Old Deng doesn't die; he just turns into a token.

That night in Palo Alto, as the beef was just added to the hot pot and the wine was poured.

Alan Walker leaned back in his chair, looking at a circle of entrepreneurs, investors, and engineers, and casually remarked:

“Stop asking what this era has done to Old Deng. Old Deng hasn’t died. He has just been compressed, crushed, abstracted by this era, and ultimately turned into a token. In the past, they were people, seniors, bosses, experts, a whole set of experience and judgment; today, they have been broken down into smaller, lighter, cheaper, more callable units. In the past, they were called people, today they are called tokens.”

There was a moment of silence at the table. Because everyone knew this was not an emotion, it was a reality.

What has changed is not just tools, jobs, and industries; it is the very way people exist.

The cruelest part is not being eliminated, but being dismantled first.

Many people think that the scariest thing about this era is unemployment. But that’s not it. The real fear is that before you leave the stage, you have already been dismantled.

Your time, experience, expression, judgment, processes, habits will all be broken down into smaller parts, extracted, reused, and transferred.

In the past, people were valuable because many abilities could only grow on that person. What this era wants is not a complete person, but the part of you that can be called upon the most.

The first principles are very simple:

• What can be expressed can be recorded.

• What can be recorded can be organized.

• What can be organized can be learned.

• What can be learned can ultimately be compressed into a token.

So Old Deng hasn’t suddenly lost value. Rather, the most valuable things about them no longer need to be completely attached to them for the first time.

This is the cold part:

The world is beginning to feel that it doesn’t need you as a complete person to continue using you.

What has disappeared from Old Deng is not the position, but the premium of the “whole person.”

Alan said something heavy that night:

"In the past, companies hired a person, but now the system only buys the most useful small segment of that person."

In the past, an Old Deng was valuable not only because he could work. But also because he had seen cycles, tripped over pitfalls, led teams, knew when to advance, when to retreat, and understood where problems would arise.

All these things used to count as part of “this person.” You had to invite this person in to gain those added values.

But today, more and more things are starting to be valued apart from “people.”

• A phrase can be extracted.

• A process can be copied.

• A decision-making framework can be retained.

The most productive parts of a position will be retained, while the remaining emotions, fatigue, hesitation, and physical state are treated as noise.

To put it bluntly, this era is doing something very cold: breaking people down into usable parts and unusable parts.

And the most painful part for Old Deng lies here.

The value of their generation comes precisely from their wholeness.

But the new era does not recognize wholeness, only whether it can be dismantled, whether it can be calculated after dismantling, and whether it can be adjusted after calculation.

So Old Deng hasn’t died. It’s just that the most valuable “whole person” on them is rapidly depreciating. What remains is only the parts that can burn the most and be called upon the most.

That part is called token.

It’s not that experience has become ineffective; it’s that experience has for the first time detached from its owner.

Many people say that experience will always have value. This statement is only half true.

Experience certainly has value. The question is, does experience still need to belong to you?

In the past, experience could only follow people. Masters led apprentices, bosses led teams, seniors mentored juniors. Experience was transmitted slowly, so it was valuable.

Now it’s different. Experience has begun for the first time to detach from its owner and exist independently.

The judgments, sequences, nuances, and habits formed by a person over a decade start to become extractable, imitable, and reorganizable. It no longer only belongs to the person who speaks, acts, or makes decisions.

This is the true loss for many Old Dengs. It’s not that no one respects them anymore, but that the things they were most proud of are being stripped away from “this person” and becoming public capabilities, becoming the foundational material of systems.

In the past, experience was a moat. Now experience is starting to become fuel.

You work hard your whole life, and the most heart-wrenching thing is not that you haven’t left anything behind.

It’s precisely that you’ve left behind too much, so much that these things no longer require your physical presence.

The moment a person feels most powerless is when they know they are unwilling but still have to use it.

In this segment, Alan spoke lightly, but it was the hardest to bear.

In the past, when people faced machines, they at least knew that it was an external thing. You could reject it, refuse it, or push against it.

This time is different.

Many people say they don’t like it, but they have already become dependent on it. Writing requires it, making proposals requires it, organizing materials requires it, responding to emails requires it, even comforting themselves and persuading others has begun to rely on it.

The problem is not whether you like it or not. The problem is that if you don’t use it, you will be slow, and if you are slow, you will fall behind.

Thus, many people are not accepting it voluntarily; they simply have no choice.

This is the true feeling of powerlessness.

You know that once you hand over many things, it will be hard to get them back. You know that part of you is being replaced, diluted, and re-priced. But when you wake up the next day, you still have to continue learning, continue using, continue adapting.

It’s not that you are not aware. It’s precisely because you are too aware that it’s even harder.

In a certain sense, this generation has already stepped into that famous line from “The Matrix”:

“Welcome to the desert of the real.”

Literally, it is saying: welcome to the real world.

But viewed today, it sounds more like a cold joke.

In the past, everyone thought positions, experience, expertise, and authority were real and solid until the era of new intelligent agents truly pressed down, and everyone realized that the so-called real world is merely the surface exposed after the collapse of the old order.

And there’s an even harsher one:

“There is no spoon.”

In “The Matrix,” this phrase means that the things you think are solid, objective, and unshakable may just be some constructed appearance.

The same goes for today. Many people have always believed that people would always be hired, respected, and priced as complete units.

But the new era is proving that what the system truly needs may never have been a complete person, but just those parts of a person that can be dismantled, called upon, and compressed.

• Knowing clearly that you can’t stop it,

• Knowing clearly that you are unwilling,

• Knowing clearly that in the end, you still have to walk in yourself.

In the end, a person’s life will be melted down into something more convenient for circulation.

When people are young, they often feel they need to leave something behind in their lifetime.

Companies, works, methodologies, reputation, the people they’ve led, judgments after seeing through the world.

Today, many people will slowly discover that they have left behind something, but the way has changed.

• The things you have written will be dismantled.

• The words you have spoken will be absorbed.

• The order in which you work will be organized.

• The judgments, aesthetics, experiences, and nuances you have honed will ultimately become more refined, more fragmented, more standardized, and more convenient for circulation.

They will continue to exist. They just won’t exist in the form of “your whole.”

This is the most desolate part.

A person works hard their whole life, always thinking they are slowly building up their life. But when the new era comes, many heavy things have been reprocessed: thinned out, scattered, compressed, numbered, and priced.

What remains is not how many detours you’ve taken, how many nights you’ve endured, or how many grievances you’ve tolerated. What remains is those parts that are easiest to absorb.

It’s not that you’ve lived in vain.

But rather that many things you’ve manifested in life no longer require you as a person.

Old Deng hasn’t died; he just heard the sound of himself breaking down into pieces earlier than others.

Ultimately, Old Deng is not a specific age group. Today’s Old Deng is simply everyone tomorrow.

You think you are still young, fast, and can keep up.

But as long as this world continues to move forward, there will come a day when your most familiar ways of doing things will become outdated, your best skills will be dismantled, and your proudest experiences will be compressed into smaller units, flowing into a system you may not like but cannot avoid.

So this article is not just about the crisis of middle-aged people. It is a colder reality:

In this era, everyone will ultimately be forced into smaller units.

• Time will be more fragmented,

• Attention will be more scattered,

• Work will be dismantled into finer details,

• Experience will be extracted more thoroughly,

• Your sense of existence will increasingly depend on whether you can be quickly understood, quickly priced, and quickly called upon.

What’s even more brutal is that this doesn’t even feel like a direct war.

It feels more like a dimensionality reduction attack from “The Three-Body Problem.”

It’s not that you’re not hardworking enough, not smart enough, or that you haven’t struggled.

But rather that the entire set of things upon which you relied—experience, dignity, rhythm, integrity—is being flattened along with the rules.

There is a cold line in “The Three-Body Problem”:

“Weakness and ignorance are not obstacles to survival; arrogance is.”

Viewed today, the most dangerous arrogance is still believing you can stand completely outside this new set of rules, still believing that the old way of pricing “people” will continue to be effective.

And there’s a more heartbreaking line:

“Give civilization to time, not give time to civilization.”

This line was originally very grand.

But placed in today’s context, it feels like a kind of irony.

The era will not continue to respect you according to the old ways simply because you have accumulated time. It will only extract, compress, and circulate what you have accumulated over decades, and then tell you:

This is the new civilization.

This is the true change of the times.

The harshest part of “Old Deng hasn’t died; he just became a token” is not mocking age or being outdated.

But rather it exposes many things that people are unwilling to articulate:

This era doesn’t necessarily have to kill you.

It just needs to process you into a form that is more suitable for circulation, and that’s enough.

As the hot pot was nearing its end, there weren’t many people speaking at the table. Alan finished his last sip of wine and simply said:

“Don’t laugh at Old Deng lightly in the future. Old Deng hasn’t lost. Old Deng just heard the sound of himself being compressed into a token earlier than you.”