Could the pandemic lead to global cohesion and a maturing of humanity?

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When I searched my blog for mentions of pandemic, one mention came up in a post I wrote in 2014 on Four scenarios for 2030.

One of the scenarios from that exercise may be enormously relevant today.
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9 insights into the future of air travel in a post-coronavirus world

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Since I do significant work on the future of travel, I was sought out for an interview earlier today about the future of air travel, something very much up in the air at the moment, one could say!

Below are some of the points I shared with the journalist.
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Transitioning from the initial terror phase as new COVID-19 cases plateau in some countries

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The good news is that over the last week new cases are plateauing or even reducing in many countries, including Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Australia, and a range of Western European countries.

Of course new cases are still rising alarmingly in other countries, most notably the US, though also in UK, Canada, and France.

The chart below shows the last 10 days of data on new cases from a selection of countries, using two different scales to help make sense of the range of the data, and avoiding logarithmic scales as it is hard to visually interpret for this kind of data. Commentary on the implications below.
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The race heats up between Facebook and Apple to create the next big thing after smartphones

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News is just out that Facebook has locked up an exclusive deal with microLED leader Plessey to supply next-generation micro displays to power augmented reality glasses. Read on for the context and implications…

Beyond smartphones will likely be smartglasses

After the TV and desktop came the laptop and tablet and then the smartphone. The progress of our interfaces with technology and information will not end here. The most obvious contender for the immediate successor to the smartphone is some form of augmented reality glasses.

I have been writing about the potential of augmented reality glasses for over a decade, even being honored at the top of a list of ‘failed’ tech predictions for the 2010s for my prognostications in late 2009 of AR as a core form of human augmentation.
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Country comparisons of COVID-19

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While there are plenty of excellent data sources and visualizations of the state of the COVID-19 pandemic globally, I haven’t seen ones that provide the comparisons that I’m looking for, so I created this chart:


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9 implications of a dramatic shift to contactless commerce and society sparked by COVID-19

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Today, most countries in the world are enforcing social distancing and in many cases lockdowns, forcing people to stay at home, sometimes at pain of fines or imprisonment.

This is immensely challenging, but if executed well it will curtail the spread of the virus so we can move past the peak of infections into the next phase.
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The two fundamental elements of strategy amid COVID-19: Survival and Reinvention

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There is no business that has not been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some companies, in industries ranging from consumer staples to video-conferencing, are struggling to cope with soaring demand

Yet most are being slammed by factors including economic concerns, reduced spending, or simple inability of their customers to come to them.
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Reviewing the debate on balancing privacy and health in a pandemic

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The issues I raised in my recent blog post We can stop the pandemic in its tracks, we just need to lose all privacy. Are we prepared for that? are, fortunately, becoming very much a topic of public debate.

Here are some of the more interesting articles that have recently emerged framing this very important conversation.
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Content series on strategy for a post-pandemic world

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There is only one topic today: the COVID-19 pandemic and its potential trajectory.

The scope of the pandemic is unprecedented in our lifetimes, and given how interconnected and interdependent our world is compared to previous generations, it is in many ways unique in human history.

In the coming months and likely beyond I will be focusing my thinking, content development, and strategy work on the medium to long-term systemic impact of the pandemic, and the actions we can take today to create a better future for ourselves, our organizations, and everyone.
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We can stop the pandemic in its tracks, we just need to lose all privacy. Are we prepared for that?

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We can readily stop COVID-19 from spreading and reverse its path of devastation.

It just requires health authorities and the government to track our every movement and everyone we come into contact with, with no exceptions.

This is already happening to a substantial degree in a numnber of countries, and quite possibly has been a major factor in limiting the spread of the disease in some instances.
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