- Author: Pedro Tellería
- Date: October 05, 2025
- Web: PedroTelleria.com
- Thought Capsules: Science & Technology
Since the beginning of this century and for two decades, technology had become boring. After the revolution of personal computers, spreadsheets, the rise of accessible programming and the arrival of the internet, we slipped into a long lethargy. Social networks, smartphones, or e-commerce were improvements, yes, but they didn’t generate wonder. They were functional extensions, not life revolutions. Until, at last, two projects have reappeared that awaken something essential in us: Wonder.
Because life, deep down, is that: Wonder. Wonder is the fuel of human action. Without it, the human being withers, becomes cynical, narcissistic, trapped in the present because the future seems out of reach.
1. The lost Wonder
Let’s take an example. You’re young, you have an average salary, and you dream of moving out. But housing prices are absurd, unattainable. Then your brain clicks: “There’s no point in saving.” And what’s left over you spend on trips, clothes, parties, treats. Not because you’re superficial, but because you don’t see a future worth sacrificing for. The system has turned off your Wonder.
This phenomenon isn’t new. Throughout history, there have been times when humanity bubbled with enthusiasm (like during the space race of the 60s), and others when it dragged itself along aimlessly (2001–2022).
2. Learning from the past: from science to action
Anyone who lived through the 70s, 80s, or 90s with a curious mind knows what we’re talking about. Science grabbed you.
- Quarks were discovered, protons were smashed, subatomic physics advanced by leaps and bounds.
- Personal computers arrived in homes.
- Programming in BASIC, Fortran, C++ was accessible, exciting.
- Tools like spreadsheets multiplied our capacity for simulation.
- Finite Element programs (FEM), CAD and CAE let us make step-change advances in engineering.
- Robotics allowed us to manufacture cars and airplanes while reducing the monotony, imprecision, and extra cost associated with human labor.
Everything was new and gave us the “power to create.” Each new technology was a lever.
3. But the new century turned trivial and boring
And that’s what we had lost with the new century.
After the internet crash—the “dot-com crisis”—in 2001, and a long series of subsequent crises, technology abandoned us. Social networks, the spread of e-commerce, smartphones (mere handheld computers), and little else. For 20 years: superficial apps, digital posturing, and tools that didn’t generate depth of life (even if some, like Google Maps, were very useful). Mere toys in the palm of the hand, consuming our time and attention, distancing us from personal contact, from nature and the real world, moving us away from the kind of constructive, innovative boredom that spurs invention.
It’s not nostalgia. It’s diagnosis. The apps and gadgets of the first two decades of the century were designed with a single objective: "Engagement".
- Capture attention: just as TV chased audience share, social networks steal our time. From 25–40 hours of television per week in 2000, we moved to much higher screen-time figures with smartphones (you could even speak of a “pathological addiction”).
- Trivial objective: place advertising and sell via e-commerce. Google no longer “searches,” it hides answers among ads. Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram feed hedonism. Telegram and X.com survive as alternative channels—one overloaded, the other useful as a non-censored medium.
- Limited added value: some apps like Google Maps, WhatsApp or YouTube are practical, but they’re evolutions of pre-existing utilities.
- And the rest are improvements, not revolutions: phone, watch, camera, planner, email, SMS, video calls, translators, podcasts, music, e-books, access keys (automated by fingerprint or face), etc.
Useful tools, yes. But none of them changes the relationship between human beings and knowledge, action, or the future. They don’t generate Wonder. They merely occupy it.
Today, however, something is changing. And radically so.
4. An Interplanetary Humanity: a real dream
Thanks to companies like SpaceX, for the first time, the possibility that human beings might inhabit other planets is no longer science fiction. It’s a project underway. It may take decades, yes, but it’s tangible and feasible. Imagine what that means for an entire generation of young people: to think they can be part of the history that leads the human species to become interplanetary.
This narrative has the power to motivate, to shape vocations, to ignite passions. As with the conquest of the seas during the Age of Discovery, or Apollo 11 in 1969, this new horizon is poised to redefine the meaning of human adventure.
Is it realistic to think about living on Mars? The answer is yes. Not today. Not tomorrow. But yes within the logic of exponential development and human ambition. We’re not talking about moving the entire population, but about opening a new frontier. And yes, scientists will live there first, as they did on the International Space Station (ISS). But after them will come engineers, technicians, builders… and in time, human communities physiologically adapted, or even with consciousness dissociated from the biological body.
What truly matters is not whether we colonize Mars with millions of people. It’s the challenge. The opening of new frontiers. Going beyond. The great and the small, the dangerous and the unknown, our origins and our destiny. Humanity needs challenges that restore its dignity.
And these challenges, far from alienating us, can reset our priorities. They can inspire new generations to study science and technology, to collaborate in collective enterprises where effort and success are shared. Like when we hunted mammoths as a team. Like the true spirit of capitalism: cooperation to conquer the impossible.
5. Artificial Intelligence: an unprecedented tool
In parallel, we’re witnessing the birth of the most powerful tool human beings have ever created: Artificial Intelligence.
Just as fire or the wheel multiplied our physical strength, AI promises to multiply our intellectual capacity.
- We’re not talking about simple algorithms or chatbots.
- We’re talking about a real extension of the human mind.
- A tool that can turn ideas into prototypes, thoughts into texts, sketches into products. And all in real time.
Used well, AI doesn’t replace the human: it amplifies us. It frees us from repetitive tasks, lets us think about more complex problems, forces us to develop discernment, judgment, creativity. And that, once again, generates Wonder.
Like printing in the Renaissance or the steam engine in the Industrial Revolution, AI radically changes the reach of our mind and our impact on the world.
And if we follow Nietzsche, who said that “man is something that must be overcome”, we could see AI as a step in that direction: a tool to transcend our cognitive limitations.
Do we know what Consciousness is? Could AI help us understand it? Many of us trust in that direction.
6. The future as challenge, not threat
Today we have two levers that can change our course. But we also have a decision to make: will we see them as threats or as opportunities?
Space exploration is not a billionaire’s whim. It’s a bet on survival and greatness. Just as circumnavigating the Earth, conquering the air, or stepping on the Moon once were.
Carl Sagan put it clearly: “We are star-stuff”. Exploring space is not escaping Earth; it’s returning to our cosmic roots.
And AI is not (only) a risk of control and manipulation, but a tool that can unlock the potential of millions of people.
Recovering Wonder is not a triviality. It is a civilizational duty. New generations deserve big dreams, not just pretty screensavers.
7. Conclusion: The return of Wonder
After decades of technology that was functional but soulless, we finally have projects worthy of us. Interplanetary Humanity and Artificial Intelligence are more than scientific advances: they are narratives that can give us back the energy to live, to learn, to build.
And that, in a drowsy society with no horizon, can make the difference between a lost generation and a legendary one.
Wonder has returned. Now it’s up to us to be worthy of it.
Epilogue
Maybe this time it’s not just about inventing tools or conquering new lands. Perhaps, for the first time, what’s at stake is who we are and who we want to be.
We stand at two thresholds: one outward, toward the cosmos; and another inward, toward Consciousness. Both demand courage, vision, and above all, purpose.
If we can connect these challenges with what is most noble in the human being—the desire to know, to build, to collaborate, to transcend—then yes, we will be up to the task.
History calls us again. And this time, not from the past… but from the future. Will we answer?