SCHIFFER FOUNDATION
Life after pandemic: what to expect in 2025
Serious topic, dog pictures included
The pandemic has changed our lives. And it will change even more! The way we work, entertain or interact. Is it our last chance to balance our relationship with nature?
Coronavirus, a tiny particle, a couple of hundreds of nanometers in size, has hit the illusion of predictability of our lives so hard that we won’t be finished with the aftermath for decades, if not centuries. Is it the last warning?
The coronavirus has sharpened the difference between the seeming and the genuine. It has shown us the governments and leaders capable of fighting back the historical challenges while keeping human face and counting each and everyone in need.
While we are still only about to understand the scale of economic damage the crisis has caused, we can only hope for science to explain, describe, and quantify the virus's spreading and the way it works. Once we know this, we can hope for the effectiveness of the vaccines or antiviral medications, which could save thousands of lives.
The snow of yesterday
A possibility of a global pandemic like this was speculated by the scientists frequent enough for being prepared. Nature has even run the beta tests for it. See MERS and SARS. None of that was enough for the world leaders and governments, for us — the society to prevent the devastating complications predicted years before they happened.
So, where are we now? How will our lives change? Who is responsible? How will we make sure nothing like this happens again? Is there something we consciously neglect now that will hit us hard, if not even harder than the coronavirus? Hell yes. But in meanwhile: my Shiba.
Let’s relax and speculate a bit. Imagine coronavirus to be in the not-so-distant past, say it is the year 2025.
Working from home
In 2025 almost everyone is probably working from home. Besides the essential personal communications, humanity has decided not to risk the second pandemic. Logically the number of people commuting has declined, which is good news and summed up with the immediate economic decline caused by the pandemic itself will definitely give us a year or two in fighting global warming.
Social communication will also decline, and the world will finally become an introvert-friendly place. Not wanting to meet somebody in person or, unimaginable, shaking somebody’s sweaty hands will finally become as awkward as we fellow introverts have always felt it to be. But even us gals need some friends and entertainment, so the consumption of digital content and entertainment will surge. We can see it happening in 2020 already. Boredom is the main thing causing us to consume more digital and physical drugs — Netflix, alcohol, coffee, <blank>. The good thing is probably engaging users will become easier: the bigger the demand, the easier it is to sell.
Remote presence replaces physical
The physical presence will become obsolete; the physical boundaries will count less and less for the working culture. The Internet has already accelerated the decay of the traditional understanding of “WERK.” A global pandemic has just underlined the necessity of change and backwardness of the physical presence, which is the main cause of humanity’s division. Our mind knows no boundaries; our dreams know no countries.
The remote presence will improve, the facial recognition-based transmission and video compression, AR and VR development will shift the understanding of presence, equalizing the avatars mimicking the emotions and facial expressions to the real person. Digital identity will become incomparably more important than the physical. Finally, the clothes will not influence your social status.
To enable instant and placeless communication, the world will need more networks. More Internet everywhere. No wonder Starlink is not the only one out there. The difference between a rat and a hamster is the marketing budget.
Somebody always disagrees
As working on remote will become regular, the sure part is the massive dissidence in older generations, who are neither intellectually capable of switching the paradigm nor willing and ready to do that. We can witness it in 2020, how they loved the good old days when the grass was greener, the sky bluer, and the water was wetter. The only hope is the longevity research and therapy reversing the intelligence degrading in the old mice.
People will try to revive the experiences of the past: weddings, birthdays, concerts, travel. 2020s will be full of mocking services, like exploring Iceland over the internet or remote presence on the rave over VR. Global networks like Starlink should make it possible.
More tech
Obviously, the Tech, as such, will gain more and more influence on how we think and dream of the future. CGI based animation will gain traction, as real actors are meat sacks spreading the viruses: Nobody wants the pandemic of 2020 to repeat. The AI will replace bullshit jobs, pushing the global community to decouple basic existence supplements from the constant “WERK”ing. Yes, I’m talking about
But what about those who can’t stay at home? Even if visiting a doctor in most mild cases can be made remote, using some basic measurement device like a smartphone, imagine firefighters controlling a drone or a robot equipped with all possible fire fighting mechanisms, or policeman-robot curling up the hooligans. Funny thought, not in 5 years, though. Think about fully automated construction with a giant 3d printer or drone-based delivery service. Also, probably too soon. Maybe in small and progressive countries, but not in Germany, no. Definitely not Germany. No.
In 2025 there is a generation of young adults who don’t know what’s an office and have never seen their colleagues in person. This will drastically change the way they think about “WERK.” Self-isolation and self-sustainability will become a self-understanding part of their lives, and they will never want to come back to life as we know it now from the times before the pandemic. The world will bind even stronger.
Besides that, the global cataclysms have always made the rich richer and the poor poorer; the hard times strike those who have nothing. But you know what? This time is different.
Common responsibility
Unlike the global wars of the 20th century, the pandemic has shown how interconnected the world is. We see people starving in Afrika, but it seemingly doesn’t bother us. The outbreaks of swine flu in 2009, MERS in 2012, ebola in 2014 seemed so local and distant that we all gladly believed it’s not our problem, none of our business. Science warned us: the way animals were traditionally treated in China will cause a global catastrophe. We didn’t listen.
So here’s the bill and the undeniable truth: we are no longer separated. Globalization, the foundation of progress and growth, comes with downsides. Although we still live in the past categories, believing in our independence and awaiting physical distance and borders to guarantee our isolation, to assure our limited responsibility, we are still co-responsible not only for our local issues. The physical borders did not stop the spreading of the coronavirus. They won’t stop another one.
Circle of life
The way we treat animals and other nature, how we treat other human beings is now a matter of high priority and our main responsibility. We face the global pandemic alone and together simultaneously, and this is the preliminary examination because the final one is yet to come. Our planet is on fire, the sea level rises, and even the most stubborn deniers of truth have to admit that the world as we knew it is over.
We cannot consume our planet as if it was all ours because it’s not. Life had existed here long before the evolutional calculation converged to us, the medium of consciousness. The living beings have co-existed in the delicate balance for millions of years, without money, without overconsumption.
As a kid, I asked myself why evolution has never created a super animal with claws, endless lifespan, and unprecedented intelligence. Now I know the answer: such an animal would consume everything around it, leaving no environment for own existing and future generations to live in.
We are those animals. Like reindeers on St. Mathew Island in the Bering Sea, we eat out our place to live, and this story became so old and boring that we grew cold and indifferent to it. But nature knows no compromise, negotiations, or postponement of justice.
We have to act quickly; otherwise, the punishment will be so cruel, the corona pandemic will fade away in comparison. People my age have to realize: there is no future. You and your children will die suffocating and starving unless we act hard and act quickly. We are all united in confronting this challenge, and the solution for it has to be global.
We are not yet evicted, but b**** you beta werk!
