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hello um it's a very difficult setup that I've been sort of handed a plate on to um firstly it's an honor to be here and I want to start by saying the real
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privilege is your mind space and your attention so I want to start by acknowledging your mind space and attention and our ability to have a conversation that I really want to have over the next probably couple hours in
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total I won't go on that long but trust me uh so just to give you a phid um secondly I just want to acknowledge I stand on the shoulders of many other people so I don't claim this is all mine
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in fact you know does Avana uh was instrumental to writing the BOS paper many of my colleagues so I I'm merely a kind of mouthpiece at best maybe some conjecture is mine as well um so I just
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want to acknowledge those things third I suppose I want to say I want to have a bit of a hard conversation tonight um and I want to try to see how
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what that means for us as a group of people um so this is not going to be pleasant hopeful like la la la isn't it all going to be beautiful I I want to sort of have a real conversation as
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close as I can see it and see where this takes us um and I suppose where I want to go is
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what does the decade look like the eight years or the decade look like I think we can often look backward and forward quite casually and we sort of sort of say oh well you know and so of I was I was surprised when I was looking at that
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thinking eight years ago that was Donald Trump and Barack Obama holy brexit had just happened right and uh all this stuff was going on and where are we now and you know where are we now Portugal
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voted largely to move far right um where are we now right in that period of time so I want to situate the kind of context in which we are because I think I want to ask some hard questions of
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ourselves first how many people here are vegan come on not one person one two yes excellent excellent all Faith with you
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okay I want to start with this diagram so when people talk about the anthropos scene what do they actually mean I think this is a really good example of the anthropos
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scene this is all the wild animals in the world all of them zebras elephants pick them anything you likee koalas crocodiles whatever that's
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them right this is all the wild birds in the world all of them that is sheep that is pigs likes your bacon that is
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cattle those are dogs and cats so when we talk about the anthropos scene when we talk about humans existence on the planet and what it really means I think it's really worth
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looking at this diagram because what it starts to show is the planet is a global farm with a small Zoo for wild
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animals that is where we are now right so we have this image of wow wouldn't it you know most of the world is wilded it's not right it's a the whole world is a
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farm and we have this small elements of zoos and all the kind of nice countrysides you see they're not countrysides every time you see Farmland you should just imagine toxins leaking into the
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air right or or actually pesticides being polluted into the ground just see it through that lens you start to realize what world we're living in then let's keep
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going so what this means also is that we're living through one of the largest biodiversity losses ever in extinction except for the top five which were done by metries to us at the planetary scale
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so we're basically destroying biodiversity in the planet at the scale unprecedented scale thousand times faster that's what that worldview means what that means is
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this vast amounts of destruction of dead zones in the sea already and it's accelerating as our sea temp start to increase and decrease in Plankton systemically 40% decrease in Plankton
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which is destroying the base food chain in the system pretty much all of us have microplastics in our bloodstream already we all have that like and it's been even correlated with heart disease so
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microplastics with correlated with heart disease and poor functioning Hearts 100% of the biosphere is contaminated that is the current St so I want us to say this to just
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Baseline where we are and I want you to hold the conversation when people say we're going to transition you know when people say we're going to transition our chair Manufacturing
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Company in that context that is a scale of where we are and I've not even started this full part of this conversation next part is this I think this is really important for us to
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see around here 1850s basically human civilization had a huge influx of
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energy massive influx of energy this was driven to us by coal that energy allowed for vast amounts of violence but it also allowed for vast amounts of civiliz
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ation complexity that has grown throughout the planet and as a result we are here in the world now we all hear about
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Renewables but here's where it gets painful the global increase in energy demand increase in energy demand is greater than all the installed
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Renewables so we're not installing Renewables at even the rate to keep up with the increase in energy demand and energy is a one toone correlation with complex
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civilization energy is a onetoone correlation with complex civilization and what we're facing is a need so when people talk about decarbonized economies what they're
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talking about is taking out this energy bulk and replacing it and if you look at all the energy demands we no where close and then which is even more
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difficult is that hydrocarbon energy that we're reliant on so in the 1920s it would take one barrel of oil of energy to release 120 barrels of oil so there a
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one to 100 it's called a return on energy invested now one barrel of oil releases about seven barrels of oils worth of energy Renewables also have a similar
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comparable Thing 1 to 7 so we no longer have that abundance of systemic leverage of energy in the planet in our current Energy Systems so this is the crisis we're in
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the middle of then every politician that stands up and says we're going to have 2% growth right 2% just 2% what they're really talking about is
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the correlation of GDP to material footprint so what we have is a problem that in 25 years 2% growth will double our material footprint currently so when you look at our
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material footprint 80% of our ecological destruction is driven by a mineral mining infrastructure and you're right somebody if they done their research they will say yes but the Min mineral mining infrastructure for oil and gas is
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as large or may even be larger than our mineral mining for Renewables however there's some real problems at the back end of that which is that we're going to run both of those mineral mining so we're going to see a massive increase in our mineral demands over the next 25
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years every city in Europe is talking about electrification takes 10 years to open a copper mine we don't have the copper in the supply chain already lined up to do the electrification in
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Europe so mineral constraints are becoming substantial and most the economy most of our economies are not delaminating from carbon at all so the scandix and the Nordic whatever Finland
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is 13.5 Kil tons per person yeah annual tons per person highest in the world Finland I think material consumption in the nordics is one of the highest in the
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world per capita so things look white and beautiful unfortunately per capita you're using the most materials in the world per unit capita and then it gets kind of even
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more painful Denmark which rightly claims to be a pretty good s circular economy 4% of its material waste and use is
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circular 4% it's still the best in Europe I think that's a global average which means the developing economies are significantly more
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circular at root so 4% circular how do you make go from 4% to 90% And then starts to get more
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difficult civiliz ation where we are in fact it's not where we are if you look at the temperatures this year they're on average 2 de warmer and pre-industrial
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average two degrees now this is where it gets interesting so when people talk about two or three degrees what do they really mean by the way if you talk to Security
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Services they will say we are closer to going for six degrees average warmer they do not believe we're anywhere close right just so you know there a the IPC projections are very conservative
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projections and all our modeling has been conservative relative reality reality is outstripping all of our models right now but if we run with 3 degrees which
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is horrific by the way 3° is horrific 3° Global a average temperature rise means 5° on land means
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8° in our Urban environments that's what three degrees means won't be the same everywhere because yes there are variations all sorts of
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climatic variations and remember we are pumping extra energy into our system so we will also get increased wind uh sort of storms rain fall all additional energy into the system but I want you to
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understand what the 3 to 5 to 8° mean now here it get here gain gets interesting at about 1.7 to 1.9 degrees we will lose one of our big Global farming uh Landscapes the five B major
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providers of the big corn we will lose them between 1.7 to 1.9 degrees now that all looks hypothetical but we're starting to see all of those things play out already if you watched what happened
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in Italy with olive Growers last year if you watched last year rice got banned from being exported from India you're already seeing the global Food Market becoming a geopoliticians right now in terms of
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actually the loss of predictability and then if we look at what these numbers really mean in terms of global human habitation all the Deep Red areas are moving outside historical
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human Niche zones of habitation so when people talk about billions of people being on the Move what we're really talking about is vast amounts of transition and this is only heat related it's not related to sort of any form of
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uh sea level rise any form of other climatic effects and we're already seeing and I'll pick that up later we're already seeing other effects move much quicker than this right and remember when I say this stuff it's
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worth remembering that climate change before climate change it almost certainly be social tipping points which will come at us first and in the face of this is
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this our systemic inability to actually make the Accords count now so what is this like this is the just the big picture now I'll just but I I
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want to share it and I want us to be on the same page and I don't mind people disagreeing that's fine we'll all get smarter but I want us to know the world we're talking about at
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least because I think too often the conversations I'm in are delusional right and I'll give you an example of a delusional conversation speaking to a political party shall be
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unnamed they said oh we need 350,000 homes a year and I was like okay have you signed up to the Paris Accord yeah yeah are you pulling out of the Paris Accord no no no so what makes you think
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you have the carbon budget for 350,000 homes a year what do you mean well you probably have the carbon budget about 14,000 homes a year those are actual numbers by the way
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worked out done by Emily Harris at the M if all of Europe right all of Europe's carbon budget because all of Europe has signed up to the Paris Accord was to look at
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its housing budgets how much housing can it actually build all of Europe can afford to build 144,000 homes malmo's producing what how much 25,000 I don't know
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whatever Berlin I think Germany is looking at half a million homes a year all of Europe 144,000 homes a year the total demand is 1.45 million
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homes a year now why I'm bringing this up it's a very simple way to realize that the constraint space that is going to shape our future world we're ignoring
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it but the feedback Cycles are apparent you're seeing what's happening in Holland and Amsterdam the conflicts of whether it's nitrogen based conf conflicts we're going to see this politics being played out on the street
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as these limits become real and not ignorable and why I'm saying this is that this changes the constraint spaces are going to change everything around us
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I do not believe this is a smooth transition I do not believe like let me give you I use this example often because it's very deeply Illustrated it shocked me when I first figured it out or was part of seeing it
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so a typical shirt 40 shirt if you were to true cost it in terms of ecological true cost ecological social it is between 250 to 450 we've been living in a
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material economy largely driven by externalization of all those costs those externalization ation are no longer viable because those externalizations are self-terminating
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us as a result we are going to see a fundamental transformation of pretty much every lay of where we see value and how we organize the
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world it will either be done through choice or it will be done by a forcing function forcing function 40% increase in Energy prices forcing function 80% increase in food prices in the UK okay
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forcing function second I think it's really important for us to really deeply understand climate breakdown I really specific climate breakdown not climate
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change politics is coded in words climate and I'm get on to this in a second is predictable weather systems we are losing the predictability of our weather systems that is what we're doing
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that is what climate is but climate breakdown is largely a symptom of a much more structural issue right and I think this is
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important to B it's a symptom of one of many issues so coding climate breakdown loss of predictability loss of predictability means the loss of
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insurability loss of insurability means the loss of capital markets sounds nice slogan let me put that in real words real words if you have a house in Nova Scotia if you have a house in Australia
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you have a house in Australia the insurance premium you're baying in parts of Australia are $500,000 a year which is the cost of rebuilding your house one to one every
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year parts of Nova Scotia you cannot get your house insured if you can't get your house insured you can't get a mortgage which means most of your
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housing markets becomes a cash only Market have a look at New York 70% of house sales in New York were cash only that's where we're headed
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so I think then what we have to recognize and this is something I've just been writing but I haven't really fully complete is we're moving into a mass multi-polar perspectival
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world the transition for the scandic Nordic countries will be different from the transition from the us'll be transition will be different from Middle East and it will be different in the African context and it'll be different
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in the Indian subcontinent level and be different in the Chinese context there will not be One Singular transition this is that whole dream is gone
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the question is what can the scandic economies do in terms of this transition which will be unique in particular the American transition will be largely I think driven by investment it will be investment driven supply side
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driven transformation where Amazon will be driving the circular economy that's how it's going to be driven whereas in Europe and certainly in the scandic economies where you have
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some semblance of democracy still left you will hopefully do a both a supply and demand side transition where we as societies will shift the nature of our
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demand through Collective will and interest and we will support the transition on the supply side that supply and demand side transition will allow us to create new markets and new possibilities and new ways of being
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together if you're in the Middle East hydrocarbon energy is not going to go away so you're going to invest in carbon setion by the way just to give you like remember Denmark has already exceeded
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its 1.5 degree budget we are now all living in la la land Technologies so for Denmark to pull its budget back to 1.5 degrees it's reliant on carbon seest
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station there is no pathway without sucking carbon out the air and storing in the ground in some way that we make it out okay so we're now in La Land so we're going to need economies
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like the Middle East to to effectively build those Technologies at scale because their cost of hydrocarbon energy is so low that they will be able to put A40 or $50 premium on the hydrocarbon to be able to suck that carbon air carbon
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out of the air again these are not Technologies I favor or agree with but if you follow the numbers unfortunately we're now living in that land and again we're going to have to
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release material space for economies like India and the African continent to effectively actually be able to use the material base that's required so the circular regenerative economy shouldn't
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be born in Scandinavia should be born in the African continent where you're going to live with 800 new million 800 million new people coming to actually being it's
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going to be the youngest continent in the world that is where the circular regenerative economy needs to be born because that is going to be have the biggest impact so we're looking at a
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differentiated portfolio of actually how the globe will transition if we're going to do it coherently and in the context and you're all seeing this I hope and again I'm not sitting here trying to say these are
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ideal situations but I am trying to say that some of these situations are what we're facing is the security everything is becoming coming increasingly through a security lens right security not in a military sense
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security of food security of protein security of energy security of critical minerals security of information and increasingly in a mass multipolar World in a dark Forest future
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we're going to see security become the core dominant narrative now the question that we have to ask ourselves is what's the theory of security is the theory of security and I publicly disagree with this
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is like European autonomy right there is no European autonomy that is not a viable Pathway to security Swedish autonomy is not a viable Pathway to
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security right so there is no New Zealand strategy in the world right you cannot bunker down in New Zealand and hope to survive you don't have access to microchips you don't have access to uh antibiotics you don't have access to
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paracetamol you don't have access to those stuff we are living in an entangled world so what is Security in an entangled world is a fundamentally different question from what is Security in a divisional
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isolatable world what is our theory of security becomes very interesting when you start to engage that conversation because it starts to become not power over people but Power with
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people and it's about building systemic Cod development in a completely different way it requires us to actually recognize our mutual Futures and mut ually assured thriving as the only possible pathway
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forward at the fork of mutually assured destruction so embrace the security conversation expand it rethink it it is going to be dominant in our conversations it can be very regressive
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and take us to a false defensible position this is my big worry with the security a false defensible position which isn't actually defensible which is why I dislike the conversations about
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localism because because they're false narratives nothing about you is local you're reliant on planetary chains whether it's even the oxygen you breathe you're reliant on Petry capabilities
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you're reliant on the Amazon so we have to make this leap there is no return to the 15th century of an illusion of localism that is I think a great
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systemic Challenge and a great intellectual opportunity for you as a generation and there's no transition without Justice this world has been built on the backs of violence invisible violence and
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material violence violence we've ignored or violence we've been complicit in you want to survive we're going to have to find Justice and this is just an act of
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humanization of ourselves and the people we've caused pain to it's hard right because we're all part of a machined age defensible isolated protective it's not going to
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work we are going to have to find Justice to be able to embrace a pathway of mutually assured thriving and there is a massive opportunity in there an opportunity to rehumanize ourselves in the
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process this I think is the biggest structural challenge that we face it is not a technological problem it is the ability to actually deal with the justice issue so addressing this
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reality I want to start by saying imagine you're living at the beginning of 1850s remember when that diagram before coal Unleashed itself into the
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landscape you're living at that moment now everything around you will change your energy systems will change over time your food nutrition systems will
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change your material economy will change your ecological systems will change we have a foundational economy transformation and in fact the human economy will
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change since the 1850s we thought of ourselves as labor not the political party but actually the units of Labor actually how do we build a new
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human economy which is not rooted in the theory of instrumentalization of humans is actually I think a great unfurling that's available to us what does a machine human economy look like that
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infills the full capacity of Being Human which Embraces not a theory of control instruction which is our theory of management and but actually Embraces a theory of learning and developmental
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models how is that rooted in a whole new material foundational economy is also going to be vital and I would argue that we're living at this Apex of transformation
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people often say to me hey Indie what does the future look like I have no idea and nor do I want to have an idea in fact I'm willingly blind largely because I think the future
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Visions have to be systemically plural and situational they cannot be colonized by an idea or a way of seeing the future I don't want to show you an image of a of a future with some fuzzy trees I think it's a false
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reality but we do know all of these systems will change and I want to sort of materialize the scale of that transformation so if I have a can of
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Coke and I have a apple sustainable Apple grown locally the problem that we have materializing those two objects is really visible a deeply sustainable
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Apple grown locally with care effectively is regenerative of every level it's regenerative of the soil it's regenerative to you as somebody who looked off who eats it it's
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regenerative of the people that actually were able to grow it and be able to support about it the can of Coke is extracted of every level it extracts minerals it's largely done mineral
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mining is done by people that are largely if not functionally enslaved are labor enslaved and it's addictive and it consumes and waste water and is net harm to
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you all those harms are externalized but the unit cost of the of the coke is a little bit cheaper probably than a deeply sustainable regenerative Apple because the cost of
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the Apple internalizes those costs our problem is our economy is geared toward as the Cola can by externalizing all those costs into the
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system and why I'm saying this is that I don't think there is a smooth transition from the cola economy to the Apple economy like I don't think you can 5%
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make Cola better and get us to it being regenerative it goes back like I think uh several of us I don't yeah I mean so several of us did the work on uh I think Jack and um
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and a few others DM did the work on embodied carbon of a house right so the best Iana is actually in Denmark the best embodied carbon best low energy house in terms of embodied carbon is
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about 150 kilogram per meter squared some of the best you can get 150 kilg we have to get to 6.3 kilog that's a 95% reduction of embodied
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carbon 95% reduction many of you run businesses if I was to change say change 95% of your business what do you have left nothing if I change if I ask you to change 30%
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of your business you have nothing left so I think one of my difficult realizations more and more coming clear to me is I don't see a transition from our material economy as
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it exist now to a different material economy I think this will be disruptive and it'll be of the order of disruptive that we probably saw at the end of living memory or quasi living memory World War II where we saw a fundamental
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shift in our economies certainly the US which was producing 50% of the global AR Armament had to rebuild its whole economy and I think we're looking at something of that order and magnitude whether we like it or not and if you
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follow the numbers all the major industries their carbon sequestration or carbon uh mitig plans are flatlining now across Europe all the easy stuff is done because now it gets very difficult like
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getting underneath 150 kilograms per meter squared remember hemp Creed is 6.3 kilogram right just hemp Creed per meter squared so when you start to really get into the numbers you start to realize
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how foundational this is and it also means looking quite fundamentally at our theories of value so if if you have a tree like I use this example because I think it's
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really just makes it visceral a street tree why did Sheffield cut down as trees I tell you really simple a counting problem it's a counting problem because trees in terms of their insurance costs
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and their maintenance costs those costs are understood but the value of a tree in terms of its cooling effect in terms of its uh if you put trees with rain Gardens in terms of its flooding impact in terms of if you have male and female
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trees the reduction of asthma is not understood or priced in the system but the costs are so after 10 years you chop down trees and you replace them with nice new trees unfortunately the
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ecological effects of trees only become really visible in 40 years so the accounting logic ignores all the value this is part of the problem that we have to start to systemically account a
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different theory of value and understand that in a deep code level and it also requires us to understand value in different ways many of you know the Highline again this work was done by Jack uh Jack Pella and and Oliver and a
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few others at DM so the Highline is really beautiful but I want you to understand a different theory of value 187 million to build 75%
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was funded by public grants of that 187 million this was the net value created in property uplift 3 point oops he hasn't shown nothing help
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yet there you go 3.4 billion in land uplift value this was in the first three years only I think 3.4 billion all of that value was privatized all of that value was
00:34:44
privatized the total tax uplift was this why that's important how many of you own houses
00:34:55
here cool so here's a really difficult thing if I took your house and I put it in the middle of Russia how much is your house worth not much so where does the value of your
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house come from Market Market so I would argue the value of your house comes from its monopolistic relationship to public goods
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schools labor markets Transportation Systems economies cultures all of that stuff so imagine you've done nothing with your house for the last 10 years and it's gone up or 20 years and it's
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gone up 500% which it has probably around that sort of order whose value was it common value which has privatized in
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the hands of a few people that own their homes this is probably the biggest enclosure that we've seen and the distribution of wealth public common wealth to the hands of private people
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that we probably saw over time this is how this will be written and why I'm saying that it is what it is right we're all part of that story it's not to victimize us or blame us I don't give a about that stuff
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what I'm interested in what does it really mean what it means is what creates value is this common goods what we've done is constrained our
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capacity to invest in common goods and we've cons we've maximized our extraction capacity in private private infrastructures we need to start to reimagine how to invest in common
00:36:55
critical infrastructures if we can do that we can probably survive this transition our ability to invest in infrastructures and what are the infrastructures of the 21st century are radically different by the way they're
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not roads rails they're the collective intelligence of a society that's going to be a critical infrastructure the collective mental health of a society that will be a critical infrastructure right the material
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circularity of that Society that'll be a critical infrastructure the B biomaterial base of a society that'll be a critical infrastructure ructure and again I'm not doing this because like I don't care about history
00:37:34
what I care about is what's the lessons the lessons are these critical infrastructures create value yet we don't know how to invest in them we don't know how to allocate them we're allocating all worlds for the
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privatization of value and those spillovers whether it's trees we don't know how to invest in them right or whether it's anything else
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so whether it's trees or the Deep retrofitting of places or whether it's mental health these are some of the infrastructure the 21st century but at the back end of this I think is harder
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questions like what I hinted at earlier was that the problem is just not so this we know trees have value we just don't know how to account for it so the differential between value and price is
00:38:25
the current problem we understand its value but we don't know how to price it we don't know how to understand it into our balance sheets we don't know how to invest into it that is the problem space what you find is very quickly we as
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designers can draw trees everywhere but unless you change how how a city what the balance sheet of a city is whether it understands the ecological bioecological diversity on its balance
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sheet you don't start to Value it so we've got to look at the Deep codes of society into how we start to think about these things and those open up all sorts of
00:39:03
profound conversations whether it's balance sheets like one of the things I'm really interested in is if you look at the carbon treasury of a city so imagine every city was looking at its carbon functions not just now but also
00:39:16
looking at its carbon treasury carbon uh production scope one two and three over the next 50 years you'd make radically different decisions once you see the data so we're not even seeing the stuff that to be able to operate against it
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and it goes deeper still and I would argue that we're living in a world where our theory of governance bureaucracy financing are
00:39:41
fundamentally being challenged and I can pick this up maybe later as conversations I think one of the philosophical points that I want to throw up is that in a complex and Tangled World our theory of topown
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governance can never deliver you can never regulate from the top the complexity of a situational reality now I'm going to put that the blah blah words put that into the ground
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so if you have a piece of land soil and you want to optimize that soil now you don't want to do single point optimization you don't want to optimize it for single issues this is
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why controversial missions are not such great things missions are great for single point optimizations but but actually what we're living in a world is for multipoint optimization that land that piece of soil you've got to deal
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with carbon sequestration yes soil soil density and integrity yes microbiome quality yes um melium networks yes uh
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nutrition quality yes uh water purification and water Integrity yes you've got to optimize for multiple things and you've got to then optimize it for context right
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so you have to do multipoint optimization to context to multiple factors so when you recognize the world as being multi-point optimized and situationally relevant our theory of
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governance starts to fall apart and I think this is going to be one of the big challenges of operating in a complex entangled world at our theory of industrial governance no longer works for complexity and you can
00:41:21
talk to some of the most interesting land use transition people right now at European level that are starting to talk about this problem because they're saying how do we carbon markets are single point optimization systems do we
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now have carbon coins water coins microbiome coins how does this work how do you do this and I think what we're realizing is any point of single point optimization has limits and profit
00:41:47
is just single point optimizing profit is just a proof of value function single point optimized so we have a fundamental governance problem and this government problems for me is an Epoch question
00:42:00
it's how we move from an industrial linear object isolated age where we see things in isolation and linear and projectable to multi-point entangled age
00:42:12
and this is a fundamental question and the other part of this question and is that I think we often talk about the transition from Technologies all the way up there the
00:42:24
implied order how do we make new chairs how do we make new I don't know tables or you know more sustainable chairs tables whatever coffee cups the problem is that we're no longer living in the N this is not a 1980s to
00:42:38
1990s transition where we're changing our product space what we are doing is we're going to have to change our World Views now the really beautiful but painful thing is the science behind this
00:42:51
stuff is actually very visible this is not a science problem anymore the problem is we've not been able to take science into policy into our theory of Institutions our institutions are locked into industrial
00:43:03
ages yet they're not able to actually operate in what is fundamentally a different worldview when we are operating in entanglement and it like I could talk abstractly let me just like I
00:43:15
like at the level of me right this is the problem is at the level of me firstly if I was to follow the science I'm not an individual I am a weak
00:43:28
I'm a multitude of beings and a multitude of personalities it's a great illusion the individual it's lovely illusion but it's not true to the science or even my
00:43:41
personality I don't exist in a single personality I exist in a plurality like and that's not like oh you know like well you know but if you just follow the science and I think in
00:43:52
there is quite a lot of beauty and you're not an object you're not a being I don't even like the word being because you're not singular you're developmental you're becoming you're evolving you have inherent learning capacity which means you're a
00:44:08
becoming and third if you recognize the idea of social brain or any of the other more craziest stuff like Quantum brain Theory you start to realize that even my idea of myself is a social
00:44:20
function like Consciousness is a function not only of me and what I think in space and time but also what I think you think in space and time and actually more even a quantum theory of Consciousness in terms of how our brains
00:44:33
are much more intuitively connected in different formats so I think this is rooted in a theory of what it means to be human and I think this is my suggestion for next conference not this
00:44:43
one what it what it means to be human I think would be a really nice one to go back to even um because I think this every age you can look from an architectural design perspective whether
00:44:57
it's laaber and modular man veruvian man by BL lonard Da Vinci every age has reimagine what it means to be human to reimagine what it means to be actually a
00:45:09
25 what what the world around them looks like and I think we're living in a mirror moment and frankly I think and and I don't in any way mean this in a dis disrespectful way I mean it was due love
00:45:21
and care I think if we all ended up embracing we they them I understand it's a political fight as as well but if we all recognize our pluralities and we all recognize we are becomings I think it would be a really powerful thing in terms of actually our relationship with
00:45:34
the world and our relationship with our own pluralities their fight is our fight frankly we think it's theirs but it's not it's also ours it's probably one of the biggest symbols of our
00:45:48
transition so living in this entanglement is I think one of the biggest realities that we're working into and I think this is like so foundational so if we look back in
00:46:01
history you I would argue and this is like like a caricature of history but just to lay out a context we had to create a sense of object Hood so Newtonian physics was
00:46:13
about understanding the world from separation right object-orientated thinking separation that separation allowed for classification theory that classification Theory separation gave
00:46:27
birth to ideas like perspective perspective allowed for distance and power and asymmetry all these things then commit allowed for the permission for violence we used classification Theory
00:46:40
to to construct the theory of race remember like just I find this there is more human biological diversity in the continent of Africa than there is in the rest of the
00:46:55
world right so we use the theory of race as a means to actually construct violence that separation permitted of violence that we
00:47:07
are now reaching a world where that object hood is no longer viable as a pathway of operating because it's self systemically self-terminating at a global level and for those that are in places of privilege as
00:47:20
well so how do we make that transformation is I think fundamental question I've already spoken about this kind of operating from single point transitions but I think this is a really big
00:47:34
question I think it nature it fundamentally changes our theory of where agency lies single point optimization can be done from the top and extracted and
00:47:45
abstracted multi-point optimization has to be embedded and relational it's fundamentally different and I think that opens up a whole new pathway and I think that opens up why you're seeing
00:47:58
beautiful things happening in the world right whether it's Rivers being made self- Sovereign or mountains this is about shifting our theory of power and re-embodying it into locations and
00:48:09
specifics this is not just a romance it is our capacity to deal with fundamentally a different worldview and reagent ifying the world that's what we're about to go we're
00:48:23
going moving from a world from assets to agen ification and agif foration means like de like property the idea of property could only be constructed if you had a construction
00:48:36
of the of a theory of dominion control so if you speak to people like um John bar in Canada eminent indigenous lawyer he talks about the nation of
00:48:48
trees right because the perception is not Dominion the perception is relationship people like Forest Landry and again I dropped these names not for my reference but I hope you will pick
00:49:01
them up and listen to some of these people because they are really brilliant in their own right and people like Forest Landry talk about to be in transaction we have to be
00:49:12
equals unfortunately transaction economies create power dynamics and then I become in power with so then I become once I have an asymmetric relationship I go into a power relationship where I can
00:49:25
abuse you in that theory of asymmetry and we've ended up in a relationship of abuse with the world because we've got asymmetric power and that is now self-terminating us so these agent ification of the world is about
00:49:39
rebuilding the world as an agent to be actually in transaction or even better in care and I haven't got this out in the public domain but so some of the work I've been doing is on computational care how do you compute care in a world
00:49:54
and I say this not just from a theory of compute but also the idea of contract and relationship into compute uh into care what does that mean for a material economy again this is worked by Fang uh
00:50:07
which is really beautiful um I just find this a real Back to the Future imagine this read just read this right I think it's
00:50:20
beautiful I borrowed the stones from the river and I promised to give them back imagine a material economy of that reality and the Beautiful Thing is we can construct this material
00:50:33
economy like we can build the bureaucracy for this material economy our bureaucratic frames that are constructed on analog pieces of paper can be reimagined for a fundamentally different material
00:50:48
economy what does it mean to live on land in different ways what I find beautiful about this is the overlapping territories the idea of the territorial map which divided the world from the
00:51:02
landscape member cartography was also a power relationship and a divisional relationship which created a world view when actually relationships with land were much more plural Much More Much
00:51:13
More sort of land was co-hosted by communities in different formats our theory of simple Geographic cartography created
00:51:25
divisional but the beautiful thing is in a way we now have the technology to live differently we have a technology for a new theory of cartography new theory of land game work that colleagues of ours are doing uh Jane Engel and various
00:51:39
others on land becoming self- Sovereign not being owned but actually being in relationship with the land in different ways and again in other parts of the world this is again work that's done by not nobody in DM but actually some
00:51:52
friends like what does an embassy of the North Sea mean does that world look like this re reagent fication what if the forest is self- Sovereign like now let's start to
00:52:08
imagine what this world looks like again what if the building is self- Sovereign again U Myan my colleague over there has been doing some work on a free house which is a house which owns itself why is that world beautiful what could
00:52:24
that look like which is a house Beyond ownership this is very controversial it's very controversial but I like everyone my te tells me often whenever I talk about it and I'm like no
00:52:37
but this is great and why it's great for me is because what it means is if you don't own the camera but the camera owns itself its relationship with the world has to be one of
00:52:49
Care Now imagine a camera that was actually not extractive not about giving data to a third party but actually was in a relationship of care for the environment it was looking after how would the data be held how
00:53:03
would the action ability be held what would be the idea of autonomy that could be built out of relationships of care and I think this is my little provocation Martin and I were talking I think 21st century the greatest
00:53:15
Explorations we can do is start to think about a new class of caring Technologies Technologies deeply rooted in a theory of care and if we can start to compute them and think about them I think it'll open up a whole land scape of thinking
00:53:27
that we're not thinking about and this to me is opening up a much more fundamentally interesting world where ownership and Dominion no longer is efficient or effective in organizing the world no longer making a
00:53:42
moral case it is no longer a moral case we cannot operate in complexity with a theory of dominion and control so we have to reagent ify the world and
00:53:54
operate in a relationship treaty the over the world and that is computationally possible that is Agent fied we've built democracy for me is not the vote it's not representative Parliament it's the distribution of
00:54:07
imagination agency and the capacity to create and learn that is a true deep democracy never let it be taken over by Parliament but if it is that and I think
00:54:21
we have achieved vast democratization of agency power and capacity in a way that's her unprecedented and if we can expand that theory of agency I think there's something beautiful available to us so
00:54:35
I'm G to stop there kind looking at Martin in a generous way but I I suppose my thing here and I'm going to end here and then perhaps we
00:54:48
can get into questions is that I suppose my big invitation to all of you and all of us is I think this is a moment where everything changes and either everything changes
00:55:02
and we make it through or we don't that's the choice the choice is no longer like ah you know what it's not a hedge bet and I think that's an extraordinary invitation for a
00:55:15
generation and I think it's an extraordinary invitation for a generation to design what I think is an Epoch scale transformation and it's rooted at every level you can touch anything and it's being reimagined
00:55:28
around us and that I think is an extraordinary opportunity an extraordinary invitation and the other thing is unfortunately or fortunately there's no like there used to be a time in like 2000s people say ah we got to
00:55:41
power the Next Generation I'm sorry that generation is you there is no other generation because either we do it or we don't and if we don't forget about it there is no one else to follow this
00:55:53
pattern on to it's you and in that I think we have to take responsibility and we have to actually build what I think is eminently available to us and visible to us is an
00:56:07
extraordinary world I think it is there it is visible and I think that is an invitation to all of us to start to really structurally no longer design transitions from our world
00:56:20
but deeply embrace the scale of the transformation that we're we're in the middle of so with that thank you
00:56:27
[Applause] thank you very much we have time for questions um please think about the
00:56:48
questions you want I'm going to ask I have the privilege of asking the first one so keep thinking and and also don't forget to say who you are and what you do when you're not here when you
00:57:01
start asking questions so um you made me feel small I felt like tinier and tinier and tinier the more I listened and then you talk about everything changes and in
00:57:13
everything changes I hear small changes like you also mentioned the second world war and the disruptive qualities that that had what do you see as
00:57:26
you know and you don't believe in transition either so what will the world burn before it changes you think it's a good question um I hope not
00:57:40
um I'm honest answer is I think we'll evolve through crisis we will see crisis and we will evolve through crisis and I think I was talking to some
00:57:53
politicians and they were like oh we got a Manifesto I was like great which Manifesto really worked because the scale of the crisis is so significant that it transforms your theory of what transition looks like the key thing is
00:58:04
how you use the crisis to make large scale Transformations and I think we're going to be in a reactive dance with the future not a projective linear I'm a Great Hero this is what the future looks like come follow me I don't think that's
00:58:18
how it works in complexity I think we're going to have to dance with crisis we're going to have to dance with crisis and open up opportunities in that dance I I I no longer believe we're in 2004 when
00:58:29
somebody can Tony Blair the world but let's dance Sophi my colleague has a question so that people online hear are the questions as
00:58:43
well name and something about what you do when you're not here okay um thank you my name is BJ and uh when I'm not here I worry about the state of the
00:58:54
world in Copenhagen and um you ended on responsibility and uh my question to you is what would you do tomorrow if you had a million euro to deploy and what would
00:59:08
you do if you had € 10 to deploy question it's a good question it's a really great question I have I have no idea um look I I I sometimes find like I maybe I'm
00:59:31
going to do the classical move here um I sometimes find the money question kind of the wrong way around typically I find money is moving already like I don't think money is the constraint system
00:59:44
actually more and more I think what we have to start to talk about is I think the problem is people do not understand the baselines that we're operating in I
00:59:56
so okay I'll properly answer your question now gu get bought myself some time um okay so first stage is I think what's what I'm seeing in the world that I'm
01:00:07
operating in more and more is that holders of risk are starting to understand this world so if you're looking to uh a central bank they are starting to understand the Global
01:00:20
Financial stability risk if you're talking to Security Services they're understanding that world if you're talking to intergenerational wealth people who hold intergenerational wealth they're understanding that world if you talk to communities on the ground did a
01:00:34
talk in front of Plymouth and CVS they're starting to feel the world on the ground I think what I'm finding is that those conversations are already starting to hold risk and actually be able to materially hold risk I think politicians
01:00:47
and CEOs actually are yet derivatives of that but they're not yet holding that risk properly but the risk holders are starting to operate so my thing is that I my biggest investment is largely building those unusual
01:01:02
alliances central banks Security Services communities on the ground and intergenerational wealth stewards because those people hold risk and I think those those actors are
01:01:14
increasingly critical in being able to make the transformation that's required where would I allocate $10 out um 10 out I have no idea no I don't even have an idea with a million I I like yes
01:01:30
there's things I'd say but not a meaningful response to your question so let me think on that I'll come back to you with due respect on that hello hi thank you my name is Nick and I
01:01:46
work in mental and emotional well-being and how to build hope and you started this conversation with saying this is not a story of Hope and then you gave us an invitation as the very last thing you
01:01:59
said so when we talk about building in people the the want to change and self efficacy
01:02:13
what can we do in order so that kind of force invitation because there is really no other option becomes a pleasure to pick up what do we need to learn on a
01:02:26
societal and human and in individual or becoming level thank you I think it's a really great question I want to answer at two levels one I what I mean by like I think
01:02:41
in looking at the numbers and looking at reality I think it breaks the delusion of Hope like I I think we're often told delusionary hopes and I think that is the most painful hope we can give people
01:02:53
a delusion of the world which is not unreal oh we're going to reduce carbon by 5% it's going to be all right it's a delusion and I think what I'm worried about is those delusionary hopes we've been selling each other for the last 20
01:03:05
years and you follow the numbers and you realize nothing has happened and then the second part is that and this is perhaps a kind of open conversation I wonder whether we see the world through a theory of choice often
01:03:18
and our theory of Hope is constructed on a theory of choice it's like a it's like a kind of extension of a ASA hum Eon consumer economy whereas what does a duty economy look
01:03:32
like and I think Duty relieves us of relieves us of the idea of I have to have hope in order to do this work but
01:03:44
recognize I need to do the work and I wonder it's a kind of mild kind of question is whether the whole theory of Hope and purpose and
01:03:57
and sort of individual fulfillment actually we need to subsume under a theory of Duty not duty to a person duty to whatever you think is coming and the numbers that you perceive
01:04:11
are real and I personally find that could be relieving of the personal anxiety that we all hold in dealing with this stuff because I think we end up holding the anxiety of starting to create synthetic hope whereas if you
01:04:23
operate with a theory of Duty it can relieve us of that and when we can actually work in the freedom of actually trying to do that together again it's not a fully formed thought but I think there's something in there that I've
01:04:35
been holding at the back of my head is that we haven't used the words of Duty and I wonder what that does to liberate us and to free us from a kind of tyranny of individual
01:04:46
agency but yeah it's a fair question hello uh hi I'm Albert orley I'm an architect and uh yeah I'm wondering because right
01:05:04
now we're all at least in the west experience this this major backlash against culturally and politically against the very idea that these things matter I mean there's a there there's
01:05:17
there's a lot of U uh agents out there pushing that I mean this is all just um we shouldn't have to care about these things it's all woke and uh I mean
01:05:30
environmentalism is made being made fun of and and then there's a lot of other people who do care but I mean I mean there is this uh big uh motion
01:05:41
culturally and I mean uh do you what what uh possibilities do you see to like um bring about bring across this message and
01:05:54
uh May make uh people accept it I mean this this even this description of reality to make people accept it it's it's really thank you for asking that question I I I really appreciate it and
01:06:09
um I was invited to give a speech in Austin uh Austin Texas and before I went on stage somebody said hey would you mind not talking about climate change I
01:06:20
like what it's like uh how do I do this I said you know like sorry most your audience will think climate change is a conspiracy to for the government to take control of all your assets that was
01:06:35
the logic I was like uh I can't do that but let me get I'll take the risk on stage right but what was fascinating to me
01:06:47
was so if you noticed the way I presented those slides it was a sequence I did those slides in it did not start with 3° temperature I started with
01:06:58
food and I intentionally did that and I did that also in Austin because people feel that in their food table right now and what I found fascinating was
01:07:11
this was talking to intergenerational wealth in Austin was that actually people that hold like one of the biggest largest agricultural producers I won't want to name what product is they'll
01:07:23
you'll be able to find them out basically the chief investment officer of that product turned around to me very large said look India it's very clear that we've been farming our land to to
01:07:36
the degradation of our soil it's very clear that actually the SEC to secure our land is now becoming more and more expensive because actually we're going we have set set up so much inequality in
01:07:49
the landscap that we're operating in and we can't get the labor this was the chief investment officer one of the largest farming like I said our theory of how we've done asset management is fundamentally wrong how do we build a different balance
01:08:01
sheet that recognizes soil that recognizes flourishing assets which create generative wealth how do we build and this was the chief investment officer talking about this issue in a different way so my hope is yeah I kind
01:08:14
of hear the V woke stuff I kind of don't care or engage what I'm interested in is just follow the numbers calmly and what I'm finding is again I that's why I pick those you go to Comm on the ground like
01:08:26
I've done like church Hall conversations like you go to communties on the ground right now they're able to get all those conversation one of the biggest criticisms I was ever given was always Indie it's a great conversation for the
01:08:39
elite but you can't get to the ground go to the ground the pain is being felt they understand the risk materially the UN actually one person walked up to me 89y old man and said Indie thank you for putting words to
01:08:50
what I was feeling I didn't understand everything you said but I felt what you were saying right so people are feeling it on the ground Security Services understand this central banks get this at a strategic
01:09:04
level there are new alliances on the ground on this transition so I think the politics is in the middle of a interal period but I think what's fascinating is the structural forces are starting to see this in different ways so that's
01:09:16
where I and even in Austin right Austin's you know the nice PA of Texas but you know one more question yeah uh michelon Captain future navigate
01:09:31
in the future I was thinking about what he said dancing with crisis uh what what what does what is the skill set we will have to learn or discover while dancing with crisis is is
01:09:43
how do we prepare ourself for for The Narrative of that or or do we just take it as it comes and adopt when the crisis comes or do we actually start preparing like we're doing here tonight on a
01:09:54
larger scale than the few of us in the room no um I I think preparation is important so so if you so let's talk about the I
01:10:12
think one of the biggest transformative forces in the next five years will be Foods Food Systems is going to Herald every other transition everything else will follow food and the reason is the
01:10:25
food is basically at the root of our soil crisis it's the root of actually the climate breakdown issues that we're going to face Jim B uh Professor Jem blondel is brilliant at this like really
01:10:36
again recommend listening to him um in order to look at that food crisis you're we're going to have to do things already right so we are already going to this if you look at controlled
01:10:49
environment Food Systems you look at rewed Food Systems we're starting to see people starting to diversify their food Food Systems in different ways so I think it's going to ask us to do things I think it's going to ask us to be able
01:11:01
to use those moments of Crisis and be transformative with those moments of Crisis remember disaster typically concentrates wealth disasters typically concentrate
01:11:13
wealth if we want to be preparing to work with crisis we're going to have to work with crisis to Ure that doesn't happen historically that's what disasters do so one of the biggest risks that we face is as we go into crisis we
01:11:25
will see concentrations of power concentrations of risk and concentrations of capital and historically that's exactly what we do with politicians so as we Face disaster we give away more power we allow we give
01:11:38
give more power away that power means more risk management thereby there's a vicious cycle we set up so I think one of the biggest things that we need for crisis is actually our own capacity to
01:11:50
become more self-authoring so here I I'll quote yeah people like the Nordic secret from Thomas Borman I think who talks about vult schools in the scandix and nordics being a key part of building
01:12:03
self-authoring societies and actually building the capacity to author yourself is probably the greatest single contribution to be able to operate in crisis and I think that's going to be a key part and remember you know I was
01:12:16
saying this like if you go back to the 1850s and we were sitting in Sweden we're talking about one of the poorest Societies in the world I mean the world world not like Europe I mean the
01:12:29
world and look at what's happened and I think some of that was to do with building self-authoring capacity of societies so what is the scale of transformation that's possible what's the human development story that's really got to be told to be invested in
01:12:42
I think one of the things that we're massively under investing in is education and human development and not education in in a light sense I mean a radical reform of of the collective intelligence of society and I think that
01:12:56
is probably the key unlocking investment to operate through to be able to dance in Tri in crisis to be able to build our own capabilities to be able to do that and that is a deep human development pathway that I think is really vital thank you thank you very much for coming
01:13:09
and thank you very much for making us feel Indie johar so if you want to continue conversations like this I very much invite you to join our next foresight cycle on the futures of infrastructure
01:13:31
there is a super tiny link to a web page don't worry I'll send you an email afterwards that will also include a link where we invite you and people like you
01:13:43
to apply um to be a part of U creating Visions for sustainable built environment and as always we encourage you to come participate in the conf confence in
01:13:56
August and next week there is a price hike so if you want to save some Swedish croners uh now it's a good time to buy our ticket and today we just released our first Speaker keynote speaker anab
01:14:10
Jane uh from the studio superflux and she's going to talk about rewen our imaginations so that we can figure us out we also have a
01:14:25
ongoing program um check that out media evolution. program thank you very much have a good rest of your evenings and hope to see you again soon
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