Human Nature 2019 – Below the Surface

A sustainable future is bio-based and circular, says Carole Collet, professor in Design and Director of Sustainable Innovation at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and offers the audience an insight into how we design for a bio-circular economy.

By way of example, Collet shows how new research and new innovations in sustainable materials and production systems are emerging at the intersection of design and biology. One is the development of new materials based on mycenae and algae that create unlikely patterns.

With artificial intelligence and machine learning on the rise, new opportunities are opening up to anticipate and influence our health – and our achievements. It is quite possible to hack humans through biohacking, says Teemu Arina, futurist, founder of the Biohacker Summit, and author of the Biohacker’s Handbook.

Teemu Arina– How much of your body can you replace before you stop being human? Five percent? Ten, twenty, fifty? Many of us already have glasses to improve our vision, but can we replace them with a computer connected to the internet so we can see further and more clearly? Just like when someone replaces their hip to be able to walk. Why stop by recreating a functionality that you do today, when you can take it further and improve a functionality, asks Arina.

National populist movements are rising across Europe. Matthew Goodwin, professor of Political Science at the University of Kent, sees some of the contributing factors to this trend are rapid social, demographic and economic change. How can we understand the roots, rise and impact of national populism in traditional liberal democracies? Matthew Goodwin och Åsa WikforssMatthew Goodwin believes that the emergence of increasingly extreme populism has been defined and explained using myths and comfort blankets – without actually doing anything about it.

Goodwin also argues that what lies behind the overall dramatic decline in support for social democracy in Europe is tension between middle-class liberal civil servants and the socially conservative working classes.

After listening to what is bubbling beneath the surface of our society, guests were invited to put on diving masks and join us 5 kilometres down to the bottom of the sea. Diva Amon, a deep-sea biologist, shows that more than 99 percent of the deep seas are unexplored, even though they remain central to keeping us alive and possess sought-after natural resources.

– The next generation of mining will take place in the depths of the sea, says Amon. She hopes for a balance between the need for minerals and preserving our last outpost on the planet.

Climate as a question of fate. Flight guilt. Climate apocalypse. With the high frequency of alarming global warming reports – shouldn’t everyone act as if the house was on fire? So, why don’t we? Per Espen Stoknes, Associate Professor and Director of Center for Green Growth at Norwegian Business School, psychologist and Chair of the Center for Green Growth, believes that cognitive barriers prevent us from thinking and acting on global warming.

– One of the barriers is distance. When we hear about climate change, it is usually something that is far away from us – both geographically and time wise. It’s abstract. It is about PPM levels, or about changes somewhere in the Arctic. It’s not here and now – and that’s what the brain registers. What’s more, climate change is perceived as if it is beyond your control and influence, and then you don’t act, says Stoknes.