Fear or inspiration?

The times we are living in are increasingly uncertain.

To many this is a source of fear, to others of inspiration.

The future is a fiction, so far, for it is a story to write together, where the only limits are our imagination and our ability to understand the world around us.

It does not matter whether it is about 2035 or 2050, our ability to analyze current trends and factors of change can help us characterize possible futures.

Together with our ability to act.

Why 2035 or 2050?

Focusing on a distant future can only be a distraction, some may say … or is it necessary to consider a wider horizon to fully understand change of — and in — the way the web economy works?

I’m not thinking, in this piece, of forecast or of technological progress, but of the ability to think freely about the types of society and the people we could find based on trends, technologies and movements already apparent.

Changes we have witnessed in our lives can turn pale compared to those ahead of us. The scenarios are stories that we tell ourselves about the possible future, they can be comforting, bewildering, entertaining, scary, stimulating or maybe even depressing. But using them to help prepare ourselves for what may be and to consider strategies to try to drive the various vectors is not wrong. The opposite.

An example to explain myself.

Human systems are putting our planetary system under strain, in many respects almost irreparably. From a world in which both systems move towards collapse, we must have the strength to find the way where sympathetic symbiosis is the basic line for all activities on our planet. To help us understand and plan our common future, though, we must push ourselves to imagine the possible one, going beyond daily life, imagining what we hope to be.

We live in a world characterized by complexity and uncertainty. Climate change, loss of biodiversity, scarcity of resources threaten future generations. This will require an urgent collaborative global action in the next decade. Meanwhile digital, technology, urbanisation and climate change will affect communities, businesses and economies, radically influencing every aspect of our lives. The future, 2050 and beyond, will be determined by our ability to face it thanks to present environmental and social challenges, entailing modifications to satisfy the needs of nearly ten billion people who will live mostly in urban areas (perhaps, post pandemics the phenomenon could be attenuated, at least temporarily).

Can we imagine a society that uses up resources at a lower speed than that at which the environment regenerates itself?

Can we imagine a society where, protecting the peculiarities of various people, there are fair, balanced and ethical social structures?

Is it possible to stem biodiversity loss and safeguard areas needing protection, without penalizing the enjoyment that people can rightfully get from them?

Can an system of artificial intelligence provide daily updates on food waste, carbon emissions and so on?

Is it that inconvenient to live in symbiosis with the planet, handling it in a correct way?

If in 2025 there was a global famine and it lasted a couple of years, could we resist?

If in 2040 there was the coldest winter on record, what would absorb more energy to face the problem? Would accumulators hold?

Is it true that systems for waste disposal, energy, production, countryside etc. can’t be reconverted?

Mankind lives today under a self-imposed slavery.

Is an “economy of us” thinkable?

If there were riots and ardent disobedience, organized, intelligent, well-ordered and effective, we could heal the planet. Because after all I don’t expect neither governments, nor multinational corporations, nor the web giants, nor intellectuals (missing in action, except when it comes to criticize Greta) to get involved and take action for this.

You know, I still think that giving good examples can work.

But it takes generosity and good will.

A lot of new types of jobs have been created, most of them dangerous and indesirable, urbanisation has been intensified well beyond the boundaries of urban growth, many people live with low income, crushed between the cogency and the aspiration that brought them in the big centres, it seems that bees are superfluous and fish endless, we look with curiosity at surrogate pseudo-proteins … Greentocracy, that’s how they call the opposite thought.

Let’s look at nature for recreational activities, to renew cultivations, let’s leave the Amazon rainforest alone, space, and deep-sea mining.

Sources of water. But, can a society where access to sources is limited, where private companies hold the monopoly over most of the water in the world?

People and agricultural systems suffer from climate change and extreme weather conditions.

Rain and archaic depuration system can’t be the only sources relied upon.

Not that the problem of food supply is different or less severe.

Or that of health care.

Isolationis. Societies are guided by fear of the stranger and of the different.

Can a society manage flows of people by setting up refugee camps resembling controlled hells?

Have we not been for too long dominated by the widespread use of smart drugs manipulating the brains of the mass?

Well then, turbo-economies have failed? At least in (large) part?

Why should we be the first to do it? Not in my backyard. We keep hearing it because the absence of dialogue still dominates.

Philanthropy and a new digital humanism can go mainstream, at the center of the stage can return health, sociality and culture, we can have governments committed to improving society instead of chasing problems older than themselves, we can take people out of poverty and have an inclusive society, because hunger, thirst and food deprivation are not a predestination.

Life is good, so far.

But not for all. Not only because of the pandemic.

As usual, ready to debate.

A smile, Nicola