Acceleration of ongoing
Beyond some strategic elements and many structural contradictions, this pandemic has highlighted an acceleration of some processes transversal to the various societies. Let’s try to list them here, with the prudence of those who are playing dice and try to glimpse in their rolling that little ripple that they called Case or Necessity.
![Process acceleration due to Coronavirus and Covid 19? Process acceleration due to Coronavirus and Covid 19?](https://agendadelfuturo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/process-acceleration-coronavirus-covid-19-3.jpg)
Strong secularization
and role of religious institutions
One of the most significant images of this period of crisis is represented by the leaders of religious confessions that are completely helpless in the face of events. The great monotheistic religions, at least systemically, have been unable to interpret and manage the difficult situation of these months.
This inadequacy was perceived not only in the lack of economic and practical support to the people most affected by recent events but also and above all in the inability to provide a truly practical moral and human key to interpretation, which was not limited to the simple reiteration of worship and rites.
Beyond the pacifying effect that faith has had on the spirit of the imprisoned or suffering faithful – and beyond the meritorious work of some local or charitable institutions, supported by people heroically committed to the territory – it is objective that institutional religions do not have contributed in any way, both from a philosophical / moral and economic point of view, to the resolution of the emergency in progress. Unprepared for this challenge, and instead traversed by powerful frictions and unresolved knots, for example, the Catholic Church then fell back on marginal positions and produced a stammer of stereotypes, moral weakness and bad communication effectiveness.
The process, already underway for some time, of full secularization will see new heights in the post-pandemic period. Religions will increasingly be configured as lateral and powerless institutions, incapable of any attractive force, placed at the banner of a vanishing world or confined to increasingly marginal layers of society.
The anthropocene, characterized by the prevalence of storytelling and interpretations with respect to real evidence, will see a radical change of sign when it can emancipate itself from founding narratives anchored to the past.
Only in this way will it be possible to arrive at a new definition of collective identity through tools that look to the present, have fallen deeply into reality and that know how to enhance the sacred dimension of the individual and the community in a non-speculative way or aimed at managing power.
![Process acceleration due to Coronavirus and Covid 19? Process acceleration due to Coronavirus and Covid 19?](https://agendadelfuturo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/process-acceleration-coronavirus-covid-19-4.jpg)
Electronic money
and in-depth consumer profiling
Increase in the statutory compulsory distance and consequent mutual distance. Need to inject large capital into the real economy to cope with the crisis resulting from the pandemic. Obligation to track payments and the use of resources, including non-refundable, provided by governments to the population. These and other factors will contribute to the final dematerialization of money to favor electronic payment systems. Also this process, already underway for years, will contribute to reaffirming how much technology has become fundamental for vitalising consumption and economic recovery.
The ability to transfer money quickly and safely, without commissions for end users, which allows tracking security and fraud prevention: these will be some of the objectives that the banking sector will have to strive for in the immediate future.
Having to renounce the commissions for the management of digitized payments, for banks the main need (and their strategic asset) will be to profoundly profile customers and their purchasing and consumption habits.
The acquired data, regardless of how it will be treated, will represent one of the strongest assets on the plate and, more generally, the terrain in which heavy disputes will be played between the state and private economic actors.
Inflation and cryptocurrencies
Last issue relating to money: the evolution of cryptocurrencies and their specific weight within communities. Imagining a scenario in which – as seems evident – strong injections of money from central banks will take place, it is probable that we will experience new periods in which inflation will have sudden and drastic rises.
Cryptocurrencies, representing the alternative to the traditional system of creating and managing money, could provide a convenient shelter where to deposit your savings. This would allow – at least in theory – to preserve the value of the investment despite inflation.
Whether this actually happens, or we find ourselves catapulted into a network of new regulations that will also strictly regulate cryptocurrencies, this is not known. In the same way, it is not possible to assess whether this new financial asset, pervaded by enormous volatility, is a good or a bad investment in the long run. Unfortunately, as always happens, the ostracism of consolidated systems or the lack of expertise in designing new economic instruments risks plunging innovations into a limbo from which it is not easy to recover.
![Process acceleration due to Coronavirus and Covid 19? Process acceleration due to Coronavirus and Covid 19?](https://agendadelfuturo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/process-acceleration-coronavirus-covid-19-2.jpg)
Dematerialized information
and purification of information framing
The struggle for information will intensify and will see the emergence of more and more barriers to entry. The distinction between official and “unofficial” information will be more polarized. More stringent measures will be taken to discredit unrecognized actors or to limit their opportunities of expression or distribution of content. This, when not turned into censorship, will become a powerful news verification system and a guarantee of quality for the citizen.
A positive element, useful to better understand the functioning of “populist” information, is represented by the fact that the pandemic emergency has exposed the “mechanism of fear” as a single source for the management of information needs.
Accustomed to reiterating the convenient frame solution based on fear (fear of the immigrant, fear of the thief, fear of taxes, of the state intervention etc.) many newspapers have been overcome by the news, which has proved more terrifying than any hypothetical threat from them evoked. Naked as the famous monarch, robbed of their comfortable impaurente weapon, exposed by an emergency this time true and totally inexplicable, these informative publications have not had sufficient tools to tame the reality.
Once the emergency is over, they will find themselves unarmed in front of the public: their “popped” fears will have no greater grip and these newspapers will be forced to rethink this narrative element in its intimate structure.
The sources of information will therefore have to deal with growing challenges. Once the pandemic is over or internalized, they will see the interest of the public fall in proportion to the coefficient of normality that will be achieved and to the level of average information quality they have shown.
For this reason, the only guarantee for the various newspapers will be to expand the quality of the service offered and the ability to create communities of loyal subscribers.
The newspapers that survive in the future will be financed only by those who buy them: a widespread share of readers capable of keeping the media alive. On the contrary, the press organs managed by private pachyderms and lobbies or financed with public funds designed to rain will find less and less luck.
Finally, the huge amount of physical resources required to print, distribute and purchase newspapers will lead to a progressive dematerialisation of the editorial offices, bringing professional printing to the digital world with increasing vigor.
New investments and widespread technology will allow us to work on economies of scale and achieve a translation of the publishing world towards a new evolutionary stage where editorial offices will also be delocalized and atomised, increasingly lighter and (hopefully) close to the end user.
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Texts updated on May 4, 2020.
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