While causing misery and hardship for many, the COVID-19 crisis has been a godsend for futurologists and those bold enough to live by the dictum, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Prognostications abound: Whether it is the promise from politicians to “build back better,” awe-inspiring predictions by engineer-entrepreneurs of this being the start of the real digital-tech-led human revolution or fearful warnings by concerned citizens that COVID-19 may have fundamentally empowered big coercive government at the expense of personal rights and freedom. Much more so than following the Asia currency crisis, global financial crisis or even the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the cacophony of opinions and prescriptions appears to get louder every day, seemingly rising lockstep with the global death toll.
It is easy to lose sight of the one global megatrend that is being turbocharged by COVID-19: the rise of the "Asian century."