After the
Disruption – Preliminary Report
Highlights from yesterday’s meeting. A full annotated
report with links and comments will appear next week The actual conversation in
its entirety can be viewed here
(Password:
2T*T@6x1)
The picture emerging is
that the world will be different, especially in cities like New York. Many
people will take a break from big cities and big employers are likely to stick
with telecommuting, dropping leases and treating headquarters as a gathering
place rather than a daily location. Talent and population will experience a
dispersal to secondary and remote regions. However, there will always be a
desire for social gathering and so, over time young people will return to the
big cities. Families may not. In the intermediate period, as business opens up there may well be a
staggering of work hours, enabling lower density of public transportation and
leisure. Immigrant workers – especially in tech will be encouraged to return to
home, resulting in more outsourcing and new kinds of talent
dispersal. Many government, business and societal structures will be
profoundly challenged.
• Everything that can or has
gone digital will go even more digital and contactless.
• Robots will appear
everywhere and the public will welcome them.
• AI will become more
nuanced (remember fuzzy logic?) and embedded wherever possible.
• Lack of faith in
government is at an all-time high, with self-reliance and personal high tech
solutions preferred.
• Sweden vs the rest of the
world. Still an ongoing debate…..
• Contact tracing will be
passively resisted as no one seems willing to trust government with their data.
• Retail as we know it is
probably dead. Online is the new norm. Only highly automated, highly convenient
or highly bespoke retail is likely to return with any strength.
• Restaurants will be culled
but diners may accept staggered seatings. Freelance chefs will emerge
everywhere……
• We have become a quasi-socialist
country with Universal Guaranteed Income a new reality.
• Potent desire to bring
jobs home and reduce reliance on China but deep sense of impotence at our
overwhelming reliance on them.
• Big corporations and
governments might even require China to second-source production in other
countries as a condition of doing business.
• Many calls for new kinds
of Marshall Plans will emerge.
• College students are
feeling deeply cheated abut the prospects of a virtual college experience. This
will cause a rethinking of the higher education system, a breakdown of non-brand
colleges
• 4 year colleges may never
return intact. Layers of nonessential administrators are likely to be retired.
• The possibility of new
kinds of national service - including one for older people whose health
vulnerability makes them doubly unemployable.
• Sales of mood altering
prescription meds exploding. (Up 35% as of March 31st)
• Mental health awareness
and empathy increasing. This may well be part of a new kind of WPA.
• The expectation of a true
vaccine and antidote is low. The expectation of new viral and environmental
threats are high.
• Most expect the public to
manage the virus anyway and return to life regardless - even bucking nervous
governments who lockdown for too long. Democrats tend to be cautious and
lockdown-seeking, Republicans more risk-tolerant.
• Generally, entrepreneurial
solutions are expected to emerge to manage social distancing in business etc.
• Concerns with
healthfulness and ways to measure this will proliferate. Expect a mad rush of
testing.
• Blockchain technology may
emerge as the key management technology.
• Healthfulness will be the
new cool. The new status hierarchy will be based on immune vitality and the
culture will look for formal and informal ways to display this. This may be the
key to social gateways.
• Religions were mostly
absent and in some cases were the unintended promoters of the contagion. As the
plague once fueled the church Reformation and this virus may similarly
challenge formal religions. Spirituality, on the other hand, appears enhanced.
• Economic recovery – will
there be enough money to go around? Governments might turn to creating
cryptocurrency type bonds while wealthy individual may turn to cryptocurrencies
to protect wealth. (FDR’s Executive Order 6102
and Gold Hoarding Act cited.)
• Distance voting is now a
must.
• New referendum
technologies that force officials to be constantly accountable to the public
may be demanded. (In this pandemic the public knew as much as or more than the
government, sometimes more proactive and expected them to plan only to find
they didn’t.)
• The standard Democrat vs
Republican debate may appear irrelevant. Expect new voices to emerge.
Bottom Line.
Present leadership is grossly inadequate, planning non-existent - even though
clear warnings have been public for decades – including numerous hit movies
that were largely anticipatory. There is a profound lack of vision and a high
willingness for the public to accept conspiracy theories and unconventional
explanations. While we have had pandemics the world has never shut down at
once. Have we lost our nerve, our leadership? What is the lasting footprint?
Was this lockdown the
overreaction of the underprepared?
