Will be there a world?

In the aftermath of history's greatest nuclear disaster, the explosion of a power plant in Chernobyl in 1986, the German sociologist Ulrich Beck coined the term “Risk Society”, which would be the title of his seminal book years later. Far beyond the paranoia of a nuclear war that had fostered nightmares throughout the Cold War period, Beck analysed many other threats that would menace the existence of mankind on the long term. Irreversible environmental changes, sudden tragic economical crises, superpopulation, massive displacements, uncontrolled outbreaks of new super diseases, terrorism, starvation… Beck foresaw many of the challenges we are facing nowadays and, frankly, I doubt whether we, as a global society, are mature enough to cope with it.

Unfortunately, the apocalyptical views stemming from several sci-fi novels from last century have become reality in a crucial period when the president of the most powerful country in the world governs based on trending topics on Twitter, the movement of denying climate change is getting more and more supporters, bigotry and fascism are sharply increasing throughout the social media… well, it is hard to be optimistic with the future of mankind considering the actual scenery and the projections on mid- and long-term.

So, hopefully there will be a world in the year 2100, but I’m not sure if there will be human beings at that time. Maybe a wiser and more resistant species, like cockroaches, will be ruling the planet.

Elysium: the triumph of the 1%

The 2013 Neil Blomkamp feature film “Elysium” is probably not a sci-fi masterpiece, but the movie is generous in providing hints of mankind's future. It takes place in the year 2154, an age when mankind is definitely and literally torn apart. The wealthy minority lives in an artificial heaven: a giant spaceship where everything is controlled, without disease, violence, environmental disturbance and so on. The majority of mankind keeps living on Earth, a true hell, where, among the ruins and pollution, people experience a semi-slavery system, where they are controlled by robots and do nothing but survive, without any kind of hope and perspective. They must be productive as well; however, they are easily replaceable.

Despite this nightmare scenario, I might say that this kind of reality would be a dream for the so called 1%, this tiny part of the humanity who really has the power, rules the institutions and controls the vast majority of the world’s wealth. Regarding the directions of the global economy under neoliberalism theology, the world depicted in Elysium is not only possible, but even desirable for the ones who are actually in charge – let’s assume that democracy is nothing but a media show to brainwash our minds in order to make us believe that we are worthy.

Democracy and the digital age

In 2100 the term “democracy” certainly will be nothing more than an entry in one of those encyclopedia websites. It will be as old-fashioned as the Middle Ages for our contemporary eyes. With a delay of 116 years, the predictions of the English writer George Orwell in his masterpiece “1984” will come true – actually, they’re coming true right now! In a recent interview with BBC News, the German guru of Big Data Martin Hilbert warned: democracy is not ready for the digital age. From his point of view, we are experiencing a sort of control foreseen by Orwell. According to Hilbert, every individual produces an incommensurable amount of data every day through his or her navigation on the Web, through their purchases and even when hanging out with their mobile in the pocket.

Based on your daily life on- and off-line, the algorithms of giant tech companies as Google and Facebook can predict your behaviour and know you even better than your partner does – or yourself. This amount of data is processed and sold to companies, governmental institutions and political parties. As Edward Snowden has shown us, we are not protected. We are already extremely vulnerable to this sophisticated system of Artificial Intelligence, something so evolved that even Orwell couldn’t have predicted it. The dictatorship of information is just beginning… can you image how it could be in 2100?