For a long time, human learning was built on a pedagogy of constraint. The generations of the 1980s and 1990s grew up in closed systems, marked by scarcity of stimuli and the demand for effort. Old-school video games, merciless and without assistance, were a school of resilience: you failed, you started again, you waited.
From a cognitive perspective, this model shaped minds capable of long-term projection. Saving, investing in real estate over twenty years, or managing complex projects were natural consequences. It was the era of slow construction.
The end of cognitive patience
This mental architecture has shattered with the digital revolution. Today’s generation is no longer trained to wait, but to react. Under the constant fire of notifications and dopamine loops orchestrated by platforms, tolerance for boredom has collapsed. Attention has fragmented. This is not a moral judgment about supposed laziness, but a clinical observation of a neurological shift: the reward circuit has been short-circuited by immediacy.
The imminent arrival of generative artificial intelligence will complete this mutation. Tomorrow, we will no longer be seekers of information, but conductors. Memorization and linear processes will give way to intuitive navigation and instant co-creation.
In this new world, the perceived value of long-term time will not just decline, it risks disappearing altogether.
The imperative of immediacy for the business world
For economic players, the danger is fatal if they continue to address a brain that no longer exists. Models built on distant promises or complex abstractions are doomed to fail. The AI-era consumer demands to feel before understanding, to see before believing.
This paradigm shift hits two sectors—long known for their inertia—head on: real estate and hospitality.
Heritage real estate—built on ownership and the patient expectation of long-term capital appreciation—is becoming inaudible. Tomorrow’s asset will be experiential, liquid, and modular. A place that tells no story, that does not offer a hybridization of uses (living, working, socializing), will become a ghost asset—invisible to the eyes of new generations.
Luxury as the mastery of stimulus
Hospitality, for its part, must reinvent itself beyond service. The “beautiful room” has become a commodity. What today’s clientele seeks is disruption. The luxury of tomorrow will lie in a controlled alternation: hyper-stimulating narrative immersion followed by radical disconnection. It will no longer be about selling opulence, but about selling control over stimulus.
The real challenge for entrepreneurs is not technological—it is cognitive. The risk lies in continuing to think with 20th-century mental models in a post-AI world. Those who can script their offerings, simplify without impoverishing, and turn emotion into a measurable asset will gain a decisive advantage.
Because the world is not becoming less intelligent—it is becoming wired differently. In this new attention economy, experience is the only currency immune to inflation.