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128 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours. Immature and even dangerous technologies are pressed into service, because the risks of doing nothing are bigger. Entire countries serve as guinea-pigs in large-scale social experiments. What happens when everybody works from home and communicates only at a distance? What happens when entire schools and universities go online? In normal times, governments, businesses and educational boards would never agree to conduct such experiments. But these aren’t normal times.In his thought-provoking analysis of the first choice, he vivid warns of the dangers of unleashing digital surveillance without taking care to restrain it properly after the emergency is over in order to saveguard privacy, relying more on empowering citizens by “...extensive testing, [...] honest reporting, and [...] the willing cooperation of a well-informed public.”
In this time of crisis, we face two particularly important choices. The first is between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. The second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity.
Humanity needs to make a choice. Will we travel down the route of disunity, or will we adopt the path of global solidarity? If we choose disunity, this will not only prolong the crisis, but will probably result in even worse catastrophes in the future. If we choose global solidarity, it will be a victory not only against the coronavirus, but against all future epidemics and crises that might assail humankind in the 21st century.Wrapping up, a sensible article with an eye on the future which is well worth reading in these troubled times.