How the unexpected builds tomorrow | Tatiana Gari & Daniella Gallardo | TEDxIEMadrid
[Applause] Hello. Okay. Sorry. When you think of revolutions, what comes to mind? Strikes, protests, mass uprisings. Most people imagine something like that. And you're not wrong. Those dominate headlines, history books, and political speeches. But what if we told you that that's only part of the story? Today, we invite you to think about revolutions differently, to rethink the blueprints that we've inherited, and to look behind the curtain, past the marches, the manifestos, the madness, the movement, and start to look at the small changes that affect everything. Because real change often starts quietly. Tiny shifts, hidden movements, ripples that over time create huge waves. Because the little things that change the way that we live, the way that we think, that we vote, they don't scream, they don't shout, they just appear. No slogans, no breaking news alerts, just straightforward transformation. What if we told you that pirates helped pioneer democracy? Or what if we could convince you that air conditioning helped pave the way for a conservative America? Or even that the shuffle button on your music devices helped reprogram our dopamine circuits? Would you believe us? Well, I think you're about to. Let's dive right in. Pirates. You might think of them as lawless citizens of no man's land, wreaking havoc on the seas, and that's partly true. But what if we told you that they were also some of the most civilized people of their time? What if we told you that they pioneered systems that we recognize today in our modern societies? You see, pirates had no king. They had no government to follow. They were out there alone on the open sea. So they had to come up with a bunch of rules. And they called these rules the pirate code. And the pirate code wasn't just a bunch of loose guidelines. They had a captain and they had a quarter master. Every single pirate had a vote and a say. And if they all disagreed with the captain, they could unanimously boot him out. They also made sure that every pirate had an equal share of the loot, creating what historians now believe were the first signs of property rights. And this was all overseen by a pirate council that you could find on every ship. Not bad for a bunch of guacal. So to understand this, we are going No, sorry. Okay. So, how did these actual policies get to land? So, to understand this, we need to zoom in into a little island called Madagascar, circa the 1700s. You see, pirates that were around that area realized something pretty big. That to better control the shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean, they had to do it from land. And so, they set up shop in these places called Damonova and Santa Marie, which quickly became pirate havens with their own pirate policies. and no official governing body. They relied solely on collective decision-making and cooperation between them and the local Malagasi people. And this fusion gave rise to something extraordinary, remarkable. The Betsy Marasaka Confederation, essentially a blend of pirate laws and western ideology. Yes, they had a monarch, but they were also radically decentralized and democratic. They held assemblies called cabalis where men and women came together to generate consensus on issues affecting the entire community. This wasn't just rebellion. This was pirate governance. So how did this actually get to Europe? Well, stories, sailors, traders, and explorers carried these narratives up north and they spread like wildfire. especially a little tale called Libertalia of a mythological pirate utopia with no slavery, coercion, or even property. These legends caught the attention of the Enlightenment thinkers in Europe in the 17th century. You see, the Enlightenment thinkers were starting to question hierarchical values, the monarchy, divine rights. Essentially, they were starting to form their own opinion on modern democracy. Scholars like David Greyber argue that pirates were a perfect example. They were literally a real life case study working under the noses of these thinkers. One of such thinkers is called John Loach and he's widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of enlightenment and he was actually a big influence on Tabis Jefferson when he started writing the US Constitution many many years later and John Loach was involved in maritime policy and he actually worked a lot on antipiriracy laws. So one could say that he knew the pirate code very well. And while we cannot say that John Loach was inspired by the pirates, what we can say is that these stories traveled and they traveled to these thinkers because they ended up in the enlightenment encyclopedia book by Dot known as a work that defines the movement. So yes, pirates were looters, but they were also innovators, radicals, experimenters, and perhaps accidental architects of the future we know today. So believe it or not, pirates may have just been among the first trailblazers of modern democracy. Air conditioning. Arguably the best invention of all time, at least according to me. Not only did they make summers bearable, but they also completely revolutionized America. You must be wondering how. Well, let's rewind to the summer of 1902. Picture a sorry, picture a small, sweaty print shop in Brooklyn, New York. You see, the heat was so humid that the ink would splurge across the page before it even had a time to dry. So obviously desperate to save his little business, the owner hired a man named Willis Carrier, this man right here, to create a dehumidifier. And he did just that. He created a machine that solved the ink problem. But it also came about with a very happy accident. It cooled the room by several degrees. That little print shop soon became the coolest place in town. Literally. Regardless, it wasn't until World War II that him and other manufacturers started to create smaller, more affordable versions of these ACs. And before they became quite common in the 1950s, America South was not very popular and especially not very relaxing. Those summers were brutal. But this all changed when people started to notice that you could put these in your homes, your offices, your condos, and country clubs virtually anywhere. And this changed everything. The South's natural charm combined with the new indoor cooled places attracted the attention of retirees who soon flocked to states like Florida, Arizona, or Nevada. But it wasn't just retirees that were quite attracted to the sunb belt. It was also businesses. Cheap real estate and no unionized labor was a dream. So many of these companies packed their bags and moved down south into old abandoned cotton fields and relocated their headquarters, their factories, and their manufacturing plants. Well, I understand that air conditioning caused migration. But you might be wondering what this has to do with politics after all. Well, the South was historically democratic. But in their suitcases, along with their flipflops, sunblock, and Hawaiian t-shirts, retirees and businesses in one of America's largest domestic moves also slipped in their conservative values and their republican political ideologies. So in the 40 years between 1940 and 1980, southern states actually gained 29 electoral college votes whilst the northeast and the rust belt actually lost 31. So it was under everyone's feet that America's political system completely shifted. And scholars actually think that this helped Ronald Reagan, a conservative candidate, win the presidency in 1980 with something so simple as air conditioning. Okay, so I'm I'm bringing something even worse, I think. Um, some revolutions can start with something even smaller, a teeny tiny button. See, before the shuffle button on your playlist or on your device, you listen to track from track one to track 10. Before streaming services, you had to sit down on your couch at 9:00 p.m. and watch the weekly airing of your favorite TV show. Even relationships had stages, meet, date, commit. And then around the 2000s in Silicon Valley, engineers developed a little device that had a little button on it, the shuffle button. And at the time it didn't seem very revolutionary, but silently it was. Because that button did something way more than revolutionize or randomize your playlist. It started to rewire how our generation looks at and experiences desire today in 2025. The shuffle button wasn't about music. In my opinion, it was about dopamine. Now, dopamine is a neurotransmitter that fuels motivation, learning, but most importantly, anticipation. not the reward but the thrill of what might come next. Now in psychology or neuroscience this is called reward prediction era error and it's basically the difference or the discrepancy between the outcome that you expect and the actual outcome or reward that happens. And if this reward is bigger than what you expected, your dopamine neurons fire up and you get this amazing sensation all over your body. And this is basically a positively reinforcing behavior. Wait, so it's kind of like the feeling that you get when you go to the casino. Correct. Exactly. Um, this isn't exactly new news. And casinos have been Yes. exploiting this for decades. Slot machines are designed actually by scientists, fun fact, to give you just the right amount of wins to keep you playing. Colloially in casinos, slot machines are referred to as Skinner boxes. Skinner BF Skinner is a behavioral scientist from the 1950s who came up with a really famous experiment called the Skinner box. Essentially what he did to put into perspective is he put a box. He put a mouse in the box. He put a lever that dispensed food. And let's say every 10 times he hit the lever, food would dispense. Pretty boring, right? Well, what he did was he randomized this. So maybe one time the rat could press it four times, it would get fed. Maybe 10, maybe 12. The rat never knew. And you know what happened? Well, the rats went crazy. They literally cannot stop clicking the button. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the effect of dopamine. And that's basically the same system, dopamineergic system, that we carry in our pockets on a day-to-day basis. One could even say we're all carrying little slot machines in our pockets. The music never changed. Nothing really changed, but the way we experience them, our generation did. Today, our generation navigates the world differently. We cannot argue that. And many products built for us all tap into the same loop. Dope, the dopamine-driven thrill of uncertainty. We've seen this in dating apps, streaming services, and even social media. We swipe, scroll, skip. not for what we want, but for what might come next. Not knowing what doesn't come next. It's no longer a UX flaw or a design flaw. It's a golden standard in business. One could argue that attention is no longer bought. It's engineered. So, what do pirates, air conditioning, and the shuffle button all have in common? None of them set out to reinvent the world. None of them were designed to change the world that we live in. And yet they all did because it's not like pirates set out to come up with um democratic fundamentals. They were literally trying to survive on the open sea. The air conditioning system didn't set out to polarize Americans. It was literally made to help ink dry. And I doubt that quiet software engineers in Silicon Valley set out to rewire dopamine circuits. They just wanted music to feel fresh. But that's the point. Remember before when we asked you if you think revolutions come from protests or strikes? Well, obviously there's some basis on that point. But I hope you can understand that the other parts can come from us. Because most of history isn't carefully planned. It just unfolds as ordinary people try to solve their problems and try to improve their daily lives. People just like you and me. And in that they change the future in unforeseeable and unimaginable ways. So who are the real architects of the future? It is the innovators. It is the leaders, but you could also argue that it's us, all of us. Because the future isn't just happening to us. It's shaped by us. And you have that power. We all do. So the real question today isn't can you change the world. It's will you. Thank you. [Applause]