Journey into the Future

Returning from a Journey into the Future

I spent the first week visiting the giants of Silicon Valley, and the second one lost in Singularity University’s kaleidoscope of world-changing ideas. What have I learned? I’ve recounted some of it in the spur of the moment, with daily videos made with my cellphone and posted on my Facebook profile and on this blog. You can watch them again in the following video, if you wish. But I haven’t stopped at those first excited reflections, unleashed by my adrenaline and by my astonishment for the new knowledge within reach.

After returning to Italy, I took some time to ponder on the stream of suggestions and shocking ideas that overwhelms you after an experience like that. And I realized that my “journey into the future” has broaden the range of my reflections on the issues that are closest to my heart, those issues that I brought along as speaker on the stage of the World Business Forum and at the other international events (on which you’ll find the video story in this blog): right profit, interconnection between the people as an historical opportunity for change, the inclusion of a growing number of human beings in shaping the world of tomorrow. Which won’t certainly be rosy from the start. On the contrary: it will be affected by an increasing number of problems, which have to be dealt with right away, by suggesting solutions, ideas and inventions.

I came back from my scientific technology journey with a certainty: man is at the center of all things.

I’ve been toying for weeks with a thought that captivates me and inspires me, the thought of a Digital Humanism. That space of possibilities that arises at the crossroads between the principles of Economics 0.0 and Technology, meant as the digital pervasiveness typical of our era. An era where the potentiality of a global change is not trapped any longer in the classic dichotomy between “revolution” and “evolution”, between a sudden and violent rift and a democratic and slow alteration. And where everybody, from single citizens to companies, States, scientific communities and schools of thought, can stand a chance in a new territory. The territory of “coopetion”, an hybrid between competition and cooperation. Main way to make a difference, to create personal and common benefits, capable of permeating the world in which we all live.

It’s really a fantastic time to be alive.