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Towards a New Enlightenment? Towards a New Enlightenment? A Transcendent Decade Preface This book, Towards a New Enlightenment? A Transcendent Decade, is the eleventh in an annual series that BBVA’s OpenMind project dedicates to disseminating greater knowledge on the key questions of our time. We began this series in 2008, with the first book, Frontiers of Knowledge, that celebrated the launching of the prizes of the same name awarded annually by the BBVA Foundation. Since then, these awards have achieved worldwide renown. In that first book, over twenty major scientists and experts used language accessible to the general public to rigorously review the most relevant recent advances and perspectives in the different scientific and artistic fields recognized by those prizes. Since then, we have published a new book each year, always following the same model: collections of articles by key figures in their respective fields that address different aspects or perspectives on the fundamental questions that affect our lives and determine our futu- re: from globalization to the impact of exponential technologies, and on to include today’s major ethical problems, the evolution of business in the digital era, and the future of Europe. The excellent reaction to the first books in this series led us, in 2011, to create OpenMind (www.bbvaopenmind.com), an online community for debate and the dissemination of knowle- dge. Since then, OpenMind has thrived, and today it addresses a broad spectrum of scientific, technological, social, and humanistic subjects in different formats, including our books, as well as articles, posts, reportage, infographics, videos, and podcasts, with a growing focus on audiovisual materials. Moreover, all of the content is presented in Spanish and English, absolutely free of charge. One of OpenMind’s fundamental assets is its group of three hundred authors and colla- borators: world-class specialists in their respective fields. Another is its community; in 2018, OpenMind will be visited by some seven million times by five-and-a-half million users from all over the world and two-hundred thousand followers on social media. Their participation, comments, and reposting of our contents bring life to the community. In recent years, we have dedicated very particular interest to the technological revolution and its profound impact on all aspects of our lives. In our 2017 book, The Next Step: Exponen- tial Life, we analyzed how this revolution is producing enormous changes in the economy, politics, society, culture, values, and everyday life. All this affects our understanding of what even humanity is, as technologies emerge that are capable of enormously enhancing human’s physical and mental capacity and lifespan. Even our position as the planet’s only intelligent species is brought into question by our coexistence and possible merging with increasingly intelligent machines. All of this ushers in a new phase that led us to title last year’s book The Age of Perplexity. Perplexity in the face of changes for which we have no guides or criteria for behaving—changes that call into question the very bases of our economic and political system. In the present book, Towards a New Enlightenment? A Transcendent Decade, we take another step forward, reviewing the most important changes that have occurred over the last ten years (which correspond to our project’s current duration) and, on the basis of their analysis, look to the future in order to understand where they are leading and what decisions we must make on both individual and collective levels. To approach this complex task, we have drawn on a group of twenty-three globally renow- ned, top-class specialists, and I wish to thank them all for their excellent collaboration and, in general, their generous support for our OpenMind project. This book begins with a review of the recent advances and future lines of scientific de- velopment, as well as their technological applications. These advances are determining our future possibilities in cosmology and physics, anthropology and data science, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and robotics, biotechnology, the social sciences, and so on. This knowledge helps us to better understand the trends shaping the principal concerns of our time: climate change and globalization, the economy and development, political orga- nization and information, gender, the problems of massive urbanization, and cybersecurity, all of which are subsequently discussed. From their analysis we can draw two conclusions: first, that the technological revolution’s ultimate impact on human life, including the preservation of the environment, fundamen- tally depends on the decisions we begin making today; and second, that a key decision will be to foster what this book calls a “New Enlightenment,” a broad dialogue to establish new philosophical and ethical bases for an economy, society, culture, and regulations adapted to our new scientific and technological surroundings, which will maximize their positive effects on growth and well-being, promote better distribution, and favor the development of shared initiatives to deal with global warming, environmental deterioration, and biodiversity. This will be a long and difficult task, but the sooner and more decisively we begin, the more likely we are to succeed. The alternative—failure—is unthinkable, because it opens the door to dystopias that some are already auguring and many already fear. Francisco González Group Executive Chairman, BBVA Francisco González 7—25 Martin Rees 26—44 José Manuel Sánchez Ron 45—71 Towards a New The Past Decade When Past Becomes Digital Enlightenment: and the Future Future: Physics in the The Financial of Cosmology and 21st Century Industry’s Role Astrophysics María Martinón-Torres 72 — 84 Alex Pentland 85— 105 Sandip Tiwari 106 — 126 Anthropology: What Data for a New The Ghost in the We Have Learned Enlightenment Machine? Nanotechnology, over the Last Decade Complexity, and Us Joanna J. Bryson 127 — 159 Ramón López de Mántaras 160 — 174 José M. Mato 175 — 187 The Past Decade The Future of AI: Turning Knowledge and Future of AI’s Toward Truly Intelligent into Health Impact on Society Artificial Intelligences Daniela Rus 188 — 202 Samuel H. Sternberg 203 — 219 Peter Kalmus 220 — 246 A Decade of The Biological Climate Change: Transformation Breakthrough of Humanity at in Robotics CRISPR-Based a Crossroads Gene Editing Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León 247 — 265 Victoria Robinson 266 — 278 Barry Eichengreen 279 — 295 The Past Decade Gender Inequalities: The Past Decade and the Future of “Past” Issues and and the Future of Globalization Future Possibilities the Global Economy Michelle Baddeley 296— 310 Nancy H. Chau and Ravi Kanbur 311— 325 Vivien A. Schmidt 326 — 346 Behavioral Economics: The Past, Present, The Past Decade and Past, Present, and and Future of Economic the Future of Governance and Future Development Democracy: Populist Challenges to Liberal Democracy Diana Owen 347 —365 Yang Xu and Carlo Ratti 366 — 380 Amos N. Guiora 381 — 407 The Past Decade Conquer the Cybersecurity: and Future of Political Divided Cities A Cooperation Model Media: The Ascendance of Social Media Francisco González graduated in Economics and Business Administration from the Complutense University in Madrid. He has been Executive Chairman of BBVA since 2000 and is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), where he is also a Member of its Executive Com- mittee. He is a Member of the European Financial Services Round Table (EFR), the Institut International d’Études Bancaires (IIEB), the International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), and the International Business Council (IBC), of the World Economic Forum (WEF), among other international fora. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees and a member Francisco González of the Global Advisory Council of The Conference Board (TCB). He represents Group Executive Chairman, BBVA in the International Monetary Conference (IMC). He is also Chairman of BBVA the BBVA Foundation. Prior to the merger between Banco Bilbao Vizcaya and Argentaria, Francisco González was Chairman of Argentaria from 1996 to 1999, where he led the integration, transformation, and privatization of a diverse group of state-owned banks. He began his professional career in 1964 as a programmer in an IT company. His ambition to transform twenty-first-century banking with the support of new technologies dates back to this time. Recommended book: The Age of Perplexity: Rethinking the World We Knew, OpenMind/ BBVA, 2017. The last decade has been a turbulent one. The financial crisis and uncertainty about the effects of globalization and the technological revolution have led to broad questioning of the global order of representative democracy and free markets. This article argues that to materialize the enormous potential growth and well-being for all offered by the technological revolution, and to dissipate the climate of discontent and pessimism, we need a New Enlightenment: a renewal of our philosophical and ethical bases, and of our political, economic, and legal architecture. This may be a long and complex process, but some steps can be taken immediately through economic and legal reforms. The digital transformation of the financial industry is one of the reforms capable of improving productivity and driving more inclusive growth. 7 Towards a New Enlightenment? A Transcendent Decade A Momentous (and Turbulent) Decade Ours are turbulent times, where political, economic, and social patterns that seemed sturdy and practically permanent are being radically questioned. Undoubtedly, this is largely due to the financial crisis that has marked the last decade. Eighty years after the Great Depression, and following the greatest known period of global prosperity that began at the end of World War II and ended with the “Great Moderation” at the beginning of our century, the world has again experienced a profound and worldwide economic crisis. This crisis, with its ensuing unemployment, rapid deterioration of public accounts, and austerity policies, has particularly affected the most developed countries.
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