So in the winter of 2012, I went to visit my grandmother's house in South India, a place, by the way, where the mosquitos have a special taste for the blood of the American-born.
U zimi 2012. godine posjetila sam kuću svoje bake u južnoj Indiji, mjestu gdje, usput, komarci imaju poseban tek za krvlju Amerikanaca.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
No joke.
Nije šala.
When I was there, I got an unexpected gift. It was this antique instrument made more than a century ago, hand-carved from a rare wood, inlaid with pearls and with dozens of metal strings. It's a family heirloom, a link between my past, the country where my parents were born, and the future, the unknown places I'll take it.
Dok sam bila ondje, dobila sam neočekivan dar. Bio je to ovaj drevni instrument izrađen prije više od stoljeća, ručno izrezbaren iz rijetkog drveta, ispunjen biserima i s desecima metalnih žica. To je obiteljsko nasljeđe, poveznica između moje prošlosti, zemlje u kojoj su rođeni moji roditelji, i budućnosti, svih nepoznatih mjesta na koja ću ga ponijeti.
I didn't actually realize it at the time I got it, but it would later become a powerful metaphor for my work.
Nisam to shvaćala kada sam ga dobila, ali on će kasnije postati snažna metafora za moj rad.
We all know the saying, "There's no time like the present." But nowadays, it can feel like there's no time but the present. What's immediate and ephemeral seems to dominate our lives, our economy and our politics. It's so easy to get caught up in the number of steps we took today or the latest tweet from a high-profile figure. It's easy for businesses to get caught up in making immediate profits and neglect what's good for future invention. And it's far too easy for governments to stand by while fisheries and farmland are depleted instead of conserved to feed future generations. I have a feeling that, at this rate, it's going to be hard for our generation to be remembered as good ancestors. If you think about it, our species evolved to think ahead, to chart the stars, dream of the afterlife, sow seeds for later harvest. Some scientists call this superpower that we have "mental time travel," and it's responsible for pretty much everything we call human civilization, from farming to the Magna Carta to the internet -- all first conjured in the minds of humans.
Svima nam je poznata izreka, "Nijedno vrijeme nije kao sadašnjost." Ali danas se može činiti da nema drugog vremena osim sadašnjosti. Trenutno i nestalno dominira našim životima, našom ekonomijom i politikom. Tako je lako zaokupiti se brojem koraka koje smo učinili danas ili objavom na Twitteru poznate ličnosti. Poduzećima je tako lako zaokupiti se trenutnim profitom i zapostaviti ono što je dobro za buduće inovacije. I vladama je tako lako stajati postrani dok propadaju ribarstvo i poljoprivreda, umjesto da ih se očuva kako bi hranili buduće naraštaje. Imam osjećaj da će, ovim tempom, biti teško sjećati se našeg naraštaja kao dobrih predaka. Ako malo razmislite, naša vrsta razvila se tako da misli unaprijed, da napravi kartu zvijezda, sanja o životu nakon smrti, posije sjeme za kasniju žetvu. Neki znanstvenici nazivaju ovu supermoć "mentalnim putovanjem kroz vrijeme", i odgovorna je za gotovo sve što danas zovemo ljudskom civilizacijom, od poljoprivrede do Velike povelje o ljudskim slobodama, do interneta -- sve je to ponajprije nastalo u umovima ljudi.
But let's get real: if we look around us today, we don't exactly seem to be using this superpower quite enough, and that begs the question: Why not? What's wrong is how our communities, businesses and institutions are designed. They're designed in a way that's impairing our foresight. I want to talk to you about the three key mistakes that I think we're making.
Ali pogledajmo u realnost: ogledamo li se oko sebe danas, čini se da baš i ne koristimo dovoljno tu supermoć, a to zahtijeva pitanje: zašto ne? Naše zajednice, poduzeća i institucije su pogrešno osmišljene. Osmišljene su na način koji oštećuje naše predviđanje. Želim vam govoriti o tri ključne pogreške koje mislim da radimo.
The first mistake is what we measure. When we look at the quarterly profits of a company or its near-term stock price, that's often not a great measure of whether that company is going to grow its market share or be inventive in the long run. When we glue ourselves to the test scores that kids bring back from school, that's not necessarily what's great for those kids' learning and curiosity in the long run. We're not measuring what really matters in the future.
Prva pogreška je ono što mjerimo. Ako pogledamo kvartalnu dobit poduzeća ili cijenu dionice nedugo prije kraja burzovnog razdoblja, to često nije dobra mjera hoće li to poduzeće povećati svoj udio u tržištu ili biti dugoročno inovativno. Ako smo opsjednuti rezultatima testova koje nam djeca donose iz škole, to nije nužno dobar pokazatelj onoga što djeca nauče, niti dugoročne znatiželjnosti. Ne mjerimo ono što je doista bitno za budućnost.
The second mistake we're making that impairs our foresight is what we reward. When we celebrate a political leader or a business leader for the disaster she just cleaned up or the announcement she just made, we're not motivating that leader to invest in preventing those disasters in the first place, or to put down payments on the future by protecting communities from floods or fighting inequality or investing in research and education.
Druga pogreška koju činimo koja oštećuje naše predviđanje jest što nagrađujemo. Kada slavimo političkog ili poslovnog lidera zbog katastrofe koju je upravo počistio ili zbog najave koju je upravo razglasio, mi ne motiviramo tog lidera da uloži u sprječavanje da do takve katastrofe uopće dođe, da uloži u budućnost stvarajući zaštitu od poplava, ili suzbijajući nejednakost, ili ulažući u istraživanje i obrazovanje.
The third mistake that impairs our foresight is what we fail to imagine. Now, when we do think about the future, we tend to focus on predicting exactly what's next, whether we're using horoscopes or algorithms to do that. But we spend a lot less time imagining all the possibilities the future holds. When the Ebola outbreak emerged in 2014 in West Africa, public health officials around the world had early warning signs and predictive tools that showed how that outbreak might spread, but they failed to fathom that it would, and they failed to act in time to intervene, and the epidemic grew to kill more than 11,000 people. When people with lots of resources and good forecasts don't prepare for deadly hurricanes, they're often failing to imagine how dangerous they can be.
Treća pogreška koja oštećuje naše predviđanje je ono što nismo u mogućnosti zamisliti. A kada i razmišljamo o budućnosti, obično se usredotočimo na predviđanje onog što je neposredno sljedeće, bilo da se pritom služimo horoskopima ili algoritmima. Ali trošimo puno manje vremena na zamišljanje svih mogućnosti za budućnost. Kada je izbila ebola u zapadnoj Africi 2014. godine, činovnici javnog zdravstva u cijelom svijetu imali su rane znakove uzbune i alate za predviđanje koji su pokazivali kako bi se zaraza mogla raširiti, ali nisu uspjeli shvatiti da će se doista proširiti i propustili su djelovati na vrijeme da to suzbiju, a epidemija se raširila toliko da je ubila 11 tisuća ljudi. Kada se ljudi s mnoštvom resursa i dobrim prognozama ne pripreme za smrtonosne uragane, često propuštaju zamisliti koliko opasni uragani mogu biti.
Now, none of these mistakes that I've described, as dismal as they might sound, are inevitable. In fact, they're all avoidable. What we need to make better decisions about the future are tools that can aid our foresight, tools that can help us think ahead. Think of these as something like the telescopes that ship captains of yore used when they scanned the horizon. Only instead of for looking across distance and the ocean, these tools are for looking across time to the future. I want to share with you a few of the tools that I've found in my research that I think can help us with foresight.
Nijedna od ovih pogrešaka koje sam opisala, koliko god strašnima se činile, nije neizbježna. Zapravo, sve ih je moguće izbjeći. Kako bismo donosili bolje odluke o budućnosti, trebamo alate koji nam pomažu u predviđanju, alate koji nam mogu pomoći da razmišljamo unaprijed. Razmišljajte o njima kao o teleskopima koje su kapetani brodova u davnini koristili kada su promatrali obzor. Ali umjesto gledanja u daljinu i ocean, ovi alati gledaju kroz vrijeme u budućnost. Želim podijeliti s vama nekoliko alata koje sam otkrila u svom istraživanju, koji nam mogu pomoći s predviđanjem.
The first tool I want to share with you I think of as making the long game pay now. This is Wes Jackson, a farmer I spent some time with in Kansas. And Jackson knows that the way that most crops are grown around the world today is stripping the earth of the fertile topsoil we need to feed future generations. He got together with a group of scientists, and they bred perennial grain crops which have deep roots that anchor the fertile topsoil of a farm, preventing erosion and protecting future harvests. But they also knew that in order to get farmers to grow these crops in the short run, they needed to boost the annual yields of the crops and find companies willing to make cereal and beer using the grains so that farmers could reap profits today by doing what's good for tomorrow.
Prvi alat koji želim podijeliti s vama čini da se igranje na duge staze isplati odmah sada. Ovo je Wes Jackson, poljoprivrednik s kojim sam provela neko vrijeme u Kansasu. Jackson zna da način uzgajanja većine kultura na svijetu danas iscrpljuje plodni površinski sloj zemlje koji nam treba da prehranimo buduće naraštaje. Udružio se sa skupinom znanstvenika i uzgojili su višegodišnje žitne kulture dubokih korijena koji učvršćuju plodan površinski sloj zemlje na farmi, sprječavajući eroziju tla i štiteći buduće žetve. Ali također su znali da, kako bi u kratkom roku pridobili poljoprivrednike da uzgajaju ovu kulturu, moraju povećati godišnji prinos kulture te pronaći tvrtke spremne proizvoditi žitne pahuljice i pivo koristeći žito, kako bi poljoprivrednici pobrali dobit danas čineći dobro za sutrašnjicu.
And this is a tried-and-true strategy. In fact, it was used by George Washington Carver in the South of the United States after the Civil War in the early 20th century. A lot of people have probably heard of Carver's 300 uses for the peanut, the products and recipes that he came up with that made the peanut so popular. But not everyone knows why Carver did that. He was trying to help poor Alabama sharecroppers whose cotton yields were declining, and he knew that planting peanuts in their fields would replenish those soils so that their cotton yields would be better a few years later. But he also knew it needed to be lucrative for them in the short run.
Ovo je oprobana i učinkovita strategija. Zapravo, George Washington Carver koristio se njome na jugu SAD-a nakon Građanskog rata u ranom 20. stoljeću. Mnogi su zasigurno čuli za Carverovih 300 upotreba kikirikija, proizvode i recepte koje je smislio, a koji su učinili kikiriki toliko popularnim. Ali većina ne zna zašto je Carver to učinio. Pokušavao je pomoći siromašnim uzgajivačima u Alabami čiji je prinos pamuka opadao, a on je znao kako će sadnja kikirikija na njihovim poljima obnoviti tu zemlju kako bi prinosi pamuka bili bolji nekoliko godina poslije. Ali također je znao da to mora biti isplativo u kratkom roku.
Alright, so let's talk about another tool for foresight. This one I like to think of as keeping the memory of the past alive to help us imagine the future. So I went to Fukushima, Japan on the sixth anniversary of the nuclear reactor disaster there that followed the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011. When I was there, I learned about the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station, which was even closer to the epicenter of that earthquake than the infamous Fukushima Daiichi that we all know about. In Onagawa, people in the city actually fled to the nuclear power plant as a place of refuge. It was that safe. It was spared by the tsunamis. It was the foresight of just one engineer, Yanosuke Hirai, that made that happen. In the 1960s, he fought to build that power plant farther back from the coast at higher elevation and with a higher sea wall. He knew the story of his hometown shrine, which had flooded in the year 869 after a tsunami. It was his knowledge of history that allowed him to imagine what others could not.
Dobro, pričajmo o još jednom alatu za predviđanje. Volim razmišljati o njemu kao održanju sjećanja na prošlost živim kako bi nam pomoglo zamisliti budućnost. Otišla sam u Fukushimu u Japan prigodom šeste obljetnice nesreće u nuklearnom reaktoru, nakon potresa Tohoku i tsunamija 2011. godine. Dok sam bila ondje, saznala sam za Onagawa postaju za nuklearnu energiju, koja je bila još bliža epicentru tog potresa nego zloglasna Fukushima Daiichi za koju svi jako dobro znamo. U Onagawi, ljudi iz grada su zapravo pobjegli u tvornicu nuklearne energije kao mjesto skloništa. Bila je toliko sigurna. Tsunamiji su je poštedjeli. Radilo se o predviđanju tek jednog inženjera, Yanosuke Hirai, koji je to omogućio. 1960-ih godina, borio se za to da izgradi tu nuklearku puno dalje od obale i na višoj nadmorskoj visini, s višim zidom zaštite od vode. Znao je za priču o hramu u svome rodnom gradu, koji je bio potopljen 869. godine nakon tsunamija. Njegovo poznavanje povijesti omogućilo mu je da zamisli nešto što drugi nisu mogli.
OK, one more tool of foresight. This one I think of as creating shared heirlooms. These are lobster fishermen on the Pacific coast of Mexico, and they're the ones who taught me this. They have protected their lobster harvest there for nearly a century, and they've done that by treating it as a shared resource that they're passing on to their collected children and grandchildren. They carefully measure what they catch so that they're not taking the breeding lobster out of the ocean. Across North America, there are more than 30 fisheries that are doing something vaguely similar to this. They're creating long-term stakes in the fisheries known as catch shares which get fishermen to be motivated not just in taking whatever they can from the ocean today but in its long-term survival.
Dobro, još jedan alat za predviđanje. O ovome razmišljam kao o stvaranju zajedničkih nasljeđa. Ovo su ribari jastoga na meksičkoj obali Tihog oceana, i oni su me naučili ovome. Oni štite svoj ulov jastoga ondje gotovo cijelo stoljeće, a to čine tretirajući ga kao zajednički izvor koji će prenijeti na svu svoju djecu i unuke. Pažljivo mjere što ulove kako ne bi izlovljavali jastoge koji se pare iz oceana. Diljem sjeverne Amerike ima preko 30 ribarskih udruga koje čine nešto poput ovoga. Stvaraju dugoročne prinose za ribare, znane kao udjeli u izlovu, koji motiviraju ribare, ne samo da danas izlove iz oceana koliko mogu, nego na dugoročni opstanak.
Now there are many, many more tools of foresight I would love to share with you, and they come from all kinds of places: investment firms that look beyond near-term stock prices, states that have freed their elections from the immediate interests of campaign financiers. And we're going to need to marshal as many of these tools as we can if we want to rethink what we measure, change what we reward and be brave enough to imagine what lies ahead.
Postoji još jako mnogo alata za predviđanje koje bih voljela podijeliti s vama, i dolaze s najrazličitijih mjesta: investicijskih tvrtki koje predviđaju dalje od kratkoročne cijene dionica, država koje su oslobodile svoje izbore od neposrednih interesa osoba koje financiraju kampanje. I morat ćemo sabrati i organizirati što više tih alata ako želimo razmotriti ono što mjerimo, promijeniti ono što nagrađujemo, i biti dovoljno hrabri da zamislimo što dolazi u budućnosti.
Not all this is going to be easy, as you can imagine. Some of these tools we can pick up in our own lives, some we're going to need to do in businesses or in communities, and some we need to do as a society. The future is worth this effort.
Kao što možete pretpostaviti, sve to neće biti jednostavno. Neke od tih alata možemo uzeti iz vlastitog života, neke ćemo morati razviti unutar naših poslova i zajednica, a neke ćemo morati stvoriti kao društvo. Budućnost zaslužuje ovaj trud.
My own inspiration to keep up this effort is the instrument I shared with you. It's called a dilruba, and it was custom-made for my great-grandfather. He was a well-known music and art critic in India in the early 20th century. My great-grandfather had the foresight to protect this instrument at a time when my great-grandmother was pawning off all their belongings, but that's another story. He protected it by giving it to the next generation, by giving it to my grandmother, and she gave it to me.
Moje nadahnuće da nastavim s trudom jest instrument koji sam vam pokazala. Zove se dilruba, izrađen je po narudžbi za moga pradjeda. On je bio poznati kritičar glazbe i umjetnosti u Indiji, u ranom 20. stoljeću. Moj pradjed imao je predviđanje da zaštiti ovaj instrument u vrijeme kada je moja prabaka zalagala sve što su posjedovali, ali to je druga priča. Zaštitio ga je tako što ga je predao sljedećem naraštaju, predajući ga mojoj baki, a ona ga je dala meni.
When I first heard the sound of this instrument, it haunted me. It felt like hearing a wanderer in the Himalayan fog. It felt like hearing a voice from the past.
Kada sam prvi put čula zvuk ovoga instrumenta, on me proganjao. Bilo je kao da čujem zalutaloga u magli Himalaje. Bilo je kao da čujem glas iz prošlosti.
(Music)
(Glazba)
(Music ends)
(Glazba prestaje)
That's my friend Simran Singh playing the dilruba. When I play it, it sounds like a cat's dying somewhere, so you're welcome.
To je moj prijatelj Simran Singh kako svira dilrubu. Kada je ja sviram, zvuči kao da mačka negdje umire, pa nema na čemu.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
This instrument is in my home today, but it doesn't actually belong to me. It's my role to shepherd it in time, and that feels more meaningful to me than just owning it for today. This instrument positions me as both a descendant and an ancestor. It makes me feel part of a story bigger than my own.
Instrument je danas u mome domu, ali zapravo ne pripada meni. Moja zadaća je da ga pričuvam u vremenu, i to mi se čini važnijim od pukog posjedovanja za danas. Instrument me određuje ujedno i kao potomka i kao pretka. Čini da se osjećam dijelom jedne priče koja je veća od moje vlastite.
And this, I believe, is the single most powerful way we can reclaim foresight: by seeing ourselves as the good ancestors we long to be, ancestors not just to our own children but to all humanity. Whatever your heirloom is, however big or small, protect it and know that its music can resonate for generations.
A to je, vjerujem, najmoćniji način kako možemo povratiti predviđanje: smatrajući sebe samima dobrim precima kakvima žudimo biti, precima ne samo svoje djece, nego cjelokupnog čovječanstva. Što god da je vaše nasljeđe, bilo veliko ili malo, zaštitite ga i znajte da njegova glazba može odjekivati naraštajima.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)