This essay was a finalist in the How We Saved the World essay contest, where people wrote as if it was 2050 when the world was working, saying how we got there starting with something they did. Here's the intro to this presentation of results, with links to the other finalists and an invitation to make comments about the contest.

– DIVINUM – INTUS – MACHINA –

Clunky at first as it sounded to so many. Yet this mere brainworm of a notion, spreading through humankind from 2024, was indeed the bug, the lover, the fermentive mother, that saved civilisation. Anything lengthier would simply not have worked. Anything lengthier could not have allowed the space, inspired the faith, provoked the understanding, given heart and ‘prepared the soil’ as it did.

 

As it does.