The Signal #14
Questioning the system.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
— Albert Einstein
We are entering a period in which many of the assumptions underpinning the current world order are beginning to shift simultaneously. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how knowledge, labour, and creativity function. Geopolitical fragmentation is challenging decades of economic and institutional integration. Technological acceleration, ecological pressures, and growing inequality are exposing the limits of systems designed for a different era.
In moments like these, the questions we ask matter more than ever. That is partly why I found The 100 Questions initiative so interesting. Not because it tries to predict the future, but because it treats questions themselves as important. The kinds of questions societies ask shape what they pay attention to, what they choose to measure, what they consider politically possible, and ultimately what kinds of futures they are capable of imagining and building.
Moments of historical transition are confusing precisely because the old questions stop being sufficient before the new ones become clear. For decades, many societies organised themselves around assumptions that felt relatively stable: that economic growth would broadly translate into prosperity, that technological progress would naturally improve lives, that markets and institutions would steadily optimise themselves over time, that globalisation would deepen interdependence rather than fragmentation.
Today, many of those assumptions are being tested. Artificial intelligence is forcing us to rethink work, knowledge, creativity, and even what kinds of capabilities societies should value. Geopolitical shifts are reshaping the balance between openness, security, sovereignty, and coordination. And growing inequality is raising deeper questions about whether our existing models distribute not only wealth, but agency, opportunity, and power fairly.
The more I reflected on this, the more it pushed me to think about the questions I keep returning to myself. Not because I expect to fully answer them, but because I increasingly think they point towards some of the defining tensions of the coming decades.
These are some of the questions I keep returning to:
What should a socio-economic system actually optimise for?
What makes a society genuinely successful beyond GDP or growth metrics?
What kinds of freedom matter most in practice: formal choice, material security, agency, autonomy?
What institutional conditions enable human flourishing at scale?
How should societies define and measure value?
How can institutions build collective capacity while preserving individual and local agency?
How do governance systems unintentionally produce exclusion or concentration of power?
What happens when efficiency pressures undermine exploration and creativity?
How can innovation benefit society broadly rather than concentrating gains?
Why do modern economies generate abundance alongside persistent insecurity?
What forms of inequality are most damaging to freedom and democratic stability?
How should labour, care, knowledge, and public goods be valued?
How can policy design better incorporate uncertainty, complexity, and unintended consequences?
What kinds of systems will societies need in an era of ecological, technological, and geopolitical instability?
What would it mean to redesign institutions for the 21st century rather than continuously patching 20th-century models?
I suspect that the futures we build will depend not only on technological breakthroughs or political decisions, but also on whether we are willing to question inherited assumptions about how societies should function in the first place.
So I’m curious, do any of these resonate? What questions linger in the back of your mind these days?
—
Keep questioning,
Sanja
