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Project Vision 21

Transforming lives, renewing minds, cocreating the future

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The world changes really fast between just a couple of phone calls (and we don’t see it).

"How are you, Francisco? We haven't spoken in several weeks,” a friend told me in a recent phone call. "I'm fine and I hope you and your family are all fine too," I replied. And then he said, "Any news?"

The conversation continued for several minutes, focusing on the more trivial topics that abound in such conversations. However, a thought came to my mind, and it continued there for some time even after I had finished talking to my friend: Why is he asking if there is "something new"? There have been a lot of changes since we last spoke!

In the few weeks between the conversations with my friend, scientists discovered a new form of quark (one of the building blocks of matter) that until now was not known to exist. And other scientists created a "time crystal", that is, a stable but fluctuating structure at the same time.

In another remarkable advance, scientists claim to have discovered the area of the human brain that "filters" reality, allowing some signals to reach our consciousness and other signals, similar in intensity and duration, to go unnoticed.

In addition, experiments are already underway to determine how the DNA of humans living permanently on Mars will change, and therefore to determine whether those changes can or should be made before those people travel to Mars. In other words, we are about to create real Martians.

This is not science fiction. The technological tool CRISPR, used to edit genes, is already used to stop rare diseases, so it is anticipated that in the near future CRISPR will be used for "other therapeutic purposes."

And those are just some of the many advances that will surely in a short time completely transform our lives. Meanwhile, my friend and I talked about trivia, as if nothing had happened in the world during the few weeks between our two conversations.

Obviously, we cannot be continually "running" after every technological advance or every scientific discovery, in the same way that it is ridiculous to "chase" every new fad or every new "idol."

The examples listed above are not an invitation to read science and technology stories (although I think it is beneficial to do so), but to expand our awareness about the speed of transformation and the irreversible impact of that transformation in our lives and in our future.

However, despite the fact that every day we move further and further away from a stable and known past to arrive at a future in constant fluctuation ("Everything flows", said Heraclitus) and unknown only to those who do not want to know it, despite of that, we refuse to expand our consciousness.

So, "news" now is what happens to this "celebrity" or that one, or to some intentionally controversial statement, or to a new trend on social media. Thus, the vision of the truly new is lost and then the consciousness of the future is closed. When that happens, we are trapped in the illusion of the present. 

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