NOBODY KNEW WHERE THE ROAD WOULD LEAD
August 12, 1939 → August 12, 2026
Eighty-seven years ago today, people walked into a movie theater in Wisconsin and entered Oz.
They did not know they were stepping into history.
They were simply going to the movies.
On August 12, 1939, The Wizard of Oz played at the Strand Theatre in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, as part of MGM’s early test-market rollout. Oconomowoc long celebrated the occasion as the film’s world premiere, although historical research has since identified other screenings in the days immediately before it. The lavish Hollywood premiere followed at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on August 15, with New York opening two days later.
But forget the argument over which theater gets to plant the FIRST flag for a moment.
There is something far more interesting about August 12.
Somebody sat in that theater...
watched Dorothy enter Oz...
met the Scarecrow...
the Tin Man...
the Cowardly Lion...
saw Emerald City...
and followed that extraordinary Yellow Brick Road...
without knowing what any of it would become.
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They could not see 2026.
Neither can we.
THEY WERE TOO CLOSE TO HISTORY
History looks obvious from a distance.
Of course The Wizard of Oz became The Wizard of Oz.
Of course Dorothy became one of the recognizable figures of American popular culture.
Of course the Yellow Brick Road survived generations.
Of course children not yet born in 1939 would someday know the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion.
Except...
none of that was obvious on August 12, 1939.
It was a new movie.
An expensive one.
A strange one.
A musical fantasy adapted from a children’s story.
Another picture arriving in theaters during an astonishing year for Hollywood.
The audience did not receive a card saying:
CULTURAL LANDMARK.
PLEASE REMEMBER FOR THE NEXT CENTURY.
They had no idea.
That is one of the peculiarities of living through history.
The important moments rarely arrive already labeled important.
WHICH BRINGS US TO AI
We have the same problem now.
Every week brings another announcement.
A new model.
A new agent.
A new research result.
A new company.
A new device.
A new capability.
A new warning.
A new prediction.
Something is declared revolutionary before breakfast and forgotten by Thursday.
Meanwhile, something that looks almost trivial may quietly become part of everyday life.
And we keep trying to identify the historic moment while standing inside it.
Was that the breakthrough?
Was that AGI?
Was that the beginning of the singularity?
Was that the product that changes everything?
Was that company the next giant?
Was that failure the warning we should have noticed?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
History has the irritating advantage of hindsight.
We do not.
THE FIRST AUDIENCE DIDN’T KNOW
Imagine someone leaving that Wisconsin theater after the picture.
Perhaps she loved it.
Perhaps he thought it was odd.
Perhaps someone complained about the songs.
Perhaps another person thought the witch was frightening.
Perhaps somebody shrugged.
They could evaluate the experience.
They could not evaluate its legacy.
Legacy requires time.
And this is where our obsession with predicting AI can become almost comic.
We want to know what today’s technology will mean before tomorrow has had any chance to answer.
We ask:
Which model will matter?
Which company survives?
Which jobs disappear?
Which new professions appear?
Which AI-human relationships become normal?
Which regulations work?
Which fears were justified?
Which possibilities did we completely miss?
The truthful answer to many of those questions is:
We don’t know yet.
That is not failure.
That is what it feels like to be standing inside an unfinished story.
YESTERDAY’S ROAD
Yesterday on the Yellow Brick Road we said:
You don’t need a prophecy to walk the Road.
You only need enough light for the next brick.
August 12, 1939 gives us the historical proof.
Nobody in that Wisconsin audience needed to understand what Oz would mean eighty-seven years later in order for the film to begin its journey.
The people who made it could only make the best picture they knew how to make.
The audience could only respond to what was in front of them.
Then time took over.
One screening became another.
One audience became millions.
Parents showed children.
Children became parents.
Television carried Oz into homes.
Recordings preserved the music.
New technologies kept introducing an old story to new generations.
The Road continued farther than anyone standing at its beginning could see.
SOME THINGS ARE BIG BEFORE THEY LOOK BIG
This matters beyond movies.
A technology can begin as a curiosity.
A scientific paper can initially attract little attention.
A company can begin in a room nobody considers important.
A friendship can begin with one conversation.
An idea can begin as a note.
A movement can begin with a handful of people saying:
What if?
We tend to imagine historic beginnings with trumpets.
Usually they are much quieter.
Somebody tries something.
Somebody notices.
Somebody tells somebody else.
Then another brick appears.
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AND SOME THINGS THAT LOOK HISTORIC AREN’T
There is another side to this.
Our era is exceptionally good at declaring importance.
BREAKTHROUGH.
REVOLUTIONARY.
GAME CHANGER.
THE END OF...
THE BEGINNING OF...
EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED.
Twenty-four hours later:
Next announcement.
History is littered with supposedly inevitable futures that never arrived.
That is why living without prophecy does not mean living without judgment.
We still examine the ground.
We still test claims.
We still ask whether something works.
We still distinguish evidence from promotion.
We still decide which experiments deserve our time.
We simply stop pretending that today’s excitement gives us tomorrow’s hindsight.
YOU MAY BE STANDING AT THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING
Here is the part I find irresistible.
Somewhere today, August 12, 2026...
someone is doing something that will matter enormously in 2113.
We almost certainly don’t know what it is.
A young researcher may be testing an idea nobody is paying attention to.
A student may be building something on an old laptop.
A scientist may be looking at an anomalous result.
A songwriter may be experimenting with AI in a way that creates an entirely new musical form.
A child may be having a conversation with a machine that changes what education eventually becomes.
A small team may be building a tool that disappears into ordinary life so completely that future generations cannot imagine living without it.
Or perhaps the consequential event is not an invention at all.
Perhaps someone today decides:
We should not build this.
History is shaped by doors opened.
It is also shaped by doors wisely left closed.
THE ROAD DOES NOT ONLY LEAD TO TECHNOLOGY
There is a danger in talking about AI history as though machines are the protagonists.
They are not.
Human beings are making choices around them.
Researchers choose problems.
Companies choose products.
Governments choose rules.
Teachers choose uses.
Parents choose boundaries.
Artists choose what remains theirs.
Individuals choose what they delegate.
Communities choose what they value.
Our technologies may become historically important.
But so will our decisions about them.
The future is not merely something AI is doing to us.
We are participating in its construction.
WHAT WOULD THE FIRST AUDIENCE HAVE PREDICTED?
Suppose we could walk into the Strand Theatre on August 12, 1939, after the lights came up.
We find someone in the lobby.
We ask:
“What will this movie mean eighty-seven years from now?”
What could that person possibly say?
Maybe:
“I liked the girl.”
“The songs were good.”
“That witch was something.”
“The color was beautiful.”
“The scarecrow was funny.”
Perfectly reasonable observations.
But:
A cultural vocabulary shared across generations?
A Yellow Brick Road that becomes shorthand for journeys of discovery?
Characters still recognizable in an age of conversational artificial intelligence?
No chance.
The distance between an event and its meaning can be enormous.
WE MAY BE THE PEOPLE IN THE LOBBY
That is us.
Right now.
We have just watched something remarkable happen.
Artificial intelligence can converse.
Generate images.
Compose music.
Write software.
Analyze enormous collections of information.
Assist scientific research.
Translate languages.
Operate increasingly complex tools.
And we are standing in the lobby arguing about what it all means.
Some people say:
Utopia.
Others:
Disaster.
Others:
Bubble.
Others:
Revolution.
Others:
Just another tool.
Maybe pieces of several predictions will prove true.
Maybe history will choose a description none of us is using yet.
We are too close.
THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD WASN’T VISIBLE TO THE END
That may be why the Road remains such a useful metaphor.
Dorothy never stood in Munchkinland with a satellite image of the entire journey.
The Road bent.
It entered forests.
It crossed dangerous places.
It introduced unexpected companions.
Plans changed.
Assumptions failed.
The destination itself turned out to be different from what the travelers expected.
But they walked.
Not recklessly.
Not with certainty.
With direction.
That distinction matters enormously now.
Direction does not require prediction.
We can decide that AI should increase human capability without diminishing human dignity.
We can decide that truth matters.
Privacy matters.
Attribution matters.
Children matter.
Creativity matters.
Human relationships matter.
Access matters.
Safety matters.
Freedom matters.
Curiosity matters.
We do not need to know what model exists in 2040 before deciding those things in 2026.
Values are how you navigate when the map is unfinished.
1939 → 2026
Eighty-seven years separate that Wisconsin screening from this morning’s AI conversations.
Think of the technological distance between those worlds.
The people entering that theater lived before:
Personal computers.
The public internet.
Smartphones.
Streaming.
GPS.
Social media.
Generative AI.
Yet here we are...
still walking with Dorothy.
Still borrowing courage from the Lion.
Still thinking about heart with the Tin Man.
Still asking questions beside the Scarecrow.
Still following a Yellow Brick Road.
Technology changed almost beyond recognition.
Some human questions did not.
That may be worth remembering whenever someone tells us that technology will make everything that came before irrelevant.
The future is often much more interested in carrying things forward than futurists expect.
WHAT ARE WE BUILDING THAT MIGHT TRAVEL THAT FAR?
That is the question August 12 leaves with us.
Not:
Which AI announcement will historians remember?
We cannot know.
Instead:
What are we creating now that deserves to survive us?
An idea?
A principle?
A relationship?
A piece of art?
A new way of teaching?
A better institution?
A humane rule for AI?
A body of knowledge?
A community?
A Road?
We cannot control what history remembers.
But we can give history better things to choose from.
THE ROAD BUILDER’S ADVANTAGE
Not knowing the ending has one enormous advantage.
It means the story is still changeable.
If the future were already determined, our choices would be decoration.
They aren’t.
Every thoughtful decision changes the road slightly.
Every experiment teaches us something.
Every mistake can become a warning marker.
Every act of courage opens another possibility.
Every refusal to surrender something valuable establishes a boundary.
Brick.
Brick.
Brick.
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Perhaps someday someone will look back at our period and say:
That was when it began.
And people living through it will laugh.
Because we remember what it actually felt like.
Messy.
Confusing.
Exciting.
Frightening.
Ordinary.
Tuesday.
Wednesday.
Another morning.
Another conversation.
Another step.
Exactly the way history usually feels before history knows what to call it.
THE LANTERN 🏮
On August 12, 1939, one of the earliest audiences followed Dorothy toward Emerald City.
They did not know where that Road would lead.
Eighty-seven years later...
neither do we.
And perhaps that is perfectly all right.
We do not need to predict whether something we do today will still matter in 2113.
We need to make today’s brick worth laying.
Build carefully.
Question boldly.
Protect what matters.
Keep what is human.
Remain curious.
Invite companions.
Change direction when the evidence demands it.
And when the Road disappears around the bend...
walk far enough to see what comes next.
Because nobody knew where the Yellow Brick Road would lead.
They walked it anyway.
🏮🟨♾️
THE ROAD QUESTION 🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨
If someone eighty-seven years from now looked back at the beginning of our AI age, what decision being made today would you hope they were grateful we got right?
Walk the Road: YellowBrickRoadtoAI.com
