 Hello and welcome to the Circular Metabolism podcast. I'm your host, Aristide, from Metabolism of Cities. And in this podcast, we talk with researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to understand what makes urban metabolism and economies more circular. On this episode, I talk with Thomas Diaz. He's the director of the FABLAB Barcelona, the founder of some projects such as Smart Citizen and Studio P52. He's also one of the brains behind the FABCITY. And he has edited the book, FABCITY, the mass production of almost everything. Thomas, thanks you for accepting this invitation. Let's start the podcast. Thank you, Aristide. Let me know. Who are you? How do you describe yourself? Well, I am a curious person that is basically not believing everything that people tell me, and I don't just want to take for granted certain things. So out of that curiosity, I think I've always been contesting or kind of trying to challenge the way things are. And in one of those, I think out of that curiosity, I think it has come this, in this honor, I would say, to be part of the FABCITY Global Initiative and being one of the instigators of it, right? Because somehow it combines part of my life's journey. I was trained as an urbanist in Venezuela. I was born and raised in Venezuela. But I have a mixed background. My father is Spanish, so a lot of connections with Spain during all my life. I think the diaspora of Venezuelans, thanks to the collapse of our socioeconomic political system during the last, especially 15 years, is more accelerated. I ended up in Barcelona, where I found the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia as the place where I was going to do just an internship of five months. So many years later. Yeah, I mean, that was 2006. And I was supposed to be there for five months. Venezuela was going, you know, in totally worst in all the dimensions that you can imagine. But there was this day I still remember in which, you know, I have my tutor, Caroline Liechtenberg, a really nice architect from the Netherlands. She was supervising my work. I was editing a book about Taipei. And then she invited me to this lunch meeting where, you know, the board of directors were having pizzas. And she said, no, we have some extra pizza come and sit with us. By that time, there were more directors that employees at IAC. And I think that's why, you know, when there was a discussion about, you know, we have to set up these fab labs and we have this pile of papers with the inventory. We have this book from this guy called Neil Gershenfeld. But basically, we have a head of studies, a secretary, a maintenance guy, and an intern. So who's going to set up the fab lab? And then I say, I can do it. You know, then, you know, it was an immediate. Did you know anything about fab lab before? No, not at all. Not at all. Imagine like I was this was full discovery and full like it was revelation after revelation. And they clicked between, you know, I was immediately, you know, I come from this background on urbanism. Not as an urban designer on the aesthetics of the city, but we were really doing like a deep studies on the socio-economical dynamics in the city, understanding like the urban economy, the urban ecology. And of course, the way we produce and consume was totally entrenched on the way that we live in cities, right? And it was for the first time that I read about someone proposing a different way of, you know, approaching the use of technology to transform the way we produce and consume. Neil, you know, his book is called, it's very focused on personal fabrication. And I think that's in a way, you know, the more American approach, like from the point of the individual, what can the individual do, right? But I think there is more, a lot of more collective fabrication than personal in the world of fab labs and in the transformation on the way cities, the its bioregions and even the rural spaces producing and consuming. And I will go back to what I think about the, for me, the obsolete difference between the rural and the urban areas, right? So anyways, like, you know, that's a big, very long answer about who I am, but a little bit of background on how I got to be involved. I think I am here because I'm involved in fab city, you know, that's why you invited me. Exactly. But this is more or less how I get to be part of fab city. There is a lot of things that happen afterwards. But I think that I keep it like this for now. So, okay, great. So you were part of this more or less, they were somehow interested into this fab lab movement. And they said, okay, let's put it there. Do you know why they were intrigued by by this or why did they wanted to explore this, this question? Well, there is, there is for sure, you know, a direct response to this is that the fact that by the time many architecture schools were incorporating digital tools in the in the design and production process, right? Especially the architectural association or the University of Pennsylvania, the Syark and the West Coast of the United States were always inspirational universities for for IAC for IAC. So of course, it was a big component of that. Okay, let's create a lab to provide our students, the students that go to do the different masters and that by that time there was just a master in architecture. Let's give them the platform and the tools for them to be at that level of the avant-garde or the top schools in the world, of course, including MIT. And there was also a previous connection with MIT, especially with the Center for Bits and Atoms. Thanks to a project that is called the Media House Project and that was done between our Institute and MIT and the CBA, back in the early 2000s, no, like the 2000, 2001. So that's what was one of the first projects done before the FABLA was established and I think that set up the collaboration between especially Neil and Vicente, right? So I think that that relationship evolved. And then when the FABLA came to IAC, I think that, you know, there was not just the interest of setting up like a workshop with machines for the students, but also, you know, held Neil to develop and really put our thinking into understanding how these FABLA's are going to change, you know, neighborhoods or the way that they're going to transform cities. So, you know, it was a natural connection. The truth is that the agenda of the FABLA, Barcelona, which I have been lucky to develop, has been something that, you know, at the beginning with struggle to, especially in an architecture school that, you know, looks at these tools as a way to, you know, provide the students and the capacity to create better narratives about speculative approaches sometimes to cities and urban transformation. And it's the process, it's probably a process that you can see a lot quicker, some results, you know, like, okay, I do a mock-up of a city and I see these cocoons type of thing and I put some green and then suddenly you have an image of the future of cities, like, okay, great, but that's, you know, that kind of creates this kind of a, I would say dystopian visions, you know, it becomes more and more dystopic, the more you use these tools to create more and more and more dystopics that seem more and more advanced and I say, look at the way, you don't have to advance that much, we really need to look not to the next 100 years but we need to look to the next minute, right? Yeah. Then the agenda of FABLA, you know, has been basically looking at that as like, okay, yes, we have to enable a future. In enabling that future, it needs like a first of all patience and it's also invest in learning, invest in, you know, acquiring the skills and the knowledge and that's something that not many people is patient enough to see, right? And also it needs a vision as well, which is, you know, I had many times the discussion with some people in the institutes that, you know, at the beginning, of course, the FABLA was not generating income by itself, but it was providing a service to the programs, so in a way it was totally, I would say, justified the existence of a FABLA. But then in some point, you know, after three, four years, we started to gain projects and professional services and we started to be interested in research and developing the FABLA Academy and gain students for the FABLA Academy. So then suddenly the FABLA with that vision on, that slower vision on transforming the city and starting from the capacity building started to gain traction and to generate income. So the truth is now, I can say very happily that, you know, the FABLA funds the institute in some way, right? The way we organize ourselves is that we have independent budgets and our budget allows us to have 35 people in the team. And at the beginning it was me with a couple interns, you know, and I was doing everything, like the blogs, reducing the machines, helping the students, taking pictures, receiving politicians. So basically they're an orchestra man. So seeing that happening is like, you know, of course, it's easy to say like after the things happened that, okay, we were right, but it's not that we were right. I think like we were just following the intuition and also we, I think that we were able to identify the opportunities, which is super important. And that's why it somehow led the FABLA Barcelona to be, I think like now it's more than a FABLA, I love more than a FABLA. I think that's something where I wanted to ask you something. As you describe it, it seems that you're not just adhering to, let's say just to DIY with, with mechanic toys, right? I mean, it's, you have somehow included a political agenda into it. I don't know if that's the case everywhere. And I don't know, you know, I mean, perhaps, how would you describe the FABLA or the FABLA movement? Your personal point of view, I think. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's difficult to describe it because it's very diverse. And as you say, there are many FABLA's that operate so differently that I think like one of the common things that we have inside the FABLA network is understanding that we are very different from each other, right? There are FABLA's inside universities, there are FABLA's that are standalone, there are FABLA's that are more focused in the technology, there are FABLA's that are more focused in the social impact. You know, and then of course we have having 2000, around 2000 FABLA's around the world, it gives you also the diversity that gives you the regions, the countries, the, you know, the languages and etc, right? So it's difficult to say, okay, the FABLA movement is about this, right? No, no, that's why I'm asking your own interpretation, how, what do you use it for perhaps, that would be the more appropriate question. So the way I see FABLA's is that they play a role that could be compared, maybe not exactly the same, but similar to the role that, you know, 25 years ago had places where you would go to use computers, right? And providing the access to tools that they are, you know, they're either difficult to operate for some people or they are not that affordable or they're just complex or too complex for the way in which we operate now, right? I believe that FABLA's are the catalysts to transform the way we produce and consume. So they are these places that in which mainly you learn, you are inspired and you prototype. I don't believe FABLA's are micro factories or they will replace industries and so on, or that a FABLA should become a place where people go and just manufacture. I see it more as a cultural places and more like a social connection, which is true, but it's also true that they had a strong political agenda, absolutely. I think that just understanding that the FAB city emerged from the FABLA network tells you like how, you know, engage, you know, our movement quote unquote is with not just playing in the safe spaces inside the walls of the FABLA with the toys, but also committing to go outside and transform a neighborhood, cities and so on. And we are in the early days, so I think it's difficult to judge yet their impact. I would say let's wait another five years. And then also there's a strong technological agenda or a research agenda. And I think that here is quite impressive the work and the knowledge that Neil and his group at the Center for Bits and Atoms brings to the FABLA, which is understanding that this is not about the machines, but it's actually understanding that we are part of a research that is trying to change how we understand fabrication. We call it digital fabrication today, but the truth is that we have digital information that goes to analog machines that can process digital information and they use analog materials to create products in a way. So it's very analog, the process of fabrication as we understand it today. But what we're really looking forward is embed, you know, the information, the material and the machine in the same place. So it means that instead of, you know, designing something in a computer, turn that into the movement of a motor, and then of the actions of a tool that is going to modify the state of a material in the case of 3D printing, or it's going to cut another material in the case of laser cutting or computer or CNC machining. You basically introduce codes into materials. In these materials, they just follow the instructions and have the capacity to fabricate themselves. So this sounds very abstract, but the roadmap is going that direction and it starts from having off the shelf machines that you can buy. And then with these machines, we want to be able to make machines that make machines, right? So the moment that you are able to make your own tools and you are able to make tools that they don't repeat what the previous ones did, but actually they can evolve the capacity of those tools. So imagine having this at the same time that you're having this global collaboration and the capacity and I think like for me that it's also important is that fables are located in a context, in a territory. And I think that that's where the potential of not just waiting until we make the digital assembler or the digital materials, but actually we can start to transition now by connecting the capacity of these fab labs with what's happening around them in neighborhoods. I have to admit for me it's slightly scary this machine that builds its own machine and all of that. It's very skynet to me to be honest, but so what I like though is that you go from this digital library of the 21st century. We don't have books anymore. It's more the machine, the equipments and then you can really think about indeed changing the entire fabrication production and perhaps consumption as well. And for me at least the most interesting thing over there is that well the environmental impact of our word is based on is due to production and consumption activities. So there might be an extreme benefit by doing so. Of course, you always think about where is the AI where is the the moral grounds, who's going to decide what are the good tools, what is the moral judgment into should we do that or that you know where should we include a human judgment into that or machines will take care of better for us so what we should do but that's, I guess, these are things that you have thought already many times but yeah. No, I mean, when I talk about machines that make machines. I'm not thinking about out, you know, an automatic process of this happening I think that for me the machine and the machines and artificial intelligence are just extensions of our capacity. And I think that we should keep understanding them like that. The human is a lot, a lot more complex at just the logic intelligence that you can find in a computer that is able to process ones and zeros. And probably even if you talk about quantum computing with the capacity of handling more complex and larger data sets and make sense out of them. There are some other type of intelligence that the humans have that we will need to keep keep or take care of right. You know, we have the brain but also our guts, which is part of what leads our metabolism, actually makes part of our intelligence, even our skin, you know, the nervous terminations are part of the intelligence that we have. I think there are multiple intelligences first of all and I don't think that we should give all our fate and our destiny to one type of intelligence that that's stupid. And I know that we can be as stupid as doing that to be honest. I think like a humanity we are really, really testing the limits of a stupidity. And unfortunately, I think like we are going even, you know, for sci-fi. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think like we will see really stupid things very, very, very soon and more even more. But, you know, the, I think like they should be like an approaching which we understand that our, you know, that our existence in this planet is not just depending on the products we consume or having the convenience of living with a, you know, at least in which the Western modern society has shown us, right? Like, you know, you have to buy things, you have to own a car, you have to own a property of a house and, you know, whenever you go outside Europe and or you go out of the, you know, the western sector centric views to see like there are other ways that it's more complex. I mean Bali now. And for instance, you know, property, social organization and even ownership is very complex. It's not as rational as we understand in the West. So I think like we need to accept that there are other ways of organizing society. And it's also another way of relating ourselves with the resources that we consume in order to keep the life of this planet. I think that we would yet need to discover alternatives to all the dependency that we have on oil and all that because it's not just the energy that we generate with oil or the how we fuel our mobility, infrastructure or mobility devices, you know, cars, airplanes, etc. But it's actually, you know, the materials embedded in the what we wear, how our computers are made, what we eat, you know, this salt, the salt is kind of like most of our salt is made out of oil. So it's like it's ridiculous not like we're eating oil. So I think I can understand it like we need to change the material ecology that surrounds us is fundamental. Okay, so how do we go then from these labs which seem to be, you know, here and there into what you call the fab city then which is, I guess, because before you said, fab labs are not necessarily, you know, micro factories and it's not necessarily the something that you want to change the entire manufacturing system but I guess in fab city, you take a much bolder step or stance and use you say that you want to transform how cities are there at least their global network of production and consumption are they should change through fab city engagements or promises. So basically, like what the approach that we're taking is, and it's in the product, I think it's in the page six of the book, it's a of the fab city book is, I don't know if it's the six, I might be mistaken, it's the full stack approach. So with the full stack, we're trying to unfold this complex mission which is saying, Oh, we're going to transform the way cities producing consume. And it's going to happen thanks to distributed design and manufacturing and open source collaboration is like, Okay, but how do you actually, you know, you do it so. Okay, and we're working that this is working progress so that version that you see in the book is really alpha version of the full stack, but then the full stack is to be that way in which we unpack the problem into smaller pieces. And also the way in which we articulate the research and also the implementation agenda of city. So what we're trying to do is for the 34 cities that are part of the city network now to have a minimum framework for them to identify where they need to invest where we need to put efforts what kind of organizations we need to support and then we put it in. And right now you will see six layers, but we're working on a seventh one. But it comes from, you know, from the infrastructure to new forms of learning, and new forms of innovation, the way that this land into the urban environment, how they become into policy, and how they're sharing two platforms with the global city network. Right. So that's more or less a very simple description of the stack. When you talk about the infrastructure, I think that there is something that it's needed to be said like a for the last three centuries, more or less, most of the investment of infrastructure has gone into the capacity of of moving atoms, either people or materials The global economy we created, which actually, you know, has its roots in the Dutch in West Indies companies established just around the corner here in Indonesia are following this idea of, you know, being able to move materials in which you have a competitive advantage of control over in order to put it in another place of the world. Right. So that applies with oil and how dictatorships and totalitarian regimes control oil, or how, you know, we have Elon Musk accepting that yes we can make a coup d'etat in Bolivia. And because of course, you know, it's for the interest of a company like Tesla to have the control of the lithium. And if you follow, you know, probably Australia is the only country that probably has certain stability where a lot of like a raw materials that we use today are needed in the world. But, you know, without trying to lose the line of thought, what I'm saying is that when we look at the infrastructure is, you know, airports, ports, bigger vessels, better airplanes, faster cars, amazing trucks. So we put a lot of intelligence and resources to develop the most advanced technologies around moving things using oil, which is not cheap by the way. We do have the sense of cheap oil and cheap raw materials, but they are not cheap. So what we need to think about is like, does it make sense really to move that much that many materials around the world does it make sense to cultivate shrimps in the UK. Send them to Thailand to take the pillow and send them back to the UK for you to make your shrimp cocktail at night. So should we go that absurd and stupid or can we just calibrate the way we do these things? Can maybe I can invest time on taking the pillow off the shrimp or should I just burn, you know, a lot of fossil fuels just to have the convenience on buying it. So the infrastructure layer is super important. And what I'm going to, what I'm trying to point my point is that the fab labs are part of that infrastructure today, right? You're saying how we go from the fab labs to fab cities. So fab labs is an infrastructure that is already in place. So they are like a Trojan horses that are already in, you know, all over the world, but they are not enough at the same time. What we're trying to do is to, you know, influence, convince cities, organizations to allow us to test new forms of production in with the fab lab can serve as an articulator. But at the end we use that what the city has in place, which most of the times is abandoned factories, which most of the time is underused infrastructure, because basically Amazon has been taken over all the production of these people, right? So there is an infrastructure in place. So what we're trying to do also is articulate that local infrastructure for production that is in place with the creativity or the applications that can come out of places like fab labs, but it could be anything else. And connect the supply and demand and understand that at a local level, we need to have that capacity of resilience. And this was tested with us without anyone planning it during the worst heat of the worst moment of a pandemic. When makers started like at the first response is like, okay, I have a 3d printer in my house, there is a fab lab in the corner, how we can start to produce masks and distributed everybody start to do it out of altruism. But then when the demand started to increase, a lot of fab labs and people were starting to connect with factories, local factories and the factories were able to take hundreds to thousands, right? And then there is the case of this ventilator in Barcelona, really nice case in which a factory of cars, they changed their assembly line in order to even reduce a motor for the cleaners of the clean. The wipers exactly and adapted to the motor of the ventilator. And then what you see this case also is that this is still under or waiting the approval from the very slow, you know, bureaucratic process of getting an invention out in the world. Of course, in this case is delicate because we're talking about lives. Now the corona outbreak is really, it's a political, it's a very politically sensitive subject. But it's showing the first of all the needs of ours for our systems to be more resilient and being able to produce locally, not only products but also food and energy in the case of a global catastrophe as it's happening, which is compromising supply chains. But also the other side is like we are actually designed for not having the capacity to respond quickly to these things, right? And then all the economic efforts are basically benefiting the big capitals and to really move, keep moving materials. This is like a bit, and it's disgusting because Perpetual machine, yeah, exactly. But in a way, like this is like a keeping the same extractive model on places that produces the raw materials. So they will, they will always be underdeveloped because they never develop a local capacity. And I talk from, I'm being from one of them from Venezuela. So let's not develop a local industry because we can sell oil and import everything. What happens when you destroy your oil industry and you cannot buy anything, you blame the United States. That's what Venezuela does. But then you need to have people working for a lot of hours, 16 hours a day in China, 16 hours a day. They live in the factories. And well, actually in China, people are starting to move to Vietnam and Cambodia because the Chinese are moving classes, right? And then there's going to start to be a lot of pressure. So China is moving their factories to Southeast Asia and then they're going to move it to Africa. So it's going to keep cheap labor perpetually. Then let's try to keep, let's try to make sure like the kings of the Middle East keep the oil under control and let's support them. So we keep the prices down so we can keep moving all these things and just perpetuating this really perverse system of taking advantage of the world's resources. Okay, but so we have, let's say, the open component, right? We have the platforms to exchange. We have the fab labs. We have now those 37 cities. Was it 34? 34. Maybe we'll be in October. We have the fab city summit, hopefully close to 40. Okay, so we have 40 cities that commit by 2050. What is it? 2054. 2054 to become, what was it? Produce almost everything that they consume locally. Right. So ideally, as we have seen with this external shock, this could happen, you know, in a much shorter time span. What is... Oh no, I don't think so. I think that we are so attached because that entails... No, but I mean, with shocks, right? I mean, be it climate change, be it resource scarcity, be it health issues, be it, you know, a lot of elements which... Absolutely. Now we're in a pressure cooker. We have all of the external things that are pushing us. We could go much, much faster. What is holding us back, do you think? Yeah, I think that's why I was saying no. I don't think that we are ready because I think that we are still too attached to this way of organizing our economy, which is sort of a way of organizing our society and what really, really connected to it. And I don't want to be hypocritical, you know. I'm connecting with you from an Apple computer. I have Coltan from Congo and my aluminum is from, I don't know, from somewhere in Australia and the copper of the battery of my... Of the lithium, sorry, of the battery is taken from Bolivia and the copper from Chile. I don't know, right? Yeah. So we are part of the paradox in a way. We live in a constant paradox because we are trying to praise all of this and at the same time we are deeply inside it, right? I think there is, first of all, I think that there is no will from any side to transform this. You know, from the ones... It's a very simple way of organizing a very complex world and usually the people that wants to be up in power, they don't want complexity. They want to have things very simple, keep things very simple. And then in the other end, it's us. And I include myself on it, which we live trapped in our own convenience. The convenience of having things, you know, to want a couple of clicks away and I have it delivered to my house. Of course, that's better for me to get dressed, go out, walk or drive to the closest store, talk with a grumpy guy that will, you know, try to be as unhelpful as possible and then finally get something that I was trying to get. So of course, you buy what you see in the screen and that's more convenient. So that's basically, it's a double trap. There's a few of us that understand the paradox. We keep living inside the paradox and it's hard to detach from it, I have to say. And it was under the pandemic that, you know, it was epiphany after epiphany moment again. It's like, I don't know if it happened to you, but I can't imagine that you have this feeling that, oh God, I thought it was going to be like in 10 years, but it's happening now. So basically we had like, we were, you know, sometimes we do this kind of a strategic plan of think about 10 years. And these 10 years now they are, there are 10 years that we need to accelerate the process to increase the capacity of cities and the regions to be able to provide the city sense and anyone that lives inside those limits, whatever they need. But I don't think that's going to happen soon at the same time. Yeah, this pandemic was really a study for me. I was just looking how things were happened because I was, in my mind, this is how it's going to be very soon. Yeah, all of the time, more or less, we're going to have emergencies left and right and one more urgent that the other and we'll have to deal with, you know, panicking and all of that. Really trying to look at all of this and say, okay, either it might be good that all of the, you know, hellstorm comes to us. So we get done with it once and for all, and we get rid with what is happening here. But I was very curious like, okay, apparently it's feasible to prohibit taking claims. Apparently it's feasible to work all from home, not all social strata, but anyhow. Apparently, many norms are not there. So I was, that was really a study element for me very, very interesting. Yeah, sorry. No, no, no, I wanted to say something which is a thing that knowing that things are not going to change doesn't mean that you don't, you know, you need to stay still and do nothing. I, what the approach that we're taking, though, is not trying to wait for everything to change, but understand the power of the small interventions of this or the small scale. So even the city is to be to think about making transformation in it. So we are trying to reduce the scale of intervention to, you know, villages, or like a sub villages inside the cities or neighborhoods. When we're talking about less than 10,000 people where you can articulate communities and start to, you know, test experiment with new forms of producing energy and new forms of distributed energy, or also with food and just hacking, for instance, the material flows at that scale. So that's the approach that we're taking. And also I wanted to mention that, you know, going back to the discussion I was saying before about the stack, you know, from infrastructure to learning to innovation and to urban strategies. And those are really fast, right, like the fast, fast layers of the stack. The slow ones are the policy, et cetera, et cetera. Right. But, you know, since we have already infrastructure in place like fab labs, and also underused or, you know, or almost dead infrastructure in cities. We can reactivate those it's kind of relatively quick. But I think we need also to invest a lot into learning into new forms of learning and meaning that, you know, this is, it is possible to articulate all the layers of educational systems, like, you know, from high school to universities to PhDs. If you put them all together on their common mission, right, of really trying to resolve the trap in which we are getting towards which is we are putting in risk around our own existence and also the existence of life in this planet. I am sure that we have that capacity. So I believe that we need to keep influencing and that's something that we should not stop. And I guess that that's the work that you guys are doing as well is making noise and making this very visible and show how idiotic we are as much as we can. That's a great segue to the two final questions I had for you. What are you going to do this next year or what should we focus on this next year you mentioned education. And the last one was what are the books, videos, articles, films that you would recommend to anyone to start right now. Um, or music or yeah. Yeah, well, let me start from the last one. This is a nice documentary in Netflix that is called Banda, B, A, N, D, A is about the Banda Islands in Indonesia. And I think that explains a lot the roots of capitalism and in global in globalization. I highly recommend it because basically the market of the nutmeg and clothe and the conquer of the West Indies, the East Indies sorry, led to the discovery of America, first of all, by accident, well the discovery by Europe, especially. And also it was the established the foundations of a current global extractive colonialist capitalist system. And again, I'm not saying it is as a somewhat that needs to pretend that it's not capitalist and part of the system. I'm not trying to be hypocritical here. I recommend an article which for me is super key is the the tyranny of convenience. It's a New York time articles. Have you read it? No. Oh, it's pure gold. Okay, I'm noting this down. Thanks. Pure gold. Definitely. I think also, you know, of course, and this is, you know, it sounds like an opera Winfrey. It's a mainstream but you will know how to. It's probably one of the most interesting historian philosophers that is that is explaining us where we come from in a in a different person with a different perspective and where we might go and which are the things that we need to be aware of. You know, he talks a lot about AI, but you were right. It's scary also to think about when AI is also able to manipulate the physical world with machines that are ruled by AI. So definitely you will know how to. And someone that I really enjoy with his tweets, for instance, is Jason Hickel. Yeah. Oh man. It's so refreshing. I'm not, I'm not tired of retweeting him and then people like Indy Johar as well. Kate Rower is people that, you know, we need to look closer, follow and support as well, you know, understand that the way we support them is also a way to to introduce a new way of thinking about our economy and about the world. Yeah, I have a lot more things, but yeah, read for the non Latin Americans. I think it's beautiful to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Yeah. So that's out of the topic, but I think that I love, I love the fantasy of it. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and also, I think that's one of the challenges we have right now probably is not that much technical. I think it's also cultural. And I think that cultural diversity in the world and then understanding that that's actually what make us rich. It's really important to keep now because in the context in the current context of polarization. We are at the risk of having this, again, to keep living under this imposed. You know, we want colonialist way of distributing the world. I'm sorry. And I can say this because I am a colonizer and I am a colonizer. Exactly. So I am allowed. And then finally, your question about the next year, I like it, you know, because as I was telling you before, so many people knows what to do in 2030 and 2050 and so on. But it's really difficult to think about the next year. And, you know, I'm putting a lot of my energy in, in, in creating a learning environments. I want to create, I think like we need to create learning environments rather than create more pre-established programs, theories, or follow the, we need to really transform a little bit the scientific method and then understand that it's not about us developing a theory and trying to prove that theory in an experiment. And that can be also taken to the city scale. And sometimes it's very dramatic when that happens because it affects a lot of people. It's not the same as doing an experiment in the laboratory, but creating learning environments in which we can, you know, challenge almost everything is super important. And, you know, I direct a master that is now based in Barcelona. It's a master in the time for emerging futures. But I'm going to work in the next year on trying to make it distributed around the world and allow people to be part of it without having to go to Barcelona necessarily. And that's how we do, how we do with the FABA Academy. And if you, you know, going back to the stack, this is will be the second layer of that infrastructure. So that's the other part that we're going to do next year as well. Inside FAPCITY, the FAPCITY Global Initiative is to go deeper into the stack and make it more understandable and useful and as much as comprehensive as possible. And finally, this next year is going to be the year of infrastructuring or kind of a giving a minimum structure to the FAPCITY Foundation, which is one of the three components of the whole FAPCITY Global Initiative. FAPCITY Foundation, given the organizational support and providing some funding sources, the FAPCITY Network is the second one, which is the 34 cities, hopefully 40 by the end of the year, that are somehow supporting actively and some passively, to be honest, but at least that we managed to convince to join this crazy idea. And then the FAPCITY Collective, which is around 100 individuals that as, you know, we were talking before we started recording, they are still in time from their organizations to work on supporting the FAPCITY in many ways. So that's next year. I'm very, very much looking forward then for the next year. Thanks so much, Thomas, for your time. And yeah, let's find things to collaborate on and let's get things moving. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much, Aristide, and thanks to Metabolism of Cities for inviting me to this. Thank you. Great.