What would it mean for science if researchers could test a proposed drug on ten thousand
different patient profiles before enrolling a single volunteer in a clinical trial? What would it mean
for urban policy if a city government could model exactly how a new metro line would reshape
commuting patterns, property values, air quality, and neighbourhood inequality, not after the line
is built but before the first planning permission is granted? What would it mean for environmental
science if a research team could compress fifty years of ecosystem response to a proposed
reforestation programme into a single afternoon of computation? These are not speculative
possibilities.