It has become ‘normal’ to say that we are headed towards a ‘new normal’. The most similar analogy I see is the query, ‘Who let the Dogs Out? Nobody knows ‘who’, but it’s catchy! We can only try and conjecture as to what that new state will be, but then, what else are ‘lockdown analysts’ for? Being a digital warrior, the binary scenarios I play are, End of the World vs Evolutionary Prosperity. The real life will give us something in between, but it highlights the futility of worrying, as in either case choices remain a linear progression of options.
We may try holding on to the past, it is not a bad thing, but life has been changing anyway. The dusty old bazaars were sidelined by the convenient Superstores, then the malls pushed them aside and made shopping a getaway experience till eCommerce exploited our inertia and made our devices the market and us, a product. Entrepreneurship has also changed from the idea of just giving the people what they want, to design thinking; giving people a need they never knew they had and then selling goods and services to fulfill that. So apart from the fact that we are being forced to change in a short timeframe, this situation is just ‘normal’.
Fareed Zakaria, on this change said, in one of his shows, that this opportunity that we have got to formalize a new way of life can also be used to deviate from the ills of the past that had got ingrained in our lifestyles. Aspects like excessive burning of fossil fuels, meat production, wasteful electricity consumption and even population growth were never sustainable models and as we sit and decide about the future of our civilisation, cleaning up the canvas and harmonising with the earth just seems even more prudent. As far as us in India, it should be easy. For centuries, life on Jambudvipa was based on balance with nature and now when the multinationals (actually corporations beyond nations) package our ancient concoctions like Turmeric Latte, Toothpaste with Salt / Charcoal, disposable leaf plates, 9 Day fasting, Yoga etc. An endless list keeps scrolling on how fundamentally strong we, as a civilisation were and even today, are.
The change will neither be immediate nor easy. Years of vested interests and invested mindsets will friction the move, but they, like many others in the past, are likely to get ‘Netflixed’. The popular streaming service and many similar others today are hot-stocks and the story is same for most non-contact service providers. The twentieth century buzzword, “Globalisation” stands to shrink to such non-contact products while giving way to ‘regional self dependence’ in other physical consumer goods. Like it or not, democracy in manufacturing will define the next industrial wave. Intellectual Property will stay as the fundamental ownership, but growth will be in down-scaled factories catering to regional markets and eventual progression in 3D Printing may further lead to corporations like Amazon supplying substrates and people printing whatever they need in the comfort of their homes.
Still as social animals, we have been known to move mountains to be with each other. Can the idea of long-term isolation be sold to such a mind set? Or can we partially sacrifice privacy and develop individual sensor bands (like a Fitbit) that broadcast our real-time infection status and tag us and our surroundings, Go / No Go. Fear of misuse and stigma will always remain, but like hijackings and 9/11 changed Airport Security, this sensor based social life, might not be a distant future. Tracking apps, in a still nascent form, are already in use in many countries, including India (Arogya Setu). 5G bandwidth may just be the platform needed for billions of these active devices to talk to each other. The race to dominate this sector is about to explode.
It is strange that solutions to life, Post Corona, being thought of today, lie at the extreme ends of the time spectrum. Ancient and futuristic ideas are converging for maintaining our average modern lives and this new cocktail may just be the cheers we need to welcome life as it will be known. Nature is divine in its ways, just when the caterpillar thought the world is over, it became a butterfly.
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