Twenty-three steps. This was the number he had to go up to get to his office on the second floor of a three-storey building on Brussels’ expensive Avenue Louise. There, his personal assistant always waited for his arrival in the morning at 8.30 am to brief him on the day’s agenda and remind him of the most important commitments of the week. His PA’s name was Jean-Marc. Efficient. Handsome. Young. Single. French.

Forty-three years. This was his age, not Jean-Marc’s, Michael’s. Black hair. Grey eyes. Handsome. Intelligent. Ambitious. Rational sometimes. Emotional often. Bored easily. Married with two girls. British father. Italian mother.

Fifteen as a corporate lawyer. He was good at his job. Clients appreciated his work with expensive fees and gifts. He gave them back one of the best lawyers in European competition law the European education system can get. That is why he could afford having his own firm. Alone, against the Baker & McKenzies or the Freshfields, Bruckhaus, Deringers that populated the trade. Big law firms with dozens of lawyers. He, only him.

Seven days a week. If Michael would have been just a lawyer during all this time, he would have probably killed himself. He had not. Nothing of the sort. He had another life besides being one more puppet of the multinational legal system in which he navigated in his dull life. A life that provided him with the thrill he needed to keep his body and mind on this earth. A second life that was going to change his first life forever.

***

The people in the bunker are isolated from the world. Their primordial value is security. They want to protect themselves and their property. In principle, they have everything they need inside the bunker. Whenever they need something else they know where to get it. They quickly get out of the bunker, go to the predetermined place, get what they need and go back straight after. All the information they get is contained in the bunker, and in the few trips to their “trusted sources”. They live in a self-inflicted closed information environment, with nearly zero occurrence of serendipity.

And at the train station?

The people in the train station are in a public space. Their objetives are normally straightforward: buy a ticket or/and catch a train, but to perform these tasks they enter in an open, not -controlled environment in which they may find themselves doing something unexpected (i.e. by serendipity) e.g. buying a bag in a shop at the station, meeting a friend that offers them a new job, meeting their future spouse or a brief passionate affair. A train station, as any other public space, is an open information environment, in which safety and control are not primordial values, but sharing is. The shop has to put a big sign and front window to announce their products, the people at the information centre offer you the necessary information for your trip and even beyond, a stranger may give you directions to the nearest exit, metro station or restroom.

This analogy describes two opposed information environments: closed and open. Each of them has benefits and costs. Closed environments are safe, but not creative. For they don’t allow for the unexpected, the unplanned to happen. Open environments may be hazardous if we’re in them completely unprotected – think of the small kid in a train station alone -, but they give opportunity to new, surprising and innovative things to emerge.

When things are stable and not connected. A closed environment can be the solution. Too much openness can be unproductive when one needs standardised procedures and behaviour for things to work. But when the world is in transformation and increasingly more connected, openness is not only beneficial, but perhaps the only way to survive. For new solutions, new ways of looking at the things, the fast integration of different perspectives become advantages in front of those that do not change and are closed to new ways of thinking.

So now think of the bunker as bureaucracies, and the train station as networks. Two different ways of organising our activities to produce useful things for all of us. Which one is more ready for the world that’s coming?

This is a clear space for my thoughts and the stories I write. Here I will just rant about topics I find interesting. Here I’ll write my stories. Nothing about my personal life. Just thoughts and fiction. It’s raw A.