Happy new year to all!
The future is of at least some interest to all of us, even if the majority is not as explicit about it as I am. But even I feel that it is valuable to reflect on what was once in a while. It is crucial to understand both the present and the past to be able to talk about the future. What happened in 2005 that will have lasting effects on the world? A lot of different things of course but there are some things that comes to my mind, and which will be parts of my future analysis for some years.
- The public perception of the relation between man and nature got skewed a considerable bit. The tsunami in Asia, the hurricanes in the Mexican gulf and the earthquake in Kashmere made it clear to us that we are not in control as much as we have persuaded us to believe during a century of mostly man made catastrophies. Not even USA, the most powerful nation on the planet, was neither prepared for nor able to manage the effects of Katrina when it hit New Orleans, this seems to have been an awakening.
- The pandemic threat got a more scaring face during 2005 – the Avian Flu. The reports about the flu from the first weeks of the year is, from a European perspective, increasingly frightening. The way Turkey is handling situation is in focus, and all governments are trying to stop panic from occur.
- Our collective reactions to these catastrophies showed that we live in a new connected world where Internet was used by millions of people around the globe to spontanous organize in a way not being seen before. Internet and digital technologies like blogs, wikis, SMS and digital cameras in cell phones made it possible for people to report, analyse and communicate freely creating emergent organizational structures almost instantly. Wikipedia became one of the focal points where current information was integrated with scientific and historic facts. All this happened when most of the journalists and politicians where still asleep, or sitting in a plane heading for the catastrophy area. If we really are on our way to wire up humanity to reach new collective behaviours, I think we saw the first manifestation of that in 2005. BBC has a short article on what they call the rise of the digital citizen
- The oil peak discussion caught on in the public perception, and the reason was of course due to the rocketing price on crude oil. Now the pressure is getting higher on oil producing countries to actually reveal their future production capacity, facts and forecasts which traditionally have been secret. An interesting question is if, how and when the oil industry is going to make the required huge investments in different part of the oil chain to be able to meet the huge demands of tomorrow. The most crucial point in the chain seems to be the refinery shortage which makes it difficult to provide enough gasoline, diesel and other refined products to the consumers. Some analysts say that the current price on crude oil at $50-60 is the new normal level, but since we stress the whole capacity of the oil chain and the production and consumtion levels are dangerously close, more fluctuations of the price are most likely, even if the energy market is becoming much better in dampening out the fluctuations when they occur. In 2006 and the following years we will see many new industrial and national initiatives to adapt the energy structures to this new situation.
- Several sources have during this year started to compare present times to the medieval era and I agree that there are some similarities, even if there also are huge differencies. Both then and now the society seems to be in a transformation phase, with a lot of stress caused by crumbling societal structures, looming threats of diseases, wars and turbulence due to increases in the power of spiritual forces. I think that the key message is that we now have started to believe that we live in a transition period where most of our current luggage and attitudes are obsolete and that we now are slowly thinking along the lines that we have to start recreating the society from bottom up again. Remember, after the medieval times came the renaissance, which is constituted by the emergence of the individual, the nation state and new patterns of culture, economy and knowledge i e the modern society.
So welcome to the new medieval times! Let us start forging our new structures so that we can once more reinnovate our civilization.
