What's on my mind? Gurus, globes and virtual reality

Last month I had the opportunity to participate in London Tech Week, a leading event to show off next-gen tech and celebrate startups. There is an A-list of speakers and I was blessed with the slot after Deepak Chopra, Indian-American author, new age guru, and alternative medicine advocate - a hard act to follow! As I’m a big fan, I was keen to listen to his speech before I did my final prep for mine.

His talk was titled, ‘Are we living in a virtual reality?’ He started with a detailed explanation of?the insignificance of our planet in our solar system.?

He helped us to visualise this by explaining the size of the universe and the fact that we can only react with 3% of it and can only see 0.01% of it. There are two trillion galaxies, seven sextillion stars and 60 billion planets in the ‘Goldie Locks Zone’, where life can exist. He noted that this means earth is just a speck of dust in a junkyard of infinity – an interesting way to describe our planet and universe.

He claimed if all the wars expanded, the climate changed and we all became extinct, the universe would not even notice. Or would it?

Maybe this is where Deepak and I disagree. I know we’re all made up of atoms and the way we see the world is just our own human perception. A bug with 1,000 eyes will see it very differently. However, I also know that the butterfly effect is real. A simple flap of one butterfly’s wings in Brazil can create a bigger effect on the weather across the world. And if this is the case, then wouldn’t the removal of that one grain of sand, called earth in our galaxy, be able to create a similar effect in our universe?

I’m not a scientist, so I don’t know. I am not a guru like Deepak, so maybe I can’t reach into my spiritual world deep enough. What I do know is that even if our reality, or virtual reality, according to Deepak, created by human perception and enabled by energy is insignificant to the universe - it is significant to me, you and all the humans, plants, animals and fungi that live here. Earth is where that beautiful butterfly flaps her wings in Brazil and creates that wonderful gust of wind we need on a hot summer’s day here in England. Where everything is beautifully connected and a place I’m hopeful for.

If it is a virtual reality, then I am super thankful for the designer.

If it is a virtual reality, then I want to protect this old programming - the code connections are complex and incredible.

If it is a virtual reality, then I want to be one of the companies that does not damage it with the next machine perceived virtual reality that requires an enormous amount of energy.

I’m committed at Colt to create our next-gen technology, build our network and enable those connections with sustainability by design.

Our teams at Colt are already cleaning rivers and lakes, making sustainable choices in our offices, enabling green power at our sites, electrifying our fleet of vehicles and removing legacy equipment that has an enormous draw on power and space. Our EcoVadis Platinum medal puts us in the top 1% of companies for our sustainability management. We have a Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) A-rating and we’ve just released our third sustainability report.

We believe that in our industry, although we may look like that grain of sand among the incumbent operators, the energy we create through our sustainable actions will have a butterfly effect across the industry and have a significant effect on our planet.

So, I send my thanks to Deepak. His explanation of our insignificance made me feel more significant than ever. I have hope for the future, even if it’s just my human perception or our virtual reality.