The new language

My father was a forward-thinking man — usually a step ahead of his time, able to see shifts long before the rest of us felt them. And he used to tell me something simple, almost casual: “Son, listen— a person who speaks English earns like two.”

He didn’t say it as a slogan. He said it as a warning — learn the language the world trades in, or you’ll spend your whole life catching up.

He was right. English wasn’t just grammar. It was access. It doubled your reach, your chances, your usefulness. It was the productivity language of his generation.

Then my generation got a new one. It wasn’t English — it was the early Internet. If you could set up your own website, tweak HTML, mess with CSS, publish your work, tell a story online, build a little audience… suddenly you were two people at once: the operator and the publisher, the builder and the amplifier.

That was the second language of our time: digital fluency — code just enough, write well enough, ship fast enough. It made a whole class of people twice as productive and twice as dangerous in the best way.

Now comes the third.

And most folks don’t see it yet.

Today’s “English” — the next great multiplier — is AI fluency paired with protocol fluency (Web3 in the real, boring, powerful sense: identity, ownership, trust, programmable transactions).

AI is not a tool. It’s a second mind — a force multiplier hiding in plain sight. Those who learn to think with it, build with it, and let it extend their craft won’t be 2× as productive. They’ll be five. Whole teams inside one head.

And Web3 — not the hype, not the coins — but the skill of designing systems where value, identity, and proof don’t depend on gatekeepers — will do to institutions what the Internet did to media.

Every generation gets one shot at the new language. My father had English. I had the early web. This generation has AI + protocols.

Miss it, and you’ll spend a decade trying to close the gap. Learn it early, and you’ll shape more than your income — you’ll shape what your region builds next.

The tools change. But the rule stays the same:

The future goes to the ones who learn the new language fast enough to use it before everyone else does.