For the first episode of ▶▶FAST FORWARD, Adina shared her vision of the world in which technology will provide tools for citizens to collaborate with each other.

She specified how these tools should be shaped and how they will help sustain local and sustainable practices, rather than centralised globalized structures, all while still keeping a global view.

Adina spoke about human to human collaboration and our relationship to our planet and our resources - and how COVID-19 may have shifted our view, allowing for new practices to emerge.

The talk was followed by a Q&A moderated by AC Coppens, CEO/Founder of THE CATALYSTS.

More about Adina

A philosopher, futurist and entrepreneur, Adina Popescu creates platforms that integrate nascent technology in order to generate impact and to empower bottom-up movements. She is currently developing a climate and environmental action platform called ÆRTH.

ÆRTH is a virtual planet that works on every smartphone, web and in virtual & augmented reality. ÆRTH is a digital twin of EARTH. A simulation of our planet – a game, but running on real world data: What ever happens on the model is happening in reality at the same time.

Adina worked as a creative advisor to Conservation International, helping the NGO to spark global engagement via immersive and viral storytelling, in particular through VR and has worked closely with Apples Agency MAL on CI´s behalf.

As the curator of the conference "Parley for the Ocean", on behalf of Pharrell Williams and Bionic Yarn, Adina has been investigating biomimicry based materials for a sustainable future of product.

Adina’s artistic work has been exhibited at Art Basel, Venice Biennale, Art Basel Miami and was the recipient of the Palais de Tokyo grant in Paris.

References, links and resources from Adina’s talk

▶▶ Adina points that today we believe that „technology” means our contemporary digital tools. But the word comes from the ancient greek word technê . Indigenous groups have developed a technê , their way to live in accordance with their resourse pools and their environments. In India farmers have genetically engineered the Basmati Rice Seed for centuries. All this is technê .

▶▶ The Anthropocene has been in place since Humans started settling, farming and building tools. The philosopher Hegel interprets technê as a tool that constructs the way we see the world. In modern terms - an interface.

▶▶ What is happening today is a rather gradual shift and has more to do with invasive tools that are centralised and therefore disconnected from the wisdom and the knowledge of our planet and its different habitats. It is the quality of the technê that has changed, not the fact that we have technology per se.

▶▶ Read more on Epistêmê - the Greek word most often translated as knowledge, and technê - translated as either craft or art.

▶▶ Michele Wucker, has written about the “Gray Rhino”, a highly probable, high impact yet neglected threat that nobody does anything about: somehow both the elephant in the room and the improbable and unforeseeable black swan event. She has described both climate change and the pandemic as a gray rhino. For more, see Yale360: Coronavirus Holds Key Lessons on How to Fight Climate Change

▶▶ Naomi Klein observed that as the coronavirus continues to kill thousands each day, tech companies are seizing the opportunity to extend their reach and power.

▶▶ Island is a very interesting tech case study. The country has the highest penetration of any automated contact tracing app in the world, with nearly 40% of Icelanders using it, but one senior figure says it “wasn’t a game changer”. Shira Ovide, technology journalist from the New York Times stresses that technology will not end the pandemic, people will.

▶▶ Adina makes an important point about having a more inclusive approach to carbon mitigation efforts. Otherwise, we will see yet another version of the gig economy that we know from the tech sector, putting rural and indigenous communities in a vulnerable position.

▶▶ Adina is developing ÆRTH, a platform helping empower groups on the ground to maintain control over their resource pools. As largely stated by Nobel Prize in Economics winner, Elinor Ostrom, value is created through the logic of sharing with others in an open and even casual way. Innovation is no longer a monopoly, unassailably colonised by mercantile initiative.

▶▶ Scientific collaboration across borders is on the rise during the pandemic. A good example of co-creation in the cultural sector during the crisis is this collaborative toolkit for artists, designers, curators and facilitators.

▶▶ Joining the discussion, Michel Reilhac mentions Half-Life: Alyx, appearing to have given VR gaming a serious boost, while Kathleen Shroeter mentions the project developed by her company, J2C, addressing the Corona Virus crisis by meaningful innovation.