1. People stop freaking out about AI

We’re both optimistic, but facts do corroborate an optimistic view. When it comes to AI and climate change, we’ll solve some of it. The Earth has survived mass destructions; we’ll be just fine. We need to start imagining – and building – the possible (and the impossible) to prepare us for what is to come.

AI has been around for decades, but it’s booming now because it’s available for everyone to use. The media makes money by scaring us and we have a psychological disposition to get freaked out, but this is not the end of civilisation, this is just pretty pictures and funny texts! With ChatGPT, we are only seeing a tiny fraction of what AI can do. There is a good video by Greg Brockman, co-founder of OpenAI, who breaks down ChatGPT’s potential.

2. Everyone embraces the Long Now

The Long Now Foundation was created by hippie engineer Stewart Brand (our philosopher of choice) and ambient producer Brian Eno in 1996. It was inspired by an anecdote from New York in the late-70s. Somebody asked Eno something like, “How long have you been here?”. He realised the American sense of here and now was much smaller than his, coming from the UK. He had this idea of ‘The Big Here’ referring to planet Earth, not just your apartment block or neighbourhood.

The author of The Clock of the Long Now, Brand was a sort of Abraham figure of the ‘religion’ of Silicon Valley. He was also the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, a counterculture Bible for sustainable living. Its slogan was ‘access to tools’. He had a good sense for what’s feasible.

In the 60s, Brand wore pins that said, “Why haven’t we seen a picture of the whole Earth yet?” He believed a picture of the entire globe would give us a sense we’re all in this together. While divisions didn’t magically evaporate, that infamous picture of the Earth from space – the Pale Blue Dot – catalysed global environmental movements.

3. We really open our eyes

A lot of our experiments play with the senses, like optical illusions do. We are fascinated by what we call decoupling or synthesising. All of our senses are strongly coupled – you might associate yellow with citrus, red with warmth, and so on – and by creating chocolate with an iridescent colour, we are showing there are many more ways to perceive the world.

(And yes, you might have guessed that we also believe doing psychedelics – in a controlled way, and for a direct purpose – allows you to access a reality you couldn’t get to naturally!)

4. We are mindful of self-fulfilling prophecies

5. Music is tasty!

Synesthesia is a big thing for us. We have built an electronic popsicle device you put on your tongue (a sort of taser!) to explore how electricity can induce a sweet and salty taste. It’s similar to licking a battery. We are now trying to connect that with an amplifier – like Spotify for taste!

As developed societies, we are consuming more and more for pleasure. It’s not fair for natural resources to have to sustain our hedonistic consumption. Substituting some pleasure eating with digital alternatives means we’re not wasting resources.

6. There is no ego

If only people could realise they are the ‘sperm that won’ and that all this is a gift, they’d have a much better time. We’re so often entrenched in our own self and ego. Everyone should read Kafka’s Metamorphosis. because it makes you think outside of yourself. Even if you’d rather be a dolphin or bird, we could all end up being a cockroach.

7. There are no limits

There is a book called Flatland that was written in the 1800s. People were just realising the philosophical implications of a fourth dimension – that there could be a God, higher dimensional beings and angels. It changed everything for us. We both have matching tesseract tattoos to remind us that the future is unbounded. The four-dimensional hypercube allows for the possibility that many more dimensions exist out there.

There’s a mindblowing video with Carl Sagan talking about hyperspace and the universe of science. He says, “When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.” This changed everything!

8. We embrace Pace Layers thinking

Every chapter of Stewart Brand’s 1999 book, The Clock of the Long Now, has a useful framework for seeing the world in a new way. His Pace Layers concept is at the core of what we do and a useful lens to understand the pace of change. Slow bottom layers give stability; the higher you go, the faster the innovation.

You just need to look at the impact of COVID on the fashion industry to see all the layers in action. We stopped kissing, governance regulations changed every day, infrastructure like hospitals and schools were impacted, and everyone worked from home, affecting commerce. Right now, the climate is changing faster than governments can react. When two layers move at different rates, it’s called ‘shear’. We rely on certain layers for innovation and others for stability. When that changes, it is disruptive and destructive.

9. People appreciate animals more

It would be cool to be a crow – they never forget a face. In a Harvard field study, they put a guy in a Dick Cheney mask. Crows could pick his face out of a crowd after he was ‘mean’ to them. They even have conversations and pass on this information. There is a storyline about all the birds across the country attacking Cheney in the recent Netflix series Beef – which is amazing. Watch it!

10. And plants

An ideal world would see an interspecies economy.

11. We find the right way out of life’s labyrinth

Everyone should get to see the Vigeland Sculpture Park once in their life. It’s an exceptional park in Oslo, Norway. Gustav Vigeland was a visionary artist who made granite sculptures that are representative of generational struggle. A character might look like they’re being attacked by bees and flinging them off, but babies will be flying everywhere. It’s funny and insightful about the phases of human life; he captures life’s constant battle.

12. Everyone has read Cloud Atlas

This complex book is really transformational. Three chapters in, you wonder if David Mitchell can pull off changing voices and characters so drastically, but he does. The palindromic structure is part of its message about how the universe works. We really loved the movie too, even though it was panned. It had white actors playing Korean society, which could be seen as appropriation but the point they were trying to make is that we are souls that transmigrate across the earth, across different identities.

13. The siesta takes off globally

A nap can transform your day. There would be less anger in the world if people just had a bit more sleep. We have an amazing Spanish hammock in the office – ten minutes in it is like eight hours of sleep. Another happy place is the bath. We read and drink together in the tub!

14. We don’t need money

Often in a startup, one partner at a time gets to do something crazy. By us being in the same space at the same time, the company’s ups and downs are our personal ups and downs.

15. Life is full of adventure

As Americans who have changed countries, moving to Spain, we have learned that anything can be an adventure. Even something mundane like buying toothpaste becomes a learning experience when you can’t understand the label. Travelling to Mars would be a blast, although we do have an idealised notion of it and the chances of coming back are pretty slim. But, because everything would be so weird and unexpected, there would be constant learning and problem solving.

16. We remain enthusiastically curious

Sometimes you have to do something that sounds like a terrible idea. If it doesn’t work out, walk it back. Our advice would be to be open to trying new things, trust your own intuition, be confident, think big but then do it! The greater sin is not doing things because of your small view of the world.

One of our favorite sayings is from physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who would describe bad ideas that make zero sense as “not even wrong”! A lot of people are winning at games that don’t matter. If you win a bug eating contest, really you’re just a loser who just ate a bunch of bugs. But we prefer to say…

‘That’s a terrible idea. What time do we start?’