One would not expect to find a knitting machine at the Mobile World Congress (MWC). Agreed that it is no longer just a mobile phone fair and that the latest smartphone models have been replaced by robots and virtual reality glasses, but from there to talking about the industrial revolution in Catalonia is a stretch. In a stand wrapped in the lines of old textile factories, Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCapital) wanted to reclaim the past of local companies at the event, seeing how innovations that occurred many centuries ago have ended up shaping the business present.
If one has to talk about when Catalonia began to stand out, one must undoubtedly think of factories like Bonaplata, installed on Tallers street at the end of the 19th century. It was the first in Spain to use steam power to move textile machines made of cast iron. A sector that not only boosted the economy but also served to develop others, such as the pharmaceutical industry, thanks to all the knowledge generated around dyes, and even computing. It was also in Barcelona where the country's first computer emerged, at Telesincro on Diputació street. And the legacy of textile factories was palpable even in memory cards, where weavers were in charge of wiring the boards, made up of an infinity of threads.
However, at the largest international congress of technological innovation, not everything was going to be about the past. In a few steps, MWCapital returns to the present, where Telesincro's first device has been transformed into a supercomputer capable of replicating the human heart based on the pulses of congress attendees. The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and the spin-off Elem Biotech are responsible for manufacturing digital humans with the aim of advancing towards personalized medicine to prevent diseases and cure them better. Specifically, it can be used to test how certain medications work, based on massive data analysis and the use of artificial intelligence (AI), which allows accelerating the time needed to validate therapies by testing them on many virtual twins.
But not only that. Following the thread of those innovations that began with the steam engine in the textile industry, brands like Desigual are now starting to apply technology to design clothes using AI, provided by the startup Fermat. This way, some mental schemes are broken, and new formulas, difficult for a human brain to imagine, are tested. It doesn't mean it has to go hand in hand with good taste, as happens to some congressmen who try to define a blue coat with newspaper prints or red sneakers with letters.
Some still incipient uses presented by MWCapital, which are not coincidentally surrounded by the area where the technology congress includes future proposals. In the second edition of Journey to the Future, there are some somewhat dystopian technologies like the flying car from the American company Alef Aeronautics. Designed to take to the air when the driver ---with a pilot's license--- encounters an accident or heavy traffic, the prototype seen these days in Barcelona is in the testing phase, after having received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. According to the company, the first vehicles are expected to hit the market by the end of 2025 with a price of 300,000 dollars.
A proposal that may be unrealistic, and above all expensive and potentially chaotic, which takes over from one seen a year ago at the show, Elon Musk's failed Hyperloop supersonic capsule. The flying car, which does not fly at the Mobile, is accompanied by an autonomous vehicle that serves coffee, following the philosophy of why go to a coffee shop if the coffee shop can come to you. Conceived by the Italian Rhea and following the model of on-demand buses, it functions as a portable coffee machine, selecting the type of drink on a screen and collecting it in a few minutes, and hopes to start being used in China.
Keeping our feet on the ground thanks to quantum
To one side of this futuristic area is the Quantum Flagship, organized by the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) to disseminate information about quantum technologies, a further step in physics that opens up many new possibilities. For many, its proposals may sound impossible and very distant, also complicated, but they are much more realistic than a flying car or an autonomous barista/vehicle. While waiting for quantum computers to arrive, for which there is still a long way to go even though they get all the attention, other areas such as quantum encryption and communication are being developed.
There is Quside, a spin-off of ICFO that specializes in the generation of random numbers to solve tasks such as evaluating the risk of assets held by a financial entity, which requires very complex calculations, or making online banking more secure, now that scams are such a concern. More useful solutions while waiting to see if cars end up flying.