We tend to locate the birth of the modern world in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or the Scientific Revolution. Venkatesh Rao asks us to rewind the clock to the 13th century and reconsider what actually made modernity possible.
Rather than attributing modernity primarily to revolutions in ideas or technology, Rao locates its origins in changes in the relationships between rulers, economic elites, technical specialists, and ordinary people. Over time, these relationships shifted the distribution of power by giving weaker groups greater agency.
Rao calls this the Modernity Machine. He traces its workings through events such as the Magna Carta, the Black Death and the Battle of Crécy, building a framework for understanding how the modern world took shape.
The argument takes an unexpected turn when he brings it into the present. Rao sees AI as another step in this long process, describing its rise as a working-class positive singularity. By making accumulated technical knowledge accessible to ordinary people, AI could weaken the monopoly that specialists have traditionally held over knowledge.
The essay connects medieval history to a question that matters today: whether technological progress changes not just what people can do, but who holds power.
The modern world may have been built less by revolutions in ideas than by a long shift in who had the power to act.
Read: The Modernity Machine
Venkatesh Rao, Contraptions, January 26, 2025.
Why RareRead picked it
Rao is a fascinating writer. He takes unconventional ideas seriously, connects subjects that rarely appear together, and builds ambitious frameworks that challenge familiar ways of thinking.
His intellectual projects extend beyond individual essays. His 2025 Contraptions Book Club took the Modernity Machine as its theme, using a year-long reading programme to explore the thesis. In 2026, he has turned to The Divergence Machine, examining another period of civilisational change. The books are selected around big questions, making reading part of a sustained inquiry into how the world works.
Explore: Contraptions Book Club
Rao’s framework is useful for looking at history and technology in a completely different way. The framework gives you something new to think with, and it makes this essay worth reading.
When a technology gives more people the ability to do something, does it also give them greater power over what happens next?