IDEAS TO SHAPE THE FUTURE

The book that rested on his chest slid to the floor and violently hit the mat. The blow woke him with a start. He opened one slightly bleary eye and was suddenly invaded by a feeling of resentment, of subtle restlessness.

The crackle from the fireplace, of half-consumed firewood, soon soothed him. He managed to get up out of his chair, slowly, that pain in his hip forever limiting his movement. He opened his mouth in a full yawn, scratching the double chin that the years had drawn on his face, now aged and languishing. He looked around trying to orient himself from the deep lethargy that clung to him; those naps always kidnapped him.

His dazed look drew a glossy library, where he used to spend hours submerged between the pages of books, subjugated by the smell of wood and resin. “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library,” he laughed to himself, remembering Borges’ quote, as if he hadn’t woken up from a nap in this life but in the other. He looked down at the floor and saw the culprit of his abrupt awakening, an old copy, almost a hundred and fifty years old now, by Aldous Huxley. He adored those first editions, and when it was published way back in 1931, Brave New World was quite a revolution. Although he wasn’t born until fifty years after that milestone, literature was eternal, making him feel optimistic, humbly victorious.

He picked the book up from the floor and inspected the worn cover while meditating: society was safe from the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon, those demonic breeds masterfully described by Huxley. Then he questioned himself: was it possible that today’s society had not yet eradicated wars or poverty? That we still struggled not to harm the environment? That we continue to be vulnerable to disease, far from the utopia of immortality? He had come to accept the imperfections of coexistence, that education was not the backbone of current societies, that happiness (oh, such a capricious yet comforting concept) did not shelter each individual and each community with its mantle… And, even so, even knowing that the world was far from those ideals, he felt proud because we had not fallen into the devilish temptation…

– “Do you need something? A coffee, perhaps?” – the metallic voice of his Artificial Friend interrupted him. Helpful, submissive.

“I need you to shut up. Don’t bother me.” His response was dry and dominant.

He picked up the glass of wine that he had set, before his nap, on the modern edition of Goethe’s Faust. His daughter had given him the book for Christmas and on the cover was the black silhouette of Mephistopheles on an indigo blue background. Yes, our society avoided a pact with the devil, he thought, and although technological advances were a never-ending source of temptations, we knew how to bend them to our will, to recognize the infinite risks they present. These days, technologies, digital or biological, were at our service, not the other way around.

Also, he smiled to himself, we’ve avoided succumbing to the cosmetic and self-imposed happiness with which we were invited to taste the apple, that neo-inquisition of “correctness” that would have turned us into servants, into castes of nothing, as in the book of Huxley. Rather, we dedicate ourselves to more humble, more respectful deeds, such as the care of seeing, of understanding, each individual, of delving into their singularities, their nuances. We are now far from the pestilence of those who sought to cancel behaviors that were not perversely stereotyped. Even so, one had to be alert, he said to himself, remembering Camus: “stupidity has a knack for getting its way”.

If fifty years ago he had had to guess at the current world, he would never have foreseen the speed of change (and back then, there were plenty of visionaries). It is thanks to literature, among other arts, that we have managed to preserve our memory, feed our imagination, and promote common sense, without which we would never had been able to guard against that threat to the essence of human nature.

Our society was imperfect, he smiled proudly.

© IE Insights.

In the next 10 to 50 years, we can expect to see continued advancements in technology, advancements that could solve major world problems and also make some of our current science fiction possible. These advancements depend on our ability to manipulate information (AI), extract clean energy, and converge information systems with biology.

Artificial intelligence will become increasingly sophisticated. We have already been able to collect and store information on behalf of virtually every person and machine on the planet. The internet has now become a massive library that can increasingly be used to find or predict information to make decisions automatically. This trend will not only continue but will drive a global change larger than the Industrial Revolution. We see this in the possibilities of ChatGPT, avatars, and machines that will seamlessly interact, like with humans. These ideas have been illustrated in sci-fi movies such as iRobot, Her, Ex Machina, the Matrix, and others that combine AI with robotics, virtual reality, and increasingly powerful computing.

Another major theme of science and technology is the possibility of new energy sources, ranging from clean hydrogen to cold fusion. Energy, particularly clean energy at a low cost, is not only a driver for the economy and global sustainability, but also for clean water, which is abundant if energy costs become negligent. Our energy currently comes directly from the sun like solar cells; indirectly from the sun like gas, oil, etc.; or from within the structure of atoms such as nuclear. So far, the most inexpensive energy source has been from carbon-based fuels. However, the cost to transform the sun’s energy directly to electricity, or to synthetically produced fuels, or to use fuel cells, has been decreasing. In the near term, cheaper carbon-free fuels are of course needed for global sustainability. In the longer term of 50 or more years, cold fusion, dark matter, or other atomic-level energy sources could provide an almost limitless source of clean energy, which could enable a new economy, global sustainability, limitless clean water, amplification of our food production, and low-cost manufacturing and supply chains.

The third breakthrough in science and technology is bio-convergence, which is also related to synthetic biology. Bio-convergence refers to the integration of biology, engineering, and computing to create new technologies and solutions. Advances in synthetic biology, biotechnology, and genomics will make it possible to manipulate biological systems, such as cells and organisms, in new and innovative ways. If we can connect our computer systems to brain and nerve interfaces, we will enable prosthetics that a person can “feel”, replacements for eyesight, digital twins of humans that can speed up drug discovery, and accurately predict the outcomes of medications. The ideas related to bio-convergence can also be seen in sci-fi movies that examine genetic engineering and cyber-biological systems such as Gattaca, Elysium, Minority Report, and Jurassic Park.

In conclusion, incredible science and technology-based advancements are possible from AI/computing/robotics systems, energy sources, and bio-convergence.

© IE Insights.

May 10th, 2073. Madrid, Spain.

Estimated total population on Earth: ten billion five hundred and thirty-two thousand, six hundred and twenty-nine people.

People on Earth suffering hunger: none.

The emergence of the first cells on the early Earth was the culmination of 750 million years of chemical and geographical processes. Another 3.5 billion years of continuous learning, spontaneous mutations, and natural selection were needed to allow complexity to thrive, and to enable massive biodiversification of organisms during the Ordovician period. Unsustainable human activity could have washed out years of evolution in a nano-fraction of time.

On another time scale, in 1977, Frederick Sanger developed the first DNA sequencing technique. It took scientists 26 years and three billion USD to fully decipher the human genome. But once we had figured out the code, in less than five years, the world’s first genetic modification of human embryos was reported, unleashing a new era of possibilities for humanity. Events causing major exponential (non-linear) change are known to be disruptive. And once triggered, they’re unstoppable.

Back in 2023, finding a model that allowed us to shift sustainability from a “cost” to a “driver of growth and value creation” was at the top of everyone’s mind. Climate change was threatening the global economy. At a time were 40% of the food generated was thrown unused, how could we starve out 3.1 million children every year? As suggested by Voltaire, common sense isn’t so common.

The question became, how could we evolve from a culture of extraction to monetizing regeneration? How could we bring the systems of Earth back to health to revert the situation?

Tensions existed between the sustainability goals that climate activists were imposing and general business objectives. At least, it was seen this way from a corporate perspective. But, of course, a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. Tricky, but true. Many times, it’s a matter of using the right lens, zooming out, or changing the time horizon. Is it us who impact? Or are we about to be impacted?

Wicked problems are always my favorite. The trouble with these mysteries was that the theory is so complex that no human mind can integrate all the variables and anticipate scenarios of the consequences that possible solutions can bring.

The goal back in 2023 was to achieve resource maximization to drive systems change towards regeneration, basically to generate a synthetic ecosystem they called “The Matrix”. For this, a pilot study was launched in the south of Spain during the summer. Excessive groundwater depletion was jeopardizing water supply for industries and citizens in the region. The idea was that the Matrix could have control over resource allocation and pricing; materials and energy would flow from one unit to another according to production and consumption demands. It was to be a perfect coordination where modularity enabled a set of distinct yet interdependent organizations to work together without adhering to hierarchy. The ground rules were simple: maximize material and energy, and prioritize transformation over extraction. No leaks and maximum efficiency. There was resistance in the beginning. Governments, private companies, and local owners wouldn’t fully disclose information. but, without this information in full, the system would never find its way through for joint value creation – so to avoid public disclosure of private data, blockchain was used to ensure transparency, immutability, and autonomy of data, materials, and products along the value chain. Applying the blockchain and big-data technologies also helped determine fair pricing and trading schemes.

The results were positive. Groundwater storage levels were recovering, and the units involved (public or private) had seen significant cost optimization. The Matrix unit was replicated throughout the world. However, there was no global interconnection between them and the model therefore failed to reach its full potential.

Einstein died with an unresolved equation, “the theory of everything”. The equation intended to be a coherent theoretical framework of physics to fully explain all aspects of the universe, how each component is created and all the links and interconnections. Putting this theory into practice would be reverse engineering, akin to mimicking the superpowers of mother nature. This, in fact, is what quantum computing is all about, it manipulates the quantum state of atoms, in a controlled way, to process huge amounts of data very efficiently and a million times quicker than the silica computers we used back then (microchips) in the first quarter of the century.

April 22 now marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern quantum environmental movement. No one knows who switched on the quantum computer, or why they did it without consent, but once it became active, all barriers vanished. The Q-Days had arrived and they are here to stay. Since then, things have changed, some say for the better, others for worse. It’s a matter of perspective and appreciation (it always comes back to our way of seeing). The fact remains, though, that in less than 30 years, natural recovery has skyrocketed. We all have food to eat, water to drink, and a decent life to live. I guess Nature and Quantum are indeed soulmates and they finally found a common language to save us all.

You are what you speak. If you ask people around the world what groups they belong to, many will name a linguistic one. Danes, Catalans, Tibetans, Kurds, Arabs, and so on are, in large part, what they are because they speak Danish, Catalan, Tibetan, Kurdish, and Arabic. Unfortunately, our linguistic identities are often in conflict. Spain is one place where such issues are in the newspapers almost every day.

How will this change in the next 50 years? One prediction is that machine translation will soften such conflicts. Many people already use tools like Google Translate on a daily basis. Some even use the tools in which you can speak one language into your smartphone, and it will speak the translated sentence a moment later. These are bound to improve, so much so that some people think that this will replace the need to learn foreign languages. Everyone will understand everyone.

I am not so sure. For one thing, smaller languages are badly underserved by such technologies. English-to-Spanish automated translation is good; Basque-to-Icelandic is rather worse. Second, this prediction treats language as, primarily, text. But people will still want to have warm, face-to-face conversations. Imagine a first date mediated through the translation on even a miraculously improved smartphone, and you will have a sense of why a universal translator in your pocket will not remove all barriers between people.

Another prediction is that English will sweep the world, becoming everyone’s second language. In this scenario, it would become less and less associated with Britain and the United States, and instead what was once dreamed for Esperanto: the neutral language that a Pole uses to talk to a Brazilian. The value of learning English is growing literally every day, as a generation that has never learned English passes away, and one that has never lived without it grows up.

But English sweeping everything in its path would also be sad in many ways: a homogenizing of linguistic life. No one wants to live in a monoculture. So, my wish for the future of multilingualism is that regardless of whether machine translation or English becomes the standard for business and tourism, that all people—with Europeans taking the lead—learn another language besides English.

If Spaniards learn French, Germans learn Italian, Japanese speakers learn Korean, Argentines learn Portuguese, and my fellow Americans learn Spanish, then we can have the best of all worlds: an identity rooted in a native language, a useful auxiliary for practical and wide communication, and the knowledge of another language (perhaps that of one’s neighbors) to foster intimate human connections. Multilingualism is not easy, but it is certainly possible, and its benefits—for reducing conflict and for fostering understanding and empathy—are hard to overstate.

© IE Insights.

The future of entrepreneurship and innovation is bright. Early-stage startups have the chance to capitalize on the trends shaping the world and create successful businesses and community. Some of the most important trends that are shaping the future of entrepreneurship and innovation include:

The rise of artificial intelligence. AI is rapidly becoming more sophisticated and is already being used to create new products and services. For example, AI is being used to develop self-driving cars, virtual assistants, and medical diagnostic tools. Companies like OpenAI, DeepMind, and Waymo are at the forefront of AI research and development.

The increasing importance of data. Data is becoming increasingly important in the world of business. Businesses are using data to make better decisions, develop new products and services, and target their marketing campaigns. Companies like Databricks, Tableau, and Domo are providing businesses with the tools and infrastructure they need to make the most of their data.

The rise of community-driven companies. They are businesses built on solid relationships with their customers and partners. They often have a clear mission and purpose. Community-driven companies include Canva (whose mission is empowering the design community), Airbnb (whose mission is to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere), and Notion (whose mission is to make it possible for everyone to shape the tools that shape their lives in community).

These are just some of the trends that are shaping the future of entrepreneurship and innovation.

© IE Insights.

Everything is changing. The pandemic has led to a boom in the use of technology. It has also profoundly changed the way we study, the way we work, the way we do business, the way we shop, and also, of course, the way we relate to one another. Social networks have gained a level of influence, for better or for worse, that never ceases to amaze us. In addition, there is growing concern about how society is becoming increasingly polarized, and how the middle class in many countries is gradually disappearing. Migration and climate change are high on the agenda and the word “sustainable” – with all that it implies – is gaining traction in our businesses, our cities, and in the world at large. The current geopolitical tensions worry us all, because we cannot see a way out of the conflicts that cause so much suffering. So, the question is: What can we do to shape the future?

We must find a way to look ahead with serenity, hope, and optimism. It is easy to play the victim who does nothing but complain or ends up feeling overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the issues. Today, we must tap into three of our natural capacities: creativity, entrepreneurship, and teamwork. Human beings are social creatures, and therefore, the solution to the major challenges ahead is not in the “you” or the “I”, but in the “we”, in collaborative intelligence. You might be wondering what this has to do with the future of health, well-being, and human potential? I would say everything, and I would like to explain why.

Everything in human nature is connected and so, in our body, mind, and spirit, we will find a way to unlock our true potential. Companies today are surprised and bewildered by the alarmingly high levels of burnout among workers, regardless of their status. The increase of anxiety and depression in society is daunting, and the degree of uncertainty experienced by younger people is creating major distress. Many of them are perhaps wondering where their lives are going, whether they should be focused on earning money, or on being happy.

The future of health, well-being, and human potential will be what we want it to be. And this decision will affect every single part of our lives. Universities, companies, and societies must either revolve around people, their health and well-being, or they will not generate that explosion of potential that needs to emerge for our desired and extraordinary outcomes. These results cannot be achieved if we see people as vehicles for profit rather than as human beings who want to give their all. The best is not what they have, but who they are. So, if we do not all take a more active role, and work together to improve our health, our well-being, and live up to our full potential, we will not be able to tackle the challenges of the future.

This is why we need to take responsibility, today. We need to take care of our bodies by being mindful of what we eat, of the exercise we do, and the hours we rest. We need to focus our minds and concentrate on the here and now, and we need to embrace compassion and forgiveness. Basically, we need to take responsibility for our well-being because our tomorrow depends on it.

Albert Einstein said: “The real problem is in the hearts of men” not in the atomic bomb. If we are well, the world will be well. Einstein himself reminded us that the separation between the inner and the outer world was merely an optical delusion of our consciousness. So, let us all learn to look after ourselves and look after others. If we take this seriously, our future will be much healthier, more harmonious, more balanced, and with a fairer and happier society.

© IE Insights.

Almost every urbanist in Europe agrees that the future of cities should be largely car-free. I agree: cars have made cities more polluted and dangerous, have stopped children playing on the street, and they take up space that could be used for the essential purpose of city life, which is helping people meet. Imagine, for instance, all the encounters, health, and happiness that we could create by turning parking spaces into café terraces, mini-parks, vegetable gardens, ping pong tables, and so on.

But we need to think honestly about the people who will lose out from car-free cities. The deputy mayor of a big German city, which has been taking away parking spaces, muses: “People come up to me and ask, ‘Where can I park my car?’ I say, ‘Firstly, I don’t know. Secondly, it’s not really my problem.’” That’s an unsatisfactory answer to people who are now car-reliant. How can we make the new city work even for many of them?

They will benefit from the advent of the first autonomous vehicles likely to enter common use: driverless buses. The technology to create a driverless car that travels different routes all the time isn’t there yet. Such a vehicle would also be prohibitively expensive for one household, and would mostly just perpetuate the problem of cars taking space from people. But what is within technological reach – and much more useful – is driverless buses each programmed to travel one particular route, back and forth forever. Without a human driver, the cost of a bus approximately halves. That means you could have far more buses traversing the city, reducing the need for private car ownership.

But the most important new vehicle in the post-car city will be the electric bicycle. A decent one costs about €1,000, or about the price of two months’ car ownership, if you count the costs of the car’s depreciation as well as petrol and repairs. E-bikes work even for older people and those in poor health. And since e-bikes can comfortably travel at 25km an hour, they can do the journey from many currently car-reliant suburbs to downtown in about half an hour. That answers a charge often made by the car lobby: that bikes only work for hipsters in city centers. E-bikes extend the domain of cycling. No wonder they are spreading fast. In the Netherlands, the most advanced bicycle country, 57% of new bike sales in 2022 were of e-bikes. Then there are cargo e-bikes, which can carry 25 kilos of freight and could replace many delivery vans.

The car-free city will only be accepted if we can make it work for most of today’s drivers. Happily, that’s doable.