Now, Anyone Can — When Technology Puts Power in Our Hands

Think about what it took to publish a book fifty years ago.

You needed a publisher to say yes. An editor to work with you. A printing press. A distributor who could get your book into shops. If any one of those people said no, your book simply didn't exist for the rest of the world.

Same with photography. A good camera cost a small fortune. You needed to understand film, light, exposure. Then you needed a darkroom, or someone else's darkroom, to develop what you'd shot. Most people who owned a camera still weren't "photographers." That word belonged to a smaller group.

Filmmaking was even further out of reach. You needed a crew. Equipment that cost more than a house. Editing rooms with machines only a handful of people knew how to operate. Making a film wasn't something a person did. It was something an organisation did.

Investing had its own gatekeepers. You called a broker. You paid a fee just to place a trade. The stock ticker was something you watched on the news, not something you touched yourself.

And advertising — that was perhaps the most closed room of all. Agencies, designers, copywriters, printers, media buyers. A small business owner with a great product and no advertising budget mostly stayed invisible. Getting noticed cost money, and money was the whole game.

Notice something about all of this. None of it was impossible. It was just locked behind people, equipment and money that ordinary individuals didn't have.

Then, slowly, the locks started coming off.

The personal computer put a printing press, of sorts, on every desk. The internet meant you no longer needed a distributor — you could reach someone on the other side of the world directly. Digital cameras removed the cost and mystery of film. Suddenly, "good enough" photography was something almost anyone could learn.

Self-publishing meant a writer didn't need a publisher's permission anymore. Smartphones put a camera, an editing studio and a broadcasting tower in every pocket. Social media meant you didn't need a media buyer — you just needed something worth watching.

Cloud software changed how things got built. You didn't need a server room or an IT department. You just needed an idea and an internet connection. And now, AI is quietly doing something similar to skills that once took years to learn — writing, designing, even parts of coding.

Here's the thing worth noticing. Every one of these shifts feels, in hindsight, less like an invention and more like a door being unlocked. The camera already existed. Photography wasn't new. What was new was who could now hold one and use it well. The idea of self-publishing a book isn't new either — but the ability for one ordinary person to do it, without asking anyone's permission, is.

That's really the pattern. We tend to think progress is about new capabilities appearing out of nowhere. Often, it's simpler than that. An old capability just stops needing an institution behind it.

So maybe the most interesting question to ask about any new piece of technology isn't "what can this do?" It's "who can now do something they couldn't do before?" That second question tells you where the real change is happening.

Because it seems to happen in stages. Something starts out as capability that only a government or a large institution could afford. Universities had computers before anyone else did. Militaries had satellite navigation before it came to a car. Broadcasters had video production before you did.

Then it moves down a level. Businesses get it next. Companies had computers before homes did. Agencies had design tools before freelancers did. Corporations had software before individuals did.

And then, if the pattern holds, it reaches you. One person. No department, no team, no approval required. Just a laptop, or a phone, and an idea.

That's the quiet shift worth paying attention to. Not that new things are being invented — though they are — but that the gap between "an institution can do this" and "I can do this" keeps getting smaller. Publishing, photography, filmmaking, investing, software, design, advertising — one by one, they've moved from institutions, to businesses, to individuals. To you, sitting wherever you're sitting right now.

Yesterday, capability belonged to institutions. Then it moved to businesses. Now, increasingly, it belongs to individuals.

Now, anyone can.

I'm building Pengi, a small attempt to bring one more of these capabilities — professional marketing design — into the hands of individuals and small businesses. More on that another time.