What world do we want in 2048? And who is already working somewhere in the world to make it happen? Two disruptive questions and one protagonist: Alfons Cornella. A physicist and three times a rebel, like the poet Maria-Mercè Marçal. Coinciding with the September rentrée, Alfons has the good habit of giving an annual lecture at the Pedrera Auditorium and selling out all tickets in the heart of Barcelona. It must not be an easy task, but the truth is that he is backed by a hundred innovation projects and more than 35 books. Honestly, it is well worth listening to him and learning from him.
“We must understand the present to build possible futures”
“We must understand the present to build possible futures,” he begins shortly before reminding us that we are living through a change of era. Geopolitics, power, and democracy. “We have a growing need for humility. Never has there been so much information as now, and organizing data is an exceptional challenge,” he assures. Too many things are happening everywhere, but the great classics fortunately do not die, such as, for example, the thought revolution of the philosopher Immanuel Kant with dignity, freedom, and structures that guarantee peace.
The number three is indeed liked
The historian Peter Watson points out that the human tendency is to seek a third between extremes. The Holy Trinity. In Kant’s case, it was the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, just as the economist Adam Smith wrote about land, labor, and capital. There are no two without three or virtue is found in balance. “The number three is pleasing to the human brain and to nature. The problem is the extremes. We must manage tensions, find balance, and experiment with third solutions. We must reinvent diplomacy to be able to talk because now we all have an arms fever,” Cornella points out. A good warning to sailors.
Peace can be economically more interesting than war.
Paraphrasing the economist Mariana Mazzucato, peace can be economically more interesting than war. We have too much information or perhaps, we lack information to know what is really true and to verify the verifier. Things happen if people do not react. Thus, the Radicle Civics movement proposes prototyping economic and social institutions to solve global crises. The journalist Georgetown Monbiot points to conversation as a key element of an institution: “We must re-establish conversation as civic infrastructure.”
The power of conversation and contexts
Yes, the power of a good conversation can change the world we want in 2048, as can moral awakening and talent at the service of what really matters. Journalist Omar El Akhad claims that "silence is a moral decision" and therefore makes a firm call for individual responsibility.
Alfons also recalls a campaign that went around the world and says: You didn’t fight your way into Harvard to end up in a bullshit job. That is, "you didn't fight to get into Harvard to end up in a shitty job." Clear and Catalan. Thus, the path leads us to solutions such as The School for moral ambition, Change begins here from the World Economic Forum or the Edgers movement where "rebellion is a positive force that questions the status quo through the future."
We must re-establish conversation as civic infrastructure.
As Professor Otto Scharner says, we must create contexts where interesting people meet. Meanwhile, there are 15,000 satellites orbiting the world and beware because half of them are already from Starlink. Things will happen in space and on earth and we must rethink our way of living and working. "Anxiety is a consequence of trying to do everything perfectly," Cornella points out. And perfection, as they said in my school, does not exist...
What is progress?
For now, we continue to look at progress from an economic impact perspective. The big question, however, is whether progress is now technology or should we redefine it towards people? How can we live well within the planet's limits? Geographer Samuel Miller argues that we must make a radical reading of what progress entails. Alfons proposes an interesting formula that says that real progress is the sum of human capabilities, public value, and future freedom divided by the sum of ecological damage, inequality, and systemic fragility. From there, the best possible result must be obtained.
Cornella explains with different examples that "there are many people inventing the future and that the future is solved by doing things well millions of times." This also applies to climate optimism, to the new science that comes to demonstrate impossibilities, but which continues to need resources, or to "good" AI that enjoys bad press, needs a lot of energy and even more education.
Thinking, for pleasure
Alfons claims that "we are in a fascinating world" where we must rediscover thought with attention, reading, and imagination, while also reinventing management and making better decisions in the face of complexity. A new social contract of three awaits us, that is, people, nature, and technology. In fact, we are already facing the new need to learn to think -for pleasure- and to remember, as Alfons concludes, that "the future is ingenuity and naivety."
A new social contract of three awaits us, that is, people, nature, and technology.
The auditorium of La Pedrera empties. What world do we want in 2048? Many of us who have listened to Alfons attentively still ask ourselves, as we exit through the main door of one of Gaudí's great wonders. And, surely, we will never stop asking ourselves because knowledge can never be taken for granted and definitively, the present must be understood to build possible futures.
"I unlearn, therefore I exist," as our colleague Alfons Cornella says.