net.wars

Oddly, the most immediately frightening message of my week was the one from the World Future Society, subject line "URGENT MESSAGE - NOT A DRILL". The text began, "The World Future Society over its 60 years has been preparing for a moment of crisis like this..."

The message caused immediate flashbacks to every post-disaster TV show and movie, from The Leftovers (in which 2% of the world's population mysteriously vanishes) to The Last Man on Earth (in which everyone who isn't in the main cast has died of a virus). In my case, it also reminds unfortunately of the very detailed scenarios I saw posted in the late 1990s to the comp.software.year-2000 Usenet newsgroup, in which survivalists were certain that the Millennium Bug would cause the collapse of society. In one scenario I recall, that collapse was supposed to begin with the banks failing, pass through food riots and cities burning, and end with four-fifths of the world's population dead: the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI). So what I "heard" in the World Future Society's tone was that the "preppers", who built bunkers, stored sacks of beans, rice, dried meat, and guns, were finally right and this was their chance to prove it.

Naturally, they meant no such thing. What they *did* mean was that futurists have long thought about the impact of various types of existential risks, and that what they want is for as many people as possible to join their effort to 1) protect local government and health authorities, 2) "co-create back-up plans for advanced collaboration in case of societal collapse", and 3) collaborate on possible better futures post-pandemic. Number two still brings those flashbacks, but I like the first goal very much, and the third is on many people's minds. If you want to see more, it's here.

It was one of the notable aspects of the early Internet that everyone looked at what appeared to be a green field for development and sought to fashion it in their own desired image. Some people got what they wanted: China, for example, defying Western pundits who claimed it was impossible, successfully built a controlled national intranet. Facebook, while coming along much later, through zero rating deals with local telcos for its Free Basics, is basically all the Internet people know in countries like Ghana and the Philippines, a phenomenon Global Voices calls "digital colonialism". Something like that mine-to-shape thinking is visible here.

I don't think WFS meant to be scary; what they were saying is in fact what a lot of others are saying, which is that when we start to rebuild after the crisis we have a chance - and a need - to do things differently. At Wired, epidemiologist Larry Brilliant tells Steven Levy he hopes the crisis will "cause us to reexamine what has caused the fractional division we have in [the US]".

At Singularity University's virtual summit on COVID-19 this week, similar optimism was on display (some of it probably unrealistic, like James Ehrlich's land-intensive sustainable villages). More usefully, Jamie Metzl compared the present moment to 1941, when US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to imagine how the world might be reshaped after the war would end in the Atlantic charter. Today, Metzl said, "We are the beneficiaries of that process." Therefore, like FDR we should start now to think about how we want to shape our upcoming different geopolitical and technological future. Like net.wars last week and John Naughton at the Guardian, Metzl is worried that the emergency powers we grant today will be hard to dislodge later. Opportunism is open to all.

I would guess that the people who think it's better to bail out businesses than support struggling people also fear permanence will become true of the emergency support measures being passed in multiple countries. One of the most surreal aspects of a surreal time is that in the space of a few weeks actions that a month ago were considered too radical to live are suddenly happening: universal basic income, grounding something like 80% of aviation, even support for *some* limited free health care and paid sick leave in the US.

The crisis is also exposing a profound shift in national capabilities. China could build hospitals in ten days; the US, which used to be able to do that sort of thing, is instead the object of charity from Chinese billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who sent over half a million test kits and 1 million face masks.

Meanwhile, all of us, with a few billionaire exceptions are turning to the governments we held in so little regard a few months ago to lead, provide support, and solve problems. Libertarians who want to tear governments down and replace all their functions with free-market interests are exposed as a luxury none of us can afford. Not that we ever could; read Paulina Borsook's 1996 Mother Jones article Cyberselfish if you doubt this.

"It will change almost everything going forward," New York State governor Andrew Cuomo said of the current crisis yesterday. Cuomo, who is emerging as one of the best leaders the US has in an emergency, and his counterparts are undoubtedly too busy trying to manage the present to plan what that future might be like. That is up to us to think about while we're sequestered in our homes.

Illustrations:: A local magnolia tree, because it *is* spring.

Wendy M. Grossman is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award. Her Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of earlier columns in this series. Stories about the border wars between cyberspace and real life are posted occasionally during the week at the net.wars Pinboard - or follow on Twitter.