“Think #WaterToTheFuture!”
About our message, its sources and meanings, passing through proverbs from everywhere and artificial intelligence
An introduction
For anyone who follows, constantly or tangentially, the public activity of La Fântâna, the company’s relatively new slogan, ”Apa la viitor” (we have had it for almost two years already!), is unavoidable.
We use it in all our social media posts. We have it printed on all our product labels and on the messages, commercial or not, where the La Fântâna brand appears.
Quite a few people have asked us “what’s the deal” with this slogan – formally, a grammatical paradox where a noun (water) is “conjugated” like a verb (in the future tense). “Water to the future” intrigues, sometimes even perplexes, and this is actually one of its purposes: “Ask us about water to the future, because we have things to tell you and things to offer you!”
In this article we aim to explain in a more elaborate way, for those who are interested, where, why and for what purpose we link the name La Fântâna with #WaterToTheFuture. The short answer has already been given, in various public messages, by people in the company: It is a philosophy of quality of life and its inherent growth through access to a vital resource, water, in the present and with responsibility towards the future.
The longer answer involves a cultural and contextual journey that we will try to summarize in what follows.
Reflecting on water
Water is arguably the only element that has accompanied humanity from before history and all the way to the most sophisticated forms of modern civilization. From the first settlements built on riverbanks to today’s smart cities, water is the constant, silent and inevitable presence of human civilization and its spirituality, regardless of continent or age. Entire civilizations have arisen around water and disappeared because the water resource was depleted (the ancient Middle East and Africa offer such examples).
The fact that, since the dawn of civilization, people have felt the need to speak, to meditate and to create images about water – in proverbs, in poetry, in philosophy, in the visual arts – shows that water has been recognized as inherent to life, as the foundation of the living world and, consequently, of civilization beyond the instinct of thirst, probably from the moment when the first humans needed to store it somewhere.
Easy example: popular wisdom
With a simple search on the internet, we find countless sayings and proverbs – here are a few from all over the world:
- “We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.” – English proverb
- “When you drink water, remember the spring.” – Chinese proverb
- “Water can wear down even the hardest rock.” – Burmese proverb
- “It is too late to learn to swim when the water reaches your lips.” – Danish proverb
- “When the water rises, the fish eat the ants; when the water falls, the ants eat the fish.” – Laotian proverb
- “If you run out of water, you run out of life.” – Uzbek saying
- “Enough shovels of earth – a mountain. Enough buckets of water – a river.” – Chinese proverb
- “Water always finds a way out.” – Cameroonian proverb
- “Only in the water can you learn to swim.” – Czech proverb
- “When it rains, collect the water.” – Burmese proverb
- “Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.”
- “The deeper the waters, the more quietly they flow.” – Korean proverb
- “Water has no enemy.” – West African proverb
By the way, the Romanian cultural heritage abounds in popular references to water as well:
- “Water passes, stones remain.”
- “The pitcher does not go many times to the well.”
- “Still waters make much mud, while fast waters wash even the stones.”
- “Silent water digs deep.”
- “The mill does not grind with water that has passed.”
- “Do not praise the ford until you have crossed the water.”
- “You cannot keep water in a broken pot.”
- “Do not get in over your head.”
- “A gentle person is like still water.”
- “Blood does not turn into water.”
- “All water puts out fire.”
- “All waters flow into the sea and the sea is not yet full.”
Why did we mention and list these proverbs? In the popular wisdom of the world, water appears as a measure of prudence, of time and of patience. Water is at the same time an implacable force, timeless, and a dimension of the moment (water flows now). For a company that works with water every day, as we do, these proverbs are in fact a framework of interpretation through which we understand how people have grasped from the very beginning not only the usefulness, but also the ethical and metaphysical power of water: responsibility, measure, respect. And these turn into values that we have internalized both as a brand and as a team.
“Thinking” water
If the proverbs represent collective, anonymous thinking, as water-related wisdom acquired a known author, the thinking of water also became clearer. People have constantly tried to reflect on water: from ancient philosophers for whom the elements – earth, water, air, fire – were the foundation of the world, to modern research on resources, climate and, increasingly, on the invisible infrastructures of digital civilization. In this context, the digital one (remember that you are reading an article published on the Internet, on a company blog), contemplation of water is no longer just poetic, but also technological and ethical. That is, two highly complex concepts with which we, at La Fântâna, operate every day.
Great minds have foreseen this complexity. The American anthropologist Loren Eiseley once stated: “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” It is a kind of creed for anyone who works with water, from hydrologists and engineers to water utility operators and, certainly, for us, in a company that makes water accessible to people through services. Leonardo da Vinci saw in water the very dynamics of the universe: “Water is the driving force of all nature.” Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the famous explorer of the seas, wrote in a journal: “We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one,” underlining the fact that there is no life outside the circulation of water. The British poet W. H. Auden rather cynically emphasized the scale of this dependence: “Thousands have lived without love; not one without water.” For the oceanographer Sylvia Earle, the relationship is directly ecological: “No water, no life. No blue, no green.”
The predictable future and water’s present
Today, major data centers that support artificial intelligence, global communication and data storage critically depend on water for cooling and stability. Intriguingly so, the flow of the world’s data is, literally and figuratively, tempered and controlled by the flow of water. It is yet another proof that water – more precisely, its absence – is inconceivable at any moment of life and existence that our minds can grasp.
And over this metaphysical perspective, year after year, day after day, lies the reality of water dynamics, here in Romania and everywhere on Earth. Let us summarize a few aspects:
- Communities of people, with increasingly complex and greater water needs, needs that can no longer be permanently satisfied naturally, but through technology – and in certain places, only through technology;
- The times we’re going through, in which uncertainty and anxiety have become the new normal and in which water no longer seems an infinite resource;
- Technology, which evolves at sometimes dizzying speeds, often making life harder under the pretext of making it easier.
Thus, today, the “thinking” of water no longer belongs only to poets and philosophers, but also to engineers, researchers, environmental specialists, critical infrastructure experts and, in our case, specialists in the commercial accessibility of water (let’s not forget that you are reading this argument on a company blog!).
In a world in which large cities, agriculture, industry, but also the data centers that support artificial intelligence depend on water, reflection inevitably moves into the technical register as well. Sylvia Earle’s famous statement from earlier – “No water, no life. No blue, no green.” – perfectly sums up the connection between water, biodiversity and the future of the planet.
For a water services company, this truth is not a metaphor, but a reality measured daily in quality parameters, in service continuity, in the way in which infrastructure, technology and the commercial offer adapt to the way the world is going and to the needs of communities.
If you have read this far…
…you have understood where #WaterToTheFuture comes from: the conviction that the future of water depends on how we take care of it in the present – and that our future, of human civilization and of life itself, depends directly on its future, the future of water. That is why we think “water to the future” – because today we bring water closer to people’s needs, always caught between its strength and its sensitivity, and always concerned with how to have it at hand tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and for as long as possible from now on.
Have you read to the end? Thank you, and think about #WaterToTheFuture too!
