I am 30 and newer left Romania until today, I’m traveling to Aguadulce, Spain for a week. The trip came by surprise from a friend that asked me to join him 4 days ago. So I am writing these words as the plan is set to take flight and I decided to keep a log of what I find to be interesting, both about the trip, but mainly train of thoughts which were triggered by what I see.
The first thing that struck me was the organizational level in the airport. I recently discovered Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind and he explains the implications of a wonderful trait of human behavior. He argues that this is the very trait which set us apart from all other animals and gave us the capacity of basically conquering the planet, with all its implications. We are talking about flexible and large-scale cooperation.
He continues his argument by exemplifying nature and how we are the only species that can do both flexible and large scale at the same time. We have species on earth that work so well together to the extent they are considered to have a hive mind, like bee or ant colonies. But although they have an extremely good cooperation in large numbers, they lack flexibility. Bees are only able to work together in a very narrow and predictable way. On the other hand, we have our brother chimpanzees, which are very social creatures that have complex collaborative interactions, but lack scale. In tribes of over a hundred chimpanzees, things start being complicated.
The airport operational structure clearly shows that humans can do very flexible as well as large-scale cooperation. We were thousands of people with tens of destinations and millions of thoughts, but we were able to work together in a quite specific way that is different from our daily routines. And although we did not know each other, we instinctively cooperated to the benefit of the large group. This is something we take for granted, but the level of cognitive understanding we need to behave in such a way is fantastic; and for better or for worse, we are the only species that manifests it, so this means we have a huge responsibility.
In the past few months I started appreciating collaboration more and more as my interest for the future grew; because the truth is that the future is the largest collaborative effort humankind is undertaking. And the quality of our collaborations dictates the quality of our future.
I believe that now, more than ever, we need to understand the role of collaboration and find better and better ways of doing it at large scale in a way that is beneficial for all of humankind, as well as all other life on earth. And I think that the intersection between blockchain and algorithms is one of the ways to do it.
Blockchains will provide the possibility of programming clear rules of voluntary collaboration, which will be guaranteed by a decentralized consensual network. And algorithms give us the possibility of digitizing very complex human behavior. The combination between voluntary, immutable rules and algorithms that are designed to understand specific human behavior will give us the opportunity of interacting is a safe and trusting way with billions of individuals; and this will most probably be the foundation for one global community called humankind.
So, while I was writing the last part, the plane took off and I really am glad that I have faith in technology and human collaboration because flying seems to be something that does not go well with the body and the mind. It’s fantastic how the understanding of gravity, aerodynamic and propulsion is able to make hundreds of tons fly. And the vulnerability we, the passengers, show with having faith in the plane and the pilots is very high because everything is completely out of our hands.
It was a smooth take-off and before I knew it, we were already in the clouds. And although I know it's a cliche, they really look like cotton candy and seem delicious. The first taught that came to mind was that before I leave this world I would love to live in a cloud city at least a couple of months. And the cool thing is that I believe technology can make this possible in the next 30 years; I might be very optimistic, but I choose to remain this way.
All it takes to make this a reality is to find a way to levitate large masses at cost. A constant need for propulsion to keep that city in the air would not be sustainable both from a financial as well as an ecological stance. The other ingredient would be to start building structures that are very light, yet very resistant and the aerospace industry is on that, most probably buildings will be modeled from such a technology. But most likely an aquatic city will be build first.
Back to flying, I found an upside to having very bad roads in Romania, it seems that I am so used with bumpy rides that turbulence comes as second nature and does not panic me. And so, after a 3 hour and 40 minutes flight, we landed in Malaga, but this was not our last destination, so we rented a car and started driving towards Almeria, where Aguadulce is.
The first major difference I saw, apart from the palm trees everywhere, was the very nice highway, which is something very rare in my country. It’s also very interesting that in this part of Spain, where the mountains are merged with the coast, building a highway is no easy task, you need to level the mountains or go through them with tunnels. This show that if you want to do something, you find solutions to do it.
And as we were driving on the coast, through the mountains, I quickly realized why I see so many vegetables of Spanish origin in all the supermarkets in Romania. This region is blanketed with a lot of greenhouses and when I say a lot, it’s an understatement. I really am impressed with the level of production and how they were able to do it at such a good price that they are one of Europe’s major exporters.
This brings the argument of overpopulation into perspective. There is a growing narrative which claims the human population is growing so fast that we will not be able to provide for all people, which I believe to be false. I will not go into the details of how healthy or not healthy is the food produced in those greenhouses, but it’s clear that a good management of resources combined with some technology can create a very high yield of food on small pieces of land. And all of this is done horizontally, but we have growing research being done in the domain of vertical farming, which will give us massively more production on the same area of land. But one other thing we need to focus on is growing food that is healthy, because this should be our only medicine. Luckily we are starting to understand more in more about what the human body needs to stay healthy and this will help in determining what good food is.
And after a two-hour drive, we arrived in Aguadulce, which is situated exactly on the coast in the Almeria gulf. What struck me immediately was the level of architectural cohesion and the beauty of buildings, all of the lines and colors fit together in a splendid way. And although there are a lot of recurring patterns and styles, somehow this city is not visually boring, plus the presence of the ever moving Mediterranean sea gives it even more life. Here is the view from where I am staying.
So after 3 hours of sleep and an approximately 3000 km plane ride, this was my first day outside of Romania and it ended quite late with me enjoying the latest episode of The Expanse, an SF that is catching my attention more and more. Stay tuned for the other parts of this travel journal.
PS: If by any chance someone from around here is reading this, give me a shout out, maybe we can do a mini meet-up :)
