From an exciting conference, bringing together, with no other purpose than that of exchanging ideas, somewhere in the U.S. this week, about thirty people of fifteen different nationalities, I glean some conclusions that perhaps can be useful to our discussions.
1. There are few places in the world where you can bring together for two days, with no agenda other than to put their heads together, the captains of industry and greatest innovators in the Silicon Valley, the top officers of some of the largest investment funds in the world, some of the best economists in the Anglo-Saxon world, Chinese professors of Philosophy and Economics, scientists from around the world in neuroscience, genomics, energy, doctors, diplomats from Africa and India, and only two Europeans, with one of them being a major figure in German public life. With no press release, without notes or preparatory document.
And what follows are just some of my personal conclusions.
2. America is full of self-doubt, in that its elites are beginning to understand that its political system is now completely paralyzed by the importance of election expenses, which are putting the executive and the legislature entirely into the hands of the individual interests of the few and are preventing the taking of any unpopular decision, especially the reduction of inequalities, which will keep growing.
3. China is seen both as a threat, fortunately replacing the disappeared Soviet Union, and as a model envied for its ability to consider the long term in its decisions, which democracies cannot do.
4. Europe is considered to have already disappeared from history. Almost nobody believes that the European countries, even if they wanted to, could still save the euro. And many believe that the disappearance of the single currency is a matter of months if not weeks.
5. For all, the main developments to come, which are enormous, will come from the multiplication of real and virtual networks, the ability to control energy storage, the ability to learn, and the possibility for remote manufacturing of any 3-dimensional object. They will then help to focus on the main problem: how to learn better and faster? How to bring about a collective intelligence able to think faster than each of its individual members?
6. Faced with these huge technical advances, the two main challenges for politicians are: should we have more children, in order to avoid having an old society, dependent on too few workers; or should we on the contrary have less, at a time when technical progress will wipe out a considerable number of professions, without replacing them with other jobs.
7. How to organize a global governance reflecting everyone’s needs without expecting more than a reorganization of the organization of the united nations?
Reading this, it is understandable that the world to come, with enormous promise, will be led neither by the G8 nor the G20 neither by a G2 between China and the United States, but rather by a G0 in which the powers would belong to corporations, media, NGOs, cartels, in a chaos for which no one can promise it will not result in the worst.