The 21st-century Sunstone: Compass for humanity
Illustration: Johan Nord, byHands
The 21st-century Sunstone: Compass for humanity
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In a world spilling over with data, how can these flows of information help navigate humanity’s greatest threats?
- June 26, 2026
The grand total of schools has been updated to include new numbers from Italy and Great Britain that were omitted in the previous update.
- Sunstone Institute was founded to collect, organise and visualise data on humanity’s greatest threats.
- The Norse legend of the sunstone serves as a metaphor for how data and artificial intelligence can help us navigate today’s complex global challenges.
- Journalist
- Naushad Ali Husein
Norse legends mention a mineral called the sólarsteinn, or sunstone. It was said to polarise light and reveal the position of the sun, even when hidden behind clouds or just below the horizon. The sunstone, if it indeed existed, would have been the tool that enabled Viking seafarers to cross the Atlantic a hundred years before the magnetic compass became popular in maritime navigation.
In a sense, the sunstone was cutting-edge technology for the Vikings at the time, and they used it to solve their biggest problem: crossing the ocean. What are the biggest problems of our times? Well, we have many of them, and they pose significant threats to humankind. Like the Vikings, we could use some help getting our bearings.
Penetrating the mist
The fastest-growing and arguably most powerful tool in modern times is data. The sheer volume of data available gives us access to an incredible mass of knowledge – a resource that could help us chart a path to sustainability. But in its raw form, data is impenetrable and obscure, much like the sun in the hazy North Atlantic sky.
Like sólarsteinn, the use of AI and machine learning has given us the power to process and organise data, decipher patterns, and create projections and forecasts within minutes – technology that one could only have dreamt of, even a decade ago. How we use these powers, though, is the question.
Windmills scatter the ocean in the North Sea, producing renewable energy. Photo: Leon Neal, Getty Images
The power of data
In past decades, wealth was driven by controlling the means of production – minerals, land, technology. But at the end of the 20th century came the internet boom, and with it, what has been called the industrial revolution of data. Today, four of the world’s five richest people owe a considerable part of their wealth to companies deeply involved in datafication, cloud computing and AI.
Data has revolutionised our understanding of our world, and contributed to large-scale improvements in technology, health, environment and the everyday lives of billions of people. Yet this powerful new force of science has also been used against common people, in favour of those who control it. It has become a tool of surveillance, suppression, control and profit.
People have pushed back, attempting to reclaim or democratise data by organising to strengthen privacy and transparency, facilitating data journalism, or going rogue, through cryptography and hacking. They argue for the protection of the public’s privacy, but also for using data as a tool for positive change – taking advantage of the opportunities datafication offers.
Children at a hospital in Lima, Peru, get a visit from "Tommy" - a dog-shaped robot designed to provide emotional support and companionship to patients. Photo: Klebher Vasquez, Getty Images
21st-century Sunstone
In 2024, long-time private banker Lawrence D. Howell founded an institute to make the power of data available to address what he considers the 30 biggest threats to humanity over the next 30 years – broadly in the areas of environment, education, conflicts, democracy and health. He called it the Sunstone Institute.
The idea was to collect, organise, and visualise data relating to these existential threats. Like the sólarsteinn, the Institute would give its users tools and information to empower them to act. The institute would remain independent and neutral. Alongside data scientists, journalists would tell the stories, so that the knowledge becomes accessible. The project has grown to include data scientists and journalists from 11 countries in Asia, Europe, North and South America, and continues to grow.
Bigger picture
It is not the first time that data scientists and journalists have worked together to reveal and document important threats against humanity and the planet.
Barcelona's urban planning is turning the city, characterized by its grid-based pattern from the 19th century, into a model of sustainable "superblocks", reclaiming streets for pedestrians and green space. Photo: Getty Images
A girl carries a solar panel in the streets of Kibera, a large urban slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Here, cheap solar energy has given more people access to electricity and reduced deaths from fires and electric shocks. Photo: Donwilson Odhiambo, Getty Images
In 2024, Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) (opens in a new tab)analysed over 40,000 satellite images with the help of AI to identify the ongoing destruction (opens in a new tab) of ecologically sensitive regions in Norway, revealing 44,000 projects ranging from industrial parks, motorways, cabins and salmon farms to primary schools and hospitals. They later partnered with Arena for Journalism in Europe to replicate the project for all of Europe. Despite being unable to identify certain types of destruction like roads and logging, they found 9,000 sq. km of valuable ecosystems destroyed between 2018 and 2023 – “the equivalent of 600 football pitches every single day” (Green to Grey, 2025 (opens in a new tab)). The report says this continues unnoticed because “the dismantling happens bit by bit, without anyone seeing the whole picture.”
