Futurist Gerd Leonhard: The Future Is Created By Optimists - A Conversation with Mathias Sundin

Greetings everybody. I'm Gerd Leonhardt, futurist in Zurich, Switzerland. I'm also the founder of the Good Future Project, a fairly young undertaking to bring together people who have great narratives about the future. And our argument is that the future is better than we think, but most people don't believe it. That's because of all the bad things we hear about the future. And so we started this project to have better narratives, videos, films, film projects, events even to bring together the Good Future crowd and to create a movement that says that the Good future is possible and we can actually make it. The world isn't going to end. Right. And the doors aren't closing, they are opening. That's kind of my chief argument. And today I have with me Matthias Sundin. He runs a company called Warp. Right. Or is it Warp News? Right, Warp News. And he's a member of the Good Future Project. Hello, Matthias.

Hello.

It's great to have you here.

Thank you.

Tell us briefly about what you do and why you're part of the Good Future Project.

Yeah, so I'm involved in two parts of Warp. Warp Institute is a non profit foundation and the goal there is to make the future come sooner. And that's implied. There is that, I think. And we think that the future is going to be better than the present and very much better than the past. So it's implied. It's a good future in that. And a big part of Warp Institute is Warp News, where we write and share fact based optimistic news on technology, science and human progress.

Yeah, I mean, I've been reading it a lot lately. I think it's really great to have an organization that focuses on this. Just recently I read the book by Christiana Figueras, who was the chief negotiator for Paris and actually made the Paris Accord happen more or less in 2015. And she wrote a book called the World We Want or something like that. The World We Choose, I think. And she talks about stubborn optimism. And I think this is just so important also in my work as a futurist because I get waves of people saying the future can't be good. I mean, look at all the things that are going wrong. You know, from Putin to, you know, the elections in Brazil to what have you. People are making arguments that we're going towards like a demise. Right. So I wanted to ask you, why do you have hope and where do you take it from? And what is your belief underneath that this will actually turn out good?

Yeah, I'm what I call a fact based optimist you can, I'm sure you can be born as an optimist and have it in your, in your DNA. And that's fine. It's probably very good. But I look at facts of the world and how the world is progressing and have been progressing for 100,000 years. But especially in the last few hundred years and especially in the last few decades, we've made enormous gains. A billion people have left extreme poverty in just last 30 years or so, for example. But many, many things are improving for humanity that mean we still have big problems. We have huge problems still remaining, but most of them are getting smaller and pretty fast. So I think it's pretty rational to think that that is going to continue if we keep doing the things that took us here. So that's why I look very optimistic on both the present and the future.

Yeah, you know, one of the key arguments I get when I speak about the good future, and that's pretty much almost most of my talks now, people are saying, you know, that's all nice and fine, but don't you agree that people generally speak and are not good? So I get this message a lot from people saying that yeah, it could happen. But haven't you noticed that people do bad things? And by and large we can't rely on people to do the right thing. And I think this is just so completely flawed, this assumption. You know, looking at Rutger Bregman's book Humankind, right. You probably know about this book or Stuart Russell from UC Berkeley, he wrote about human compatible AI and humans, same direction. I think in principle I think we can do the right thing and we are good collaborators. We do a lot of things wrong, we use bad things, we have bad people, but we're perfectly capable and has been proven in history actually. So what's your take on this? You think that's true or you have some facts you can share on that?

Yeah, no, definitely, I agree. And again, if you look at the facts, you see that many, many things, very important things in life is getting better and better. So that must mean that overall people are good or trying to do good things. And just think of the people, you know, most of them aren't bad. They don't try to destroy society or, you know, hurt their neighbors or whatever it is. Most people are good, not entire good, but overall they're good in trying to make the world a little bit of a better place. And when now 8 billion people does that, well, the world is improving. But I think a key component of that is that we're allowed to be free, think freely. I see the. You. You usually say that humanity took off like 300 years ago, 200, 300 years ago, based on the Industrial Revolution. And that was. The Industrial Revolution was, of course, a key component. But something else happened then that I was even more important. And that was a democratic revolution. For the first time, we started to get, or we took human rights. We said we have rights because we are humans. And one of them is freedom of expression, the kind of freedom that you have in a democracy. So that democratic revolution where we can share ideas and have different opinions, I think that's what's really moving humanity forward. And if more people would live in democracies and we have technology to help us share our ideas and discuss them and debate them and all that, then I think the progress will be faster and better. But again, that doesn't mean that everything is good or that everything is moving in the right direction. Like Steven Pinker says, that would be magic. But most things actually are. So when you look at the fact, it's pretty close to magic. But we still have some huge problems left, of course.

Yeah. I mean, I think that there's two reasons for why people think pessimistically about the future. I think one is that technology, like social media, has created this echo chamber of bad things, because that's more sensationalist and the algorithm finds it and it amplifies bad things six to eight times as much as good things on social media. And ever since then, belief in democracy has declined also. So people see all this stuff on social media and they think this is actually what's happening. It's just the AI amplifying stuff so that we stick around more. Right. And then you're looking at Hollywood or Netflix or Bollywood or wherever you're looking in the film business, 98% of the films about the future are dystopian, whether it's Black Mirror or Transcendence or what have you. Or Blade Runner 2046. Right. I mean, that's dystopia. Right. And so we keep hearing about dystopia, and we kind of think this is it. Right. Why are we not hearing other things? And this is, of course, social media is a very, very big point in this. And the other part is that technology companies, on the other hand, they're telling the story of the future from their point of view. Like IBM says, oh, it's going to be all AI that will fix everything. And tech companies are saying, oh, just more tech will fix it. And that's Also not true. So we're stuck between those two worlds. The world of corporate tech and the corporate future tellers like the Metaverse, and then the reality of entertainment and media, which is also negative. And that really needs to change. And this is why we started the Good Future project. Not to prove that the future is good, which you can't, but to work out the story, the narrative. What I like about your organization is the constant reminder of all the good things that are happening that can change the narrative. Today. When you talk to a 27 year old millennial, chances are they will say, you know what? The future, you've messed up everything. People my age messed up everything because we have created 50% of the CO2 in 25 years. That's out there. That's been our accomplishment. And they're saying basically it's that. And then we can't agree on anything. The UN is not doing anything that actually changes anything. And the World Economic Forum is all tilted and they have all these stories. I'm like, come on. So new stories? How do we create new stories? And what is your goal with the organization? To create that new story?

Yeah, no, it's very important for us to, to create this new narrative, as you say, around the future and first realize it's not someone else who's creating that future, it's us. And if you're anyone today, but especially if you're young today, and if you have the luck of being born in a democracy, at least you have bigger opportunities than any generation before to have an impact on, on the future. You don't have to start out a royalty or super wealthy or anything like that. You can start up with a smartphone and a YouTube channel and you can actually have a huge impact on the future. You have to work hard for it. It's not something you can do just easily, but you have that kind of impact on the future. And I think one really important thing is to change the narrative, like you mentioned in Hollywood, for example, or the news media, because almost all every movie about the future is dystopic and it shouldn't be. Star Trek is sort of the lone, the lone optimistic, you know, science fiction out there. And starting is great, but it should be much, much more than that. And I think it's. And that's not just nice to have. It's very important that we have this because that's why the optimism is so important. Because if you, if you can dream of something, if you dream of something that is better for yourself or for humanity or whatever, you you feel you. You have. You get the strength to try to do something, to try to make that dream a reality. So, and. And as always, when you start a new project, company or whatever it is, you run into different obstacles and problems, and you have to get. Get past them. And if you have that vision, that dream of the future, that optimism of the future, it's much. You keep going longer, you have more energy to try to get past those obstacles and actually achieve your dreams. So it's very, very important.

You know the Barbara Hubbard quote, right, when she says, as you see the future, so you act, and as you act, so you become. Right.

Exactly.

And I think that's just so true, and I think it's irresponsible. I think what's happening today is that we have these negative stories overshadowing everything and creating fear, because fear results in extremism, like voting for populists, you know, and voting for strong men, you know, come in and save the world. And also, you know, this kind of despotism, you know, it's like I'm despondent because everything around me is falling apart, right? And that is just the way that I look at things, right? It's just like I've noticed several times, you know, when I'm tired and I don't have any energy left, you know, and I meet somebody like a cab driver or the concierge of the hotel, and I kind of treat them in a way that I've been letting them know that I'm tired and stuff. I get bad things back, right? And when I look positively, I get good things back. I had a taxi driver the other day who I didn't have cash and his card machine was broken, and he took me to New York Airport, and he said, you know what? I live right next by. I was going to close anyway. Don't worry about it. Give me a free ride. Have you ever heard about the New York taxi driver giving you a free ride? You know, now cows don't fly, right? So, I mean, this is kind of like the thing. Let's talk about Kevin Kelly. You're wearing a T shirt with his key message, right? Kevin Kelly, for those that are listening, is of course, the chief maverick of Wired magazine. He's been a futurist forever. He's written at least 10 great books. One of them called the Inevitable, I think, recently. And Kevin is a great mentor, I think, to everyone in the futurist community with his messages. He lives in San Francisco, of course, and he recently had a great talk, I think it was on Big Think, where he talked about why the future should be looked at as optimism. And one of his key messages is that we should not be optimists because we have less problems. We have lots of problems, especially now, but we have more capacity to deal with the problem. We actually have a lot more tools, like climate change. Clearly, we can do it right. We have the tech. We're not defenseless, but we're doing the wrong thing with it. This is back to Buckminster Fuller, who said that humanity is inventing all the right technology and science, but using it for the wrong reasons. So what's your take on Kevin's work? I mean, you're probably in line with a lot of his messages, I assume.

Yes. And this quote on my T shirt here, the future is created by Optimist. It. It was very similar to. He had a pinned tweet that said something very similar. So I reached out to him and said, could you write an article for Warp News with that message? Why do you think the future is created by optimist? And he wrote an article for us. It's still our most read article, actually, every day. It's our most read article day after day after day. And it's called the Case for Optimism. And he turned it into also to a TED Talk that Now has over 2 million views.

Right, but that's the one I was referring to.

Right, exactly. And I believe he's 100% true. It's the people who can envision the future and see, and like I just said before here, dream of that future. Those people are creating the future. The pessimists that just sit there and criticize everything, often very baseless criticism. They don't contribute to the future. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be critical of things. You should absolutely be critical of things and say, hey, this is bad. We need to change this. But if you stop there, if you say this is bad, okay, that doesn't really help much. But you have to add the change part to that. And for that, I think optimists more than anyone else sees those things and get the energy to change those things. I can really recommend both the TED Talk and the article that we have is a little bit longer. It dives a little bit more into this topic. It's really, really great, everything he writes.

Yeah, he's pretty amazing. I mean, I use the Gramsci quote, which I think Kevin also quotes Antonio Gramsci, the Italian philosopher who said we should be looking at the future with pessimism of the mind. And optimism of the. Pessimism of the intellect. Sorry, and optimism of the mind, to which I say optimism of the heart, you know, not losing faith, so to speak, in that this is possible. Right? This is a very important thing. You know, we can question things, we can be pessimistic, we can be inquisitive, we can ask questions, but we have to keep up the perspective that this can be served to the good. Right? It can actually develop into something good. And I think this brings me to a topic that I get a lot when I speak and when I write things, is that people are saying that, okay, this all, you know, you're showing off this utopian Pollyanna kind of world, you know, where everything is hunky dory. And that's just totally naive. Right? I mean, I get this argument a lot from younger people who are saying this is just so naive. Haven't you seen what's happening with the women in Iran? And you know, I'm saying, yeah, I've seen all these things, but you don't have to be naive to have a belief in the good. Right? I'm sure you're hearing that a lot too, in your work.

Yeah, absolutely. Before I die, whenever that is, I hope it's a long time in the future, we see some really exciting research into anti aging. But anyways, before I die, I really want to help change the perspective that optimism is naive. I think it's pessimism that is naive. And for a hundred thousand years, humanity has made progress, first really slowly and then faster and faster. Things are getting better and better. Problems are getting smaller and smaller. But then the pessimist comes there, okay, I think all of this is just going to stop. And it's not just going to stop, it's going to reverse. Based on what? Based on what? We have more opportunities now for good than ever before. Why should all of that stop and turn around? I think that's a very, very naive perspective on how to.

I think it's very cheap also, because when I talk to people and I say, what are your fears about the future? Well, I can list 500 things. This could be happening, this and this and this, and then in the end it just dies. Everything is dead. Right? That would be very easy. And this is what we see in media. It's just very easy to say, this isn't working, this isn't working, this isn'. And I think social media, again, has amplified this because this is what sells what propels entertainment and stuff. And now we're so far with the Metaverse and virtual reality, where we can't distinguish between the entertainment and reality as easily because we watch this and we're saying, yeah, this is what it is. It's like the movie her or it's like, no, it's not actually like that. This is just entertainment. And I think this is something really where I wish we'd have more people making films. One of our main purposes of the Good Feature project is to bake films. And we are in fact working on a good future film, which is a continuation of my previous film, the Good Future from last year, which was shot in Nazarote, but now making it much more, you know, with more people involved and making it more easy to understand, make a real film. That's kind of the project I'm working on right now. Maybe we can collaborate on this as well with a positive narrative. I mean, funny when you look on Netflix, right? The Social Dilemma, for example, totally spot on, but really dystopia, right? I mean, you watch this and you're like, oh, holy shit, you know, what do I do now? And then the other one, the DiCaprio, don't look up. Right, right. Same thing. Very entertaining, totally spot on. But at the end of the film, everybody dies. Yeah, like, oh, no, that's not so good. Do we have any other options? I don't know. Have you seen any films that are not like this? I don't know.

No. Actually, I sort of wrecked my brain around it. And again, Star Trek is sort of the only thing I could come up with that is taking place in an optimistic future. Still a lot of problems, obviously, but, you know, so. Yeah, and I think. I think part of it is that, you see, part of this are sort of how our brain works and we react strongly to fear and danger and all that. But I think it's also laziness from news media and from fiction writers and those. They're so ingrained in all the negativity, they know how to create a story around that. So they don't try anything new really. And this goes for. For news media. They just write their negative stories over and over again. They don't. They never think from the other perspective or never, but very rarely think from the other perspective. And when I talk to news media people, they see it sort of as, okay, they have this perspective of the world is super bad and it's so bad. So sometimes you have to write a positive story of something, oh, I found my long lost brother or whatever, and that's fine, but that's not the kind of news. I, we are trying to create and I think should be creating more real things going on, real changes that making things more, you know, creating more opportunities or making life better, that has to change. But a lot of the inspiration could come from fiction, both books and movies, films. I think that's super important. So that's really why I'm glad you asked me if I wanted to be part of the Good future project, because I think it's a really good, good project. And that was sort of the whole idea around Warp Institute and Warp News is to find people like you and collaborate with them and find others. Because I think together we can really, really change the mindset of humanity.

Yeah, and my work, which gets a lot of discussion when I speak to groups and companies and so I get a lot of feedback on this topic. It's been very important for me. I've been struggling with this for a while, but it's to actually, to dare to go out and say, this is good, right? It's a good thing here and we can actually do this rather than saying all the obstacles because especially in Europe, we are this kind of but society like here in Switzerland or Germany, you say, okay, here are the things that we can do. We can do all these things to improve climate change and to kick, to bring in electric vehicles in the city and so on. And then everybody says yes, true, but you don't hear that in America. And America is like, great idea how we're gonna do this, right? And we gotta get rid of this. But thing, you know, this kind of like, you know, it's like the inertia, like, you know, nobody will do that because, you know, it's a tax or you know, carbon tax or whatever. You know, that's actually not true at all. Like longevity, as you mentioned earlier, this is one of those things where clearly we are getting older already and we're looking at the potential Life extension to 100 and not too far of the future. If we can make that equal to everybody on the planet, this could be amazing. Especially if we live well. Of course not well in the sense of rich, but a high quality life. So those are all fantastic objectives. And if we can paint that picture of saying this is possible, people would think have more hope. For example, also a lot of kids today, when I talk to them, they say, no, we're not having kids. Because having kids in the shit world, that would be stupid. I'm like, no, no, no, no. This is just so bizarre. It's like, why did we think different in the 60s and 70s or 80s, you know, when I don't know, but. So I'm looking for this reset. I'm very happy you joined the group. Tell the people one more time out there how they can find your content and the web address and stuff.

Yeah, no, you can find us@warpnews.org and there we have the fact based optimistic news. And then we also have the foundation behind that, warpinstitute.org and we have a free newsletter that comes out every Thursday with some fact based optimistic news and some of the other contents that we produce. So please check us out.

Great. So we are of course@the goodfutureproject.com you can sign up there, you can watch our videos. We have our YouTube channel. Now we're going to do a lot more stuff like this and this show will go live in a couple days and we'll be there to chat and talk to you about this. So thanks very much for joining. And over and out from Zurich and from.

From Stockholm.

Stockholm, right. From Zurker. From Stockholm. Okay. The good future is entirely possible. See you later.