Ángel Pérez Martínez

Human beings have always dreamed of magnificent cities. The imagined and mythical, like the so-called Lyonesse not far from the coast of Cornwall, or the Seven Cities of Cíbola located somewhere in the southwest of North America, or El Dorado, hidden in the pre-Colombian jungle. Surely behind these dreams looms the aspiration to find a model of harmonious coexistence. These would be cities attuned with the natural environment that surrounds them. With hanging gardens like those in ancient Babylonia or cloistered in a precious valley like Machu Pichhu, although these two examples actually did exist.

Some organizations foment innovation in the contexts that dictate the present. But innovation is intimately tied to the future and variations of the future. Thus, inspiring creativity is also offering ideas about what is possible and forthcoming. Perhaps this is the key to true realism.

If Cicero or Quintilianus had known about TED Talks, they probably would have included them in their repertoire of rhetorical devices. Quite possible because, just like the Romans recommended, Ted Talk orators persuade with eloquence.

In an article published a few months ago in'The New Yorker' the British writer John Lanchester explains that in order to write a novel about London, he had to begin by trying to understand “the world of money.” Although Lanchester isn't shy on culture – he grew up between Calcutta, Brunei, and Hong Kong; and was educated at Oxford – his reading about the economy required something of an effort.

Leaning against the trunk of an apple tree in 1666, Isaac Newton asked himself, “Why do apples fall?” Perhaps some of the neighboring farmers would have thought: “Well, that’s a waste of time.” And maybe they would have added, “What’s the use of thinking about such obvious occurrences? Apples fall because they fall.” Behind this possible recrimination there might have been some noteworthy ideas about the importance of productivity and the food chain: what is important about apples is how to harvest them and capitalize on them.

The world of video games is an economic and creative reality. Its possibilities are not limited to its recreational aspects; it is an industry that employees a multitude of people. According to the latest report by Newzoo, gaming generated more than €100 billion in 2018. And in an article that cites the Newzoo report, CNBC points out that this represents an increase of more than 13 percent compared to the previous year. The gaming industry encompasses video games, games for mobile devices, and eSports.

The advantages are many. This doesn't mean we have to be specialists in computer science. Programming languages are what allow machines to be given instructions, and what makes them, more or less, intelligent. So, the more we know about these processes, the better we understand how the world today functions. We will also be better protected against urban myths and fake news. For example, if we knew how the algorithms that protect our bank accounts work, we would be leery of the urban myth that says if we enter our pin backwards in the ATM, the bank immediately notifies the police.

They say that the market doesn't tolerate ambiguity, which is the result of a lack of certainty, among other things. Rumors are a natural offshoot of the undefined, the very terrain of conspiracies and hoaxes.

Digitalization encompasses both a process and a habitat. As a process, digitization transforms analogue content. For example, converting the 1604 edition of 'Quijote' printed by Juan de la Cuesta into a digital 'Quijote'. The content that was drawn, printed, or typed is input into a computer via numeric codes. The result can even simulate the original typography. But the letters that appear on the screen are, in reality, digits that the computer converts into images.

Ben Hammersley – currently the editor of Wired.uk – is credited with coining this term: a combination of iPod and broadcast. A podcast is a set of digital audio files making up a series of episodes that can be downloaded onto a variety of devices.

Around the 1960s the U.S. Army coined the name soft skills to refer to abilities other than those involved in working with machines. Military instructors realized the need for other abilities in the profesional development of its technicians and engineers.

We need to talk about artificial intelligence (AI), and not because of the hype surrounding it, but because it is all around us. Without noticing, in one way or another, AI has become a part of our daily lives, and this may be just a hint of what’s to come in the future. Alan Turing pointed out that that at one point, machines will be able to simulate human thought and that's where we should start.

Probably the first thing the philosopher would do would be to create a strategy to explore it. Just like when he designed a user's manual for the human mind with Logic or when he developed a method of thinking critically to examine metaphysics. Aristotles “tried to show that all things in nature belong to certain groups and subgroups,” writes Jonstein Gaarder in Sophie’s World. But first, he counted up the tools he had for this task.

When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, he couldn’t publish everything he wanted. The supply of text was limited, censorship prevented him from publishing certain things, there were few authors around and demand for reading materials was low. In the 21st Century, the situation is very different. It’s worth exploring these differences, recalling the process that Marshall McLuhan called the Gutenberg Galaxy.

For decades now, the conceptual terminology of urban planning has been striking. There are smart cities, urbaneering, digital cities, information cities and interconnected cities. These new terms, together with new tools like the internet of things and big data are transforming a debate that began several thousands of years ago in ancient China and the valleys of Mesopotamia. The discussion of the future of cities is far from new, as it entails some of humanity’s oldest concerns. What is unique today – as we’ll see – is not the novelty of the concepts but their potential.

The latest issue of the magazine La revista de Occidente includes the translation of an article by Peter Galison entitled “The journalist, the scientist and objectivity.” It describes the ease with which images are manipulated in today´s world. This has caused publications such as Science magazine to create protocols to prevent the presentation of manipulated illustrations. The perversion of information also reaches the world of journalism, where false rumors are propagated with a singular force.

In a report entitled The Future of Football, Futurizon predicts that in the future, sports events will be broadcast using tiny drones capable of hovering a few inches above the playing field, swirling around spectators or chasing the ball in the air. Except for referees, players and coaches, ordinary spectators have always enjoyed these events from architectural points of view:  the stands or the sides of the pitch. And, even if we don’t realize it yet, narratives have also depended on these points of view. What would happen if the perspective changed? Would it be possible to televise a match exactly as the referee sees it? Would that be of any interest at all? Or telling what an embedded drone observes?

We tend to configure our computers, our Smartphones, our social media and even our television. Digital adjustment allows us to adapt our devices and programs to our needs. But can we also configure ourselves?