History isn’t only about kings, wars, or inventions — it’s about how humans transform. How our relationships, art, psychology, and even our bodies change when economies shift.
In this episode of Decoded by Mo, I’ll navigate from machinesto services to experiences — tracing how value creation evolved across the last two centuries, and how resilience kept reinventing itself along the way.
I begin with the Industrial Age, when coal, steam, and steelmultiplied human muscle. Cities like Manchester became “workshops of the world,” filled with factories, smoke, and new opportunities — but also poverty, disease, and child labor. Time itself was rewired: factory bells replaced seasons, railways created standardized time zones, and education trained children for industrial discipline.
Art became both mirror and critique. Dickens, Turner, Shelley, and Blake captured the hopes and horrors of industry, while futurists celebrated machines. War accelerated everything — from tanks and planes to nuclear bombs.Oil emerged as the fuel of modern power, shifting global wealth to the Middle East. Resilience in this era meant enduring disruption, adapting to machines, and surviving mechanized war.
Next, the Service Economy took shape. Once goods were abundant, value shifted to banks, insurance companies, hospitals, schools, and bureaucracies. White-collar work surpassed factory work. WWII logistics and Cold War systems showed that resilience meant organizational scale and institutional strength. Education expanded into universities and MBAs. Cultureindustrialized too: Hollywood, advertising, and pop music turned services into identities. But fragility appeared in overgrown bureaucracies and crises like the Great Depression or the oil shocks.
Then came the Experience Economy. Disneyland in 1955 sold fantasy, Starbucks turned coffee into identity, Apple built theaters of technology.
People no longer measured wealth only by goods or services, but by meaning and memory. Tourism became the largest industry on earth. Pop art, advertising, and music festivals blurred art and commerce. Even geopolitics became theater: the Cold War staged experiences through Olympics, propaganda, and the moon landing.
But experiences proved fragile. They depend on authenticity, trust, and stability. Over-commercialization, overcrowding, or crisis can collapse them overnight. COVID-19 revealed this fragility dramatically — yet resilience emerged digitally through streaming, virtual events, and online communities.
Across these three shifts, one lesson stands out: value keeps moving, and resilience keeps changing shape. Machines gave us productivity but alienation. Services gave us stability but bureaucracy. Experiences gave us meaning but fragility.
Understanding these transformations isn’t about nostalgia — it’s about preparing for what comes next. Because just as goods gave way to services, and services to experiences, we now stand at the threshold of platforms, data, and artificial intelligence.
This episode isn’t just about economics. It’s about how technology, war, art, and culture reshaped who we are. And it’s about how resilience — in body, mind, and society — remains the thread connecting past and future.