Nobody knew what the outcome of the war was going to be, everybody was terrified, and the US and its allies were losing the war. I think of this as a 1941 moment.”ġ941 was the thick of World War II. But, Metzl said, “It’s my contention that this isn’t a 2001 moment, this is something much bigger. The world changed that day, and it’s never returned to how it was before.Ī flu-like pandemic with a relatively low mortality rate may seem minor compared to the deliberate murder of thousands of innocent people. Marks of Historyįor many of us, the most impactful geopolitical event that’s happened during our lifetime was the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In a talk at Singularity University’s virtual summit on COVID-19 last week, Metzl explained why he believes that we’re never going “back to normal”-and what we should be doing now to make the new normal a good one. Jamie Metzl, technology and healthcare futurist, geopolitical expert, entrepreneur, author of Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, and Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, thinks this is possible-but it all depends on what we do and how we behave right now. More importantly-or, at least, more optimistically-what if the world could come out of this crisis better than it was before?
We’re making plans for what we’ll do when things go back to normal-and banking on that happening.īut what if life never fully goes back to how it was pre-coronavirus? What if this epidemic is a turning point, and after it the world is never the same? We just want this to be over, and we figure it’s only a matter of time.
But we’re already sick of being at home all the time, we miss our friends and families, everything’s been canceled, the economy is tanking, and we feel anxious and scared about what’s ahead. As efforts to contain the novel coronavirus ramp up, it’s likely going to change even more. Life has changed a lot in the past few days, weeks, or months, depending where you live.