As countries reopen their economies from the COVID-19-induced lockdown, searching for the “new normal” has been a fashionable exercise of the mind.
Many intuitively sensed that the post-COVID-19 world would be fundamentally different. Thinkers like Yuval Noah Harari and Jacques Attali talk about what the future may hold, and have been attracting global media attention as many observers continue to stay home wondering what the future has in store for them.
Harari argues that there are two sets of binary choices to make going forward. One is a choice between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment, the other is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity.