El camino hacia la Era de la Imaginación

Hey there! 👋 My name is Rodrigo, I just finished high school, and I'm about to start college. Like anyone my age, I look to the future with a mix of excitement and, let's be honest, a little bit of vertigo. And the big "culprit" for this emotional roller-coaster is Artificial Intelligence.

But to understand just how huge the wave we're surfing is, I think it's worth looking back to see the other "waves" that brought humanity here.

The Revolutions That Brought Us to the Future

Ever since the first Homo sapiens decided it was cooler to plant their dinner than to run after it, our history has been a succession of revolutions. Each one changed everything.

Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000 BCE): We stopped being nomads and settled down. Villages began to emerge, the population grew, and for the first time, someone said, "This land is mine."
Bronze and Iron Revolution (c. 3,300 BCE): We discovered metals and, with them, more powerful tools and weapons. Trade exploded, and wars became more "professional."
Scientific Revolution (15th–17th centuries): Guys like Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton gave us a new pair of glasses to see the universe. Suddenly, the Earth wasn't the center of everything. What a shock!
Commercial Revolution (15th–18th centuries): The Portuguese were masters at this! The caravels united the world, creating the first global market.
Industrial Revolution (18th–19th centuries): The steam engine changed the game. Cities filled up with people and chimneys.
Scientific-Technological Revolution (c. 1870–1914): Electricity, steel, the telephone... The world got faster, brighter, and louder.
Digital Revolution (since 1970): My parents' generation. Computers, the internet, and the ability to send a "meme" to the other side of the planet in seconds.
Artificial Intelligence Revolution (Now!): And here we are. Robots that think, programs that write poetry, and assistants that learn.

The most mind-blowing part of all this? The speed. If you notice, the time between each revolution is getting shorter and shorter. It's an exponential acceleration!

Welcome to the Age of Imagination

With the launch of ChatGPT, I feel we haven't just entered a new technological revolution. We've entered the Age of Imagination.

Why? Because today's AIs are incredible tools of transformation. You give them a prompt (a request, an idea), and they transform it into text, voice, image, or even video.

But there's a catch: the initial spark, the idea, the dream... that still has to come from a human. Our main role has become to imagine.

"Vibe Coding": Programming with Soul (and with AI)

One of the areas getting a monumental shake-up is one that isn't even 30 years old: computer science.

I'm living proof of this. I created an application, Mythoria, and I can say that 90% of the app's code and the entire backend were built with what has become one of the most hyped concepts in recent months: "Vibe Coding".

Basically, it's programming in conversation with an AI agent, like the Github Copilot Agent. I mainly used the Claude 3 Sonnet and, for the trickiest problems, the Claude 3 Opus models.

Tasks that once required deep knowledge and weeks of work are now solved with a simple request, which can even be made by voice while I sip a coffee. It's almost like having a senior developer by my side, 24/7.

💡 Tip: AI works best with popular languages and libraries (like Python with Django or JavaScript with React) because it has more examples to learn from.

Not Everything is a Bed of Roses 🌹

We still haven't reached the point of "wish and you shall receive."

If it weren't for my dad's help, who has more experience in this, the application's architecture wouldn't be as robust and scalable. He taught me the importance of best practices.

For example:

Having good documentation in the project immensely helps the AI understand the code. And we can use the AI itself to generate the foundation for that documentation.
Automated tests are essential to ensure everything works—and AI is an incredible help in creating them.

At the end of the day, in Vibe Coding, the most crucial part remains the same as always: knowing exactly what you want to do. But I even use AI for that: I spend hours "discussing" ideas, concepts, and trends with ChatGPT.

That's how I learned about:

Creating characters
Paginating books
Designing business and marketing plans

How Will AI Change Companies?

With the latest developments, like GPT-5 and the idea of AI "agents", we are beginning to delegate increasingly complex tasks. It's no longer just about asking it to write an email—it's about asking it to manage a marketing campaign.

For example, I've been using a prototype of the ChatGPT Agent to manage my Google Ads. It asks me questions, I give it the guidelines, and it accesses my account to create and optimize the campaigns. Human interaction is still needed, but less and less so.

🎥 And then there's video. I'm blown away by what tools like Google Veo 3 can do. I had the idea to create ads for Mythoria with figures like Camões, Cervantes, or Shakespeare, in ancient settings, using the app to write their masterpieces.

For an 18-year-old kid with a budget that's basically my weekly allowance, this would be absolutely impossible without AI. (Even so, I've already burned through all my Veo credits and then some! 😅)

"One-Person Companies"? Utopia or 2026?

Some are betting that, with agents and automation, we will see one-person unicorns. I love the idea (who doesn't?), but I also wonder about the:

Social cost
Practical limits (regulation, trust, quality)

The debate is raging—and that alone forces us to think more carefully about what we want to build.

So, Now What?

I'm days away from starting college. The plan is to get a degree in Engineering.

But honestly, with the speed at which everything is changing, I sometimes ask myself:

What will the world and the job market be like in 5 years, when I'm expected to graduate?

I don't have the answer. Maybe nobody does. But one thing is for sure: it's going to be one hell of a ride. And I can't wait for it.