Our Future Is Heaven Or Hell Futurist Keynote Speaker Gerd Leonhard At TedX Modena, 18OCT2020

In this upside down world, it's quite clear, yeah, we're not going to go back to normal. Sorry. There will be new normals and we have to get used to this and we have to make the best out of it and we have to collaborate and we have to help each other discover how we can pivot into new situations. In this new normal, we're moving into a world where what used to be on top of is moving to the bottom and vice versa. The priorities have changed. What are their priorities now? Not the cruise ships, those are gone. Not flying somewhere for the weekend. Not doing all of those things that we used to do, but thinking about differently. Healthcare. Taking care of your health, taking care of your kids, Remote work. And technology. Technology, Technology. Technology is everywhere. Technology can be a gift. It can do amazing things for us, but it can also be a bomb. Tim Cook, Apple CEO, once said, technology can do great things, but it does not want to do great things. It doesn't want to do anything. If we want to do great things with technology, and we're going to do a lot of those, then we have to bring the ethics and the values and what we want into it. The question is what we want, not what we can have. Because, yeah, in 20 years, technology allows us to have everything, anything. And I think when we think about technology, it's really quite clear already with mobile devices and gaming and so on, too much of a good thing can be a very bad thing. Because humans are not machines. We are not exponential. Nature is cyclical. It goes up and down. Technology is, of course, explosive, making huge gains every 18 months, doubling in capacity and halving in price. But we're not. We're just humans, we're linear. And let's keep this in mind. We are not on a project territory. We're going to be 120, maybe 150 years old in 20, 30 years. But not unlimited, and definitely not an unlimited capacity of the things that we can do. The question is not what will the future bring? But the real question is what kind of future do we want? What is the future of that we want to design, that we want to have. Because if you're looking at our reality, it's really right now in this crisis, the unthinkable has become the new normal. All the things that we're not allowed to do that we must be doing Northern Europe, giving funds to Southern Europe and all of the plans of the stimulus packages and so on. That's unusual. Let's not go away from this and say, well, it's going to go on as it was. It's not. It is now basically no longer unthinkable to do things like the carbon tax for flying, for driving a car, for eating meat. Forget about unthinkable. Rethink again. Question your assumptions. Think about a new form of capitalism. I call this sustainable capitalism. Riffing off Al Gore, of course. Four things that we want to achieve with what we're doing. People, planet, purpose and prosperity. Four objectives. And every CEO should be judged by his performance on the four points and not receive dividends on just one point. When we think about Europe, clearly this is going to be our future. A collective approach, a social capitalism, if you wish, as to how we can make these things work. And we can only work with one thing, really. And this is happening right now. I know this is a scary thought, especially for Italy. The United States of Europe coming, give it 10 years, we're going to be much closer to the United States of Europe than ever before. And this is our key to the future, to achieve exactly this. Those three things as a battle plan, as a business plan for Europe. The business plan can't just be to do one thing, it has to be three. Holistic, circular, human, and of course, technology as well. And there is our future. Quite clear. When we think about technology and machines, it's obvious we are going to see machines that can think parenthesis in zeros and ones. But that's not enough. We're still going to have to be human, put our things on top. That we are. Purpose, curiosity, foresight, critical thinking. I mean, we are clearly moving into a world where it's about sentience, existence, the good old Renaissance term, and sapiens wisdom. Humans on top of machines. And this is what we have to teach our kids. We have to teach our kids to be good at purpose, at curiosity and passion. Not just be good at science and technology, but at things that only humans can do.