IDEAS TO SHAPE THE FUTURE

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.