Question: Should futurists be looking at the little things in our world — instead of always focusing on the big questions and big issues of the future?
By Elina Hiltunen
Small things make a big difference.
I learned this personally while doing my final year project in my master’s degree studies. My first degree was in chemistry, and more specifically, in polymer chemistry. In my final thesis, I tried to find a suitable plasticizer for a biodegradable polymer called poly-L-lactide. The poly part of that complex word refers to its many identical molecules linked together in a chain, making it a plastic.
Lactide, on the other hand, is a ring-shaped compound formed by two lactic acid molecules. The most exciting part of that name monster, however, is the letter L. It indicates the chirality, or spatial configuration, of the lactide molecule. Lactide molecules, like many other molecules, have so-called stereoisomers. They have the same atoms, but only the spatial structure distinguishes them. They are mirror images of each other. The spatial structure alone can change the properties of molecules, even if they are the same substance. For example, a molecule in one spatial form can act as a medicine for one disease and in another has no effect. Small things do matter!
I later started my PhD thesis at business school. I wrote my doctoral dissertation about weak signals, which are small, strange, and even ridiculous changes that can, at best, anticipate significant future changes. One small weak signal does not tell us anything about change. The idea is that by combining these tiny seeds of change, we can start seeing hints of bigger changes. If small drops form big rivers, many weak signals can form significant trends.
As a futurist, I am still interested in the small things. They often seem insignificant, but they can have significant impacts when combined. Many things that matter to us are so microscopic that we don't always remember they exist. Rarely does one microscopic thing change our lives, but if the number of these small things increases or decreases or their balance changes, they can suddenly have a big impact.
And, of course, there is power in numbers, as we know. A cell, for example, is often insignificant. But when you combine some 37 trillion different cells, you get a human being.
In this article, I could have discussed several interesting microscopic things and their significance for our future. However, due to the limited number of characters, I will limit my review to five small but significant things: phytoplankton, particulate matter, viruses, carbon dioxide, and elementary particles, from largest to smallest.
PHYTOPLANKTON
The lungs of the world are wet. They are found in the oceans and, more specifically, in phytoplankton. Phytoplankton in the upper layers of the oceans both absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen through photosynthesis. About half of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by phytoplankton. Phytoplankton also plays an essential role in the Earth's carbon cycle, as dead phytoplankton exports carbon to the ocean floor. This is why the oceans act as carbon sinks, absorbing an estimated 40% of all man-made greenhouse gases. Moreover, phytoplankton is the base of the oceanic food chain, ensuring that we have fish in the oceans and waterways, for example.
In terms of size, phytoplanktons are about 0.2-200 micrometers in diameter. Phytoplankton are microscopic, often single-celled organisms such as algae and bacteria. There are estimated to be more than 100,000 different species. An example of phytoplankton is the cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus, which is 0.6 micrometers in size. Despite their small size, cyanobacteria are mainly responsible for the general build-up of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere at the beginning of time.
Climate change affects phytoplankton’s life as the oceans warm, acidify and become more saline. No clear understanding exists of how ocean warming will ultimately shape phytoplankton life. Because phytoplankton are diverse, the effects will vary from species to species. Changes in water temperatures have been hypothesized to affect the abundance of phytoplankton types. For example, cyanobacteria will increase and larger phytoplankton decrease. Large cyanobacterial algae, also known as blue-green algae, have already grown and are unfortunately familiar in many waters. Some cyanobacteria are neurotoxins that cause harm to marine and aquatic life, including humans. Other harmful algal blooms, red tides and golden algal blooms, have caused mass mortalities in fish.
One scary effect of warming waters may be that some phytoplankton will turn from carbon sinks to carbon producers. Some, in turn, will disappear. In 2010, Canadian scientists found that globally, phytoplankton numbers have fallen by 40% since 1950. One alarming study was published in 2015 by researchers at the University of Leicester in the UK. According to its calculations, if global temperatures rise by 6 degrees Celsius, the temperature of seawater will rise so high that phytoplankton will no longer produce oxygen. This would spell doom for the Earth's biota. Including us humans.
PARTICULATE MATTER (PM)
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as many as 99% of the world's people live in areas with poor air quality. Every year, poor air quality causes around 4.2 million deaths worldwide. Air quality is affected by particulate matter from fossil fuel and wood combustion, transportion, industry, construction, and nature. Particulate matter is respirable particles, including sulphate, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, black carbon, mineral dust or water. They are divided into two groups according to their size: the larger PM10 and PM2.5. Coarse (bigger) particles, called PM10, have a maximum size of 10 micrometres. These include street dust, pollen, and sea mist. Fine (smaller) particles, called PM2.5, are less than 2.5 micrometres in size and are mainly from burning wood and fossil fuels, industry and transport. Particles smaller than 2.5 micrometres are the most harmful to humans, as they can penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream. They cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, respiratory symptoms, strokes, and lung cancer and contribute to premature deaths.
Efforts are therefore being made to avoid the release of fine particles into the atmosphere. In maritime transport, for example, new regulations coming into force in 2020 will require a reduction of 80-86% in the sulphur content of fuels. The health benefits are undeniable. This change is estimated to reduce childhood asthma worldwide by 3.6%. But it is not that simple. Fine particles also slow climate change, meaning that the change in shipping to cleaner fuels will warm the climate as fine particles reflect sunlight into space. However, not all fine particles have a cooling effect on the climate. Black carbon, for example, has a significant impact on global warming. In the air, it absorbs sunlight, and when it reaches glaciers, it accelerates snow melt.
VIRUSES
Viruses are small biological systems that lack cellular structure or metabolism. They can be called parasites, as they need a host cell to reproduce. Viruses are ingenious at changing their structure, which allows them to spread from one species to another.
Viruses range in size from 20 to 400 nanometres. Although tiny, no one has missed their power, especially since 2019, when the world was introduced to the COVID-19 virus. The tiny virus paralyzed transportion and travel between countries. It shut people in their homes, drove numerous businesses out of business and caused chaos in the health sector. It caused death and pain: the WHO estimates that the coronavirus killed nearly 15 million people worldwide between 2020 and 2021.
As disruptive as it was, the coronavirus pandemic was not the first pandemic. There have been many pandemics over the years and centuries. The best known is probably the Spanish flu, caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus (80-120 nanometres in size). The outbreak occurred between 1918 and 1920, killing twice as many people as the First World War (1914-1918). The highest estimates put the death toll at up to 100 million. Smallpox, the only disease that mankind has survived (the last case was in 1977), killed around 500 million people in the previous 100 years of its existence.
We will continue to see more and more virus pandemics in the future. The reasons for this are clear: climate change, loss of biodiversity, population growth, and increasing prosperity, which have led to increased consumption of meat and dairy products. This means increasing numbers of farm animals, which is an excellent breeding ground for future pandemics.
Many pandemics are caused by viruses passed from animals to humans and have mutated to become destructive to humans. Such animal-to-human transmissible diseases are called zoonoses. For example, HIV comes from monkeys, and influenza originated from birds or pigs. Bats are veritable virus carriers with more than 60 viruses that can infect humans. These include Ebola, Rabies, Nipah and Sars. Viruses can be transmitted to humans directly from bats or through an intermediate animal. Increasing numbers of domestic animals and shrinking wildlife habitats will lead to new pandemics in the future. Globalisation, the movement of people from one place to another, and urbanization will contribute to the spread of pandemics.
Viruses not only affect humans, but animals and plants as well. Such viruses can pose challenges to food production, for example, especially when production is concentrated on a small number of crops worldwide. Maize lethal necrosis, rice tungro, sweet potato virus, banana bunchy top, citrus tristeza, plum pox are examples of viruses that have devastated crops around the world.
Despite all the harm they do, viruses also benefit us. Weakened viruses in vaccines prevent dangerous diseases, and viruses are used in gene therapy and cancer treatments. Viruses that eat bacteria, called bacteriophages, can be the solution when a bacterium has become antibiotic-resistant.
CARBON DIOXIDE
One carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. This simple molecule is one of the most important molecules in our environment, alongside water and oxygen, and its quantity will determine our future. The carbon dioxide molecule is 0.33 nanometres, but despite its small size, its effects are on everyone's lips.
Let's start with the basics: carbon dioxide is a molecule that is essential for our lives. It is an important molecule in photosynthesis, where plants convert energy from the sun into chemical energy. Photosynthesis also produces oxygen. Thanks to carbon dioxide, we have vegetation in the world in general. Carbon dioxide is also an important greenhouse gas. It ensures that the Earth's temperature is suitable for our life. But when too much carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, it leads to excessive global warming, with severe consequences for the future.
Carbon dioxide is the dominant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 75% of all greenhouse gases. It is mainly produced by burning fossil fuels (including oil, coal, and natural gas), deforestation, and land use. Human-generated carbon dioxide ends up in the atmosphere and carbon sinks, i.e. forests and oceans. When carbon dioxide is absorbed by the oceans and water bodies, it is converted into carbonic acid. Carbonic acid, in turn, acidifies the oceans and causes problems for marine ecosystems.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have steadily increased due to human activity. In March 2024, its atmospheric concentration was more than 425 parts per million (ppm). The amount of carbon dioxide may seem insignificant in terms of parts per million. After all, the air contains about 78% nitrogen and about 20% oxygen. Why is 0.04% somehow alarming? What could such a slight percentage increase, even a doubling, possibly mean in the future?
We don't have to speculate about how the world will change if CO2 levels increase. We can check history to see Earth's conditions when CO2 levels were high.
The last time the Earth had CO2 levels above 400 ppm was in the so-called Pliocene Era, about 2.6-5.3 million years ago. The Earth's average temperature at that time was about 2-3 degrees Celsius higher, and the sea surface was as much as 9.1 meters higher. From those peak times, carbon dioxide levels declined, which is the opposite trend to what we live in today: carbon dioxide levels have only increased in recent years. (For those wondering how the CO2 levels of those times could have been measured, the secret is the permafrost air bubbles that have preserved this information).
On the other hand, in the Eocene Epoch (around 56-34 million years ago), CO2 concentrations were up to 2-10 times higher than today. So, what was life in the times of Eocene? The climate was comfortably warm and humid; the average temperature was about 10-14 degrees higher than today, the glaciers had melted, and the sea level was 120-150 meters higher. At that time, humans did not exist. One only must use imagination to think about human life on a planet where the sea level is some meters, even hundreds of meters higher than today.
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
Elementary particles are the smallest units in the universe. They are so small that they do not even have a defined size. Everything around us is ultimately made up of elementary particles: fermions (quarks and leptons) and bosons. Atoms comprise protons, neutrons, and electrons, which are elementary particles (leptons). Protons and neutrons, on the other hand, are made up of three quarks that are “tied together” by gluons. So, the matter around us is ultimately quarks and leptons. The rarer anti-particles are also counted as elementary particles. Each elementary particle has its own antiparticle with the same mass but a different charge. When these particles collide, they destroy each other and create energy.
Although elementary particles are tiny, they have a role in our everyday lives (apart from the fact that our entire universe is ultimately made up of elementary particles). For example, knowledge of basic electronics is based on understanding and harnessing the behaviour of electrons. Electricity is the movement of electrons. Medical PET imaging exploits the electron's antiparticle, the positron. The development of superconductors and nanomaterials also exploits the knowledge of elementary particles. Photonics, on the other hand, relies on understanding the logic of photons (bosons).
In the tiny world of elementary particles, everyday physics does not apply. In this world, the principles of quantum physics apply, which seem strange, to say the least, when considered in everyday terms. For example, a particle can be in two states simultaneously (superposition), and the states of two particles can be entangled no matter what the distance (quantum entanglement). These properties are exploited in quantum computers, which offer unparalleled speed and capability in certain computational operations. Quantum computers are set to explode computing into new dimensions at some point in the future.
SMALL THINGS CAN HAVE A BIG IMPACT
We often consider big changes like megatrends when we think about the future. But even small things can have a big impact. Rarely will one small, microscopic thing change the world, but when small forces combine, they can create explosive change. One letter only in a few cases means something, but when I combine them in the way I like, I get my message across to readers: never underestimate the little things!
Elina Hiltunen is a Futurist, a Doctor of Science (Business Administration) and Master of Science (Chemical engineering). She is currently doing her second PhD thesis at National Defence University, Finland, about how to use scifi in defence organiztaion’s anticipation process. She is author / co-author of 14 books, including scifi. She lives in Finland.
Comments