In the previous chapters we saw the dark picture of a world in which we have done nothing. Now let us look at that same world through another window: let us travel to the year 2100 and suppose that humanity has chosen the right road and has built this network.
Before I begin, let me say one thing: what follows in this chapter is not a prophecy. It is a picture of what could come to pass if the right decision were taken. No one knows the future; but anyone can say which future he wants.
So what shape does this world have?
Let us begin with a child. A child who, in the decades to come, is born in a remote village in the heart of Africa or of Central Asia — in the very place that was once “invisible to the world”. But this child, unlike his forebears, is not imprisoned within the walls of geography. A few kilometres away there is a station which will carry him within a few hours to a great city, to a well-equipped hospital, to a university. If he falls ill, specialist treatment is within his reach. If he has a talent, there is a road for it to flower.
The place where he was born no longer decides his destiny. And this, to my mind, is the greatest achievement of this network: the breaking of that most ancient injustice which condemned a person for the place of his birth.
In this world, the economy of the earth wears another face. Countries which were once landlocked and left behind by the world market now sit upon the main arteries of trade. Goods move more cheaply, more swiftly and more cleanly from the remote mine to the world market. The commerce of mankind is no longer hostage to a few narrow chokepoints; if one route is closed, there are dozens of alternatives. The world, instead of standing always one step away from crisis, rests upon a firm and resilient network. And most important of all, wealth and opportunity are no longer concentrated in a few particular points of the earth, but have flowed everywhere along these arteries.
And the deepest transformation has taken place in the souls of people. That widespread frustration which was born of seeing the lives of others without the power to reach them has given way to a new feeling: the feeling of participation and of dignity. People are no longer merely spectators of other people’s lives upon a screen; they are themselves part of the world, they can move, see, learn and build. That painful gap between “what people saw” and “what they had” has been filled — and with it, a great part of the anger and unrest which rose out of that gap has subsided.
But the greatest fruit lies in the bond between the nations. In a world whose peoples can easily come and go among one another, trade with one another, study and work in each other’s cities, become friends and even form families, the wall of estrangement falls. And where people know one another, misunderstanding and fear and enmity take root with greater difficulty. War, in a world whose nations are so interwoven, becomes far more costly and far more remote.
But here a point must be made clear: connection and commerce alone are no guarantee of peace. History has its examples of nations which traded with one another and went to war all the same. This network raises the cost of war and reduces its pretexts, but it does not make it impossible. In the final part of the book, where I address the hardest challenges, I shall return to this point at greater length.
This is the very storm of which I spoke in the preface — a storm which this time, instead of arriving, has been quenched in the seed. And instead of the elite building a way of escape from the earth, humanity has together built a way of remaining upon this earth and making it better.
And let me speak more honestly still, and not fall into the trap of fantasy: the world of the year 2100 is not a paradise. Man is the same man, with all his weaknesses and disagreements; there are still difficulties, there is still strife somewhere, there is still work to be done for the bettering of things. This network works no miracle, and does not cure all the pains of mankind overnight.
But what it does do is fundamental: it builds a world in which distances no longer give the orders, in which connection outweighs separation, and in which every human being — from every corner of the earth — has a fairer chance of a better life. And perhaps more important than the network itself is the example it leaves behind: it shows that nations are able to come to an agreement with one another over something great.
This is the whole difference between those two possible futures.
This vision is beautiful and full of hope. But one great question remains — a question until I answer which this picture will remain no more than a dream: how?
How can a tunnel be driven beneath the Bering Strait? How much does such a network cost, and where does the money come from? Who administers it, so that it does not become an instrument of domination for a limited few?
It is here that we must come down from the sky of the vision and set foot upon the hard ground of reality. In the next part we pass from the dream to the drawing — to how this network is, in practice, to be built.