk, and to shape what comes next.

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena… who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.”
—Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic, 1910

Arena Timeline: Key Moments of Reckoning

Era	Arena	Key Technologies	Humanity’s Challenge	Outcome
1770s–1900s	Industrial Revolution	Steam, factories	Labor reform, urban survival	Partial success
1800s–1900s	Electricity & Communication	Telegraph, power grids	Equity, safety, access	Quiet win
1920s–1970s	Broadcast Media	Radio, film, TV	Truth, propaganda, regulation	Mixed impact
1945–Present	Nuclear Age	Fission, bombs	Avoid extinction	Ongoing risk
1990s–Present	Internet	World Wide Web	Privacy, democracy, decentralization	Still contested
2007–Present	Social Media	Mobile, algorithms	Mental health, misinformation	Deeply in-progress
1970s–Present	Climate Change	Carbon, renewables	Global cooperation, mitigation	High-stakes battle
2012–Present	Biotechnology	CRISPR, synthetic biology	Ethical boundaries	Unfinished
2010s–Future	Artificial Intelligence	Neural nets, generative models	Meaning, control, fairness	Now in session

History: Lessons from the Arenas We’ve Faced

Theodore Roosevelt understood his history lessons. We cannot afford to turn our backs or sit on the sidelines. If we do not take action to heal society and the planet, someone will damage it—whether through intent, indifference, ignorance, or incompetence.

Roosevelt stepped into many arenas, from the Rough Riders to the White House. While he was not perfect, we (especially visitors to our National Parks) can mostly agree that the world is better because of his actions.

It is now our turn to learn from history so that we can leave a better world for the future.

The Arena of Industry (1770s–1900s)

What emerged: The machine age, steam power, urban migration.

What it asked of us: To protect workers, balance growth with dignity, build cities that could breathe.

Our response: Partial victory—labor unions, weekend laws, schooling reforms. But exploitation persisted and the planet’s health took a backseat.

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those timid souls who neither enjoy much nor suffer much.”
—Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life, 1899

The Arena of Electricity and Communication (1800s–1900s)

What emerged: Telegraphs, electrification, instant messaging.

What it asked of us: Infrastructure standards, equitable access, safety regulation.

Our response: A mostly quiet success. We connected the world—but also built the backbone of central surveillance.

The Arena of Broadcast and Narrative Control (1920s–1970s)

What emerged: Radio, cinema, television.

What it asked of us: Media literacy, freedom vs. propaganda, truth in storytelling.

Our response: Mixed. Television fueled civil rights, but also authoritarianism. We never fully tamed the storyteller’s power.

The Nuclear Arena (1945–Present)

What emerged: The bomb. Fission. The potential end of us.

What it asked of us: Restraint. Diplomacy. Mutually assured survival.

Our response: Terrified cooperation. Cold War balance. Prevention, not disarmament.

Status: Still unresolved—the abyss remains within reach.

The Digital Arena: Internet and Identity (1990s–Present)

What emerged: The web, personal data, decentralized knowledge.

What it asked of us: To define rights in a borderless world, to protect truth and autonomy.

Our response: Enthusiastic innovation, followed by reactive ethics.

Status: Ongoing—what we build next determines whether the Net liberates or encloses.

The Arena of Social Media (2007–Present)

What emerged: Virality, echo chambers, digital selfhood.

What it asked of us: Resilience, authenticity, moderation at scale.

Our response: Community building, but also tribalism. Connection, but also collapse.

Status: Still in combat—culture is coded by unseen hands.

The Arena of Climate (1970s–Present)

What emerged: Global warming, ecological collapse, planetary thresholds.

What it asked of us: Transformation of energy, economy, and expectation.

Our response: Mixed. We closed the ozone hole—a historic success. But carbon still rises, glaciers still shrink, and time is thinning.

Status: This is our proving ground. Every decision matters now.

The Arena of Biotechnology (2012–Present)

What emerged: CRISPR, synthetic biology, gene drives.

What it asks of us: Humility before life’s code. A new bioethics.

Our response: Powerful tools, clumsy hands. Promise shadowed by premature ambition.

Status: Tense. We are editing the very script of life without fully reading it.

Today and the Future:

The Arena of Artificial Intelligence

What emerged: Machine cognition, autonomy, simulation of meaning.

What it asks of us: To define what is human, what is real, what is just.

Our response: We stepped in early—open-source movements, ethical frameworks, generative wonder. But risk outpaces reflection.

Status: The newest, loudest arena. You are standing in it now.

“In the arena, the triumph belongs not to those who play it safe, but to those who act with daring clarity in the face of uncertainty.”
—(Adapted in the spirit of Roosevelt, 2025)

What Must Be Done Now

We must demand transparency in how models are trained, governed, and deployed. The future cannot be shaped by the men behind curtains.
We must resist the seduction of total automation. Not everything that can be delegated should be. Imagine what will happen when we automate the monitoring of the monitors that monitor our automations. My mind hurts writing that—I would not want to have to pick up the pieces after such a failure.
We must teach discernment, not dependence. AI should amplify judgment, not replace it. We have learned not to blindly follow the confident and charismatic leader that offer no proof. Why would blindly follow an AI?
We must protect the vulnerable, whose data and likenesses are most easily taken, most invisibly erased. Bad actors already prey on the unsuspecting. AI makes it easier for these malicious individuals to steal identities, impersonate others, and rewrite history to the point where events and cultures disappear. We must do better through education, controls, and punishing bad actors.
We must shape regulation and governance, not react to it. If we wait for permission, we abdicate the arena. Our government and legal systems are again proving to be ill-prepared. It is up to the industry and AI users to design safety, privacy, security, inclusion, belonging, and robustness into AI. We have already proven that waiting and fixing tools and processes after the fact is not just costly and frustrating—it causes more harm to people.
We must dare to build different. Tools that honor presence, agency, and consent—technologies that serve the many, not the few. If we continue thinking "bigger is better" and "growth at all costs," then AI might just be able to deliver on those promises, though there might not be anything left behind. It is time for bold, yet deliberative, action. We cannot keep following our old playbooks.
And we must plan for retreat. No system, no matter how advanced, is immune to failure. We must be able to pause, backtrack, or unwind AI deployments when needed—especially in the face of instability, misuse, or limits in power and energy. The ability to step back is not weakness. It is wisdom. It is survival.

This is not a moment for retreat. It is the very definition of Roosevelt’s arena—loud, messy, high-stakes, and unfinished. And we are each already standing inside it.

Closing Call

To be in the arena does not require perfection. It requires presence. The courage to look at the machine, the mirror, the planet—and not look away. We are not shaming the past. We are honoring it by rising now. Some arenas we entered too late. Others we fled too soon. But many—we are still inside.