Two hours a year to find out where we come from and where we are going in scientific and technological trends is the proposal of the physicist Alfons Cornella, who yesterday held his 30th annual conference on innovation. The event has been called Radical in the last 10 years because it anticipates "what is coming that, at another time in history, we would have considered radical and instead is now considered normal," according to Cornella.
As is customary in these conferences aimed at business audiences, Cornella broke down the biggest innovation trends in the world into ten major aspects. In yesterday's session, he placed special emphasis on energy and education, because “they are the two important components in the definition of a functioning society. Without energy and education you have nothing and therefore you will do nothing.
In the energy field, Cornella exposed "a very clear revolution that is beginning to be glimpsed, above all, due to the relationship that will exist between having cheap and sustainable energy and the level of economic growth." He spoke of paradigm shifts such as the one represented by the great shelf in the North Sea, between Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries, for wind energy. "We are talking about - he pointed out - a capacity to produce energy for 200 million European homes". “Combined with the solar energy that can be produced in southern Europe, and Spain here has the potential to be a big winner in the energy revolution, the energy conditions will change,” he said. Advances in nuclear fusion and geothermal energy may eventually break the chain of dependence on oil.
In education, Cornella anticipated that "the big change that is coming is how to overcome this cretinization to which the digital world has led us with excessive consumption of very specific stimuli, with TikTok as the best example of a dopamine shot" . That overcoming will come “from tools, models and methods that help each one to learn from the talent they have. How do you discover or are helped to discover your talent or the things that you are most qualified or interested in, ”she observed.
Cornella does not consider himself "overly optimistic", but points out that "there are many people working to really make things work differently." It is a phenomenon of growing activism "which will be an activism not so much of protest, but of proposal, in the search for solutions." This trend has served to develop a current concept, that of the stock of solutions that work. “We can be optimistic –said Cornella– because there have never been so many people concerned about the future of the planet and our species”.
Cornella's numerous examples with links to all kinds of innovations ranging from advances in brain science to quantum physics can be followed on the Institute of Next by Infonomia website.
