30 Names for this Era

(Originally published April 17, 2020)

Random Observation/Comment #660: We’re fighting a war in sweatpants.

Why this List?

We’re living through some crazy times. What are we going to call this era in the history books? Is this a war? Era? Period? Reign? Age? Revolution? There will be different references for each country, socio, political, tech, crisis, and other time periods. Some of these names might just be chapters in a history textbook.

This is the end of the beginning.

1. The Global Lockdown – 100 years later from the Spanish Flu and the best response to stop spread is still social distancing. This is not a critique – without early contact tracing and quarantine of those infected, this is the best strategy available. Please Stay Home.
2. The Great Pause – The economy will restart again, but currently it has just stopped. Loss of jobs. Decreased spending. A big pause button was pushed and restarting will not be easy.
3. The Great Reset – We may view the world differently now. What’s essential? What was manipulated? What are our new roles?
4. The Invisible War – We are fighting an invisible enemy.
5. Post-Covid War – Like the Cold War and Post-Cold War period, we will see some significant changes to the new normal.
6. Viral Age – Viral for the spread of the virus, but also the spread of misinformation. Everything multiplies by our digital ties and degrees of trust.
7. Pandemic Pivot – I’m hoping our tax allocations and funding reflects some of our basic needs in healthcare, education, academic research, working conditions, and minimum wage. Unfortunately, the current administration is going backwards with climate change and WHO funding.
8. The Great Uniter – States have united across healthcare to help at times of need. Globally, we’re all fighting the same health issues and hopefully sharing our findings from an academic perspective.
9. The Great Divide – There’s short term unification, but it’s clear those below the poverty line living paycheck-to-paycheck will be the highest impacted. Those with investments will likely see 3x increases from stock movements.
10. The Great Equalizer – On the other end, the pandemic itself will have personal impact in loss. Everyone will know someone in their ~100 connections that has contracted the virus and recovered or passed away. It will be a time of mourning and grief.
11. Unemployment Crisis – This is certainly to the scale of a crisis. There are certain skills that will be more useful in the future and an impact in the types of new jobs that will be deemed essential.
12. Economic Ice Age – The next 2 years will be an ice age for businesses and entrepreneurs. Some restaurants with enough capital will pivot with implemented best practices on cleanliness, but this overhead may be too much for the smaller businesses. People may be too scared to buy in-person again.
13. The Takeover of Big Tech – Big tech will not only survive the pandemic, but also thrive in their created monopolies. Small businesses will not have enough capital to maintain high paid and high quality employees. People will also lean towards “stable jobs” when things are uncertain. Companies that employ the range of skilled and unskilled labor like Amazon will grow much stronger.
14. The Remote Working Experiment – Those who are fortunate enough to keep their jobs and can work from home will likely create a friendly work from home balance. There will be less demand for offices in some countries and higher demand for international remote teams.
15. Economic Paralysis – We’re frozen and personally unable to move. Our momentum for helping the economy continue to turn has come to a complete stop.
16. Unlinked Circular Economy – Standard circular earning and spending has been broken. There’s an imbalanced reliance on technology and stress on specific supply chains to obtain core necessities.
17. Flat Tire Economy – Our circular economic wheel has a flat tire and our spare tire is pretty crap. Maybe the tow truck is the central bank printing money to help larger institutions stay afloat and trickle down to the consumers. Whichever analogy you choose, it’s a long drive before getting new wheels.
18. Regaining Momentum – Objects at rest want to stay at rest. We will need to provide some fairly extreme pushes in the beginning to get people back on the wheel and the economy rolling.
19. Immobilization Span – This might last a few months or a few years. In either case, this span of time emphasizes the decrease of travel thereby decreasing our use of airplanes, cars, and public transportation.
20. Creation of Generation-C – Not only will we be more Connected, but we will be post-Coronavirus with a larger emphasis on cleanliness and PTSD from lockdown/agoraphobia tendencies.
21. Live Streaming Generation – Without expensive sets and theaters, the creation of Content will be driven by the manufacturing of media to a much leaner team. YouTubers and Remote Professors/Teaching will teach traditional media a lot about scaling down production. More than before, people will care about their digital branding and create their own value through alternative means.
22. Digitization Age – Cash and assets are mostly digitized already, but this will only expand in access and custodianship/ownership.
23. Emergence of Virtual Reality – Most Sci-Fi movies show the planet devastated by global turmoil and inequality while our digital selves and branding has greater value than physical goods. The immersive nature of VR will make the world flatter and change how we interact with the real world.
24. Deep Fake Era – Not only will there by more deep fakes and certain mistrust of video, AI will also help with deep fake detection. These two layers just means that people need to be less gullible towards sharing. More than ever, our security measures for authentication and validation must be upgraded to prevent identity theft.
25. Age of Data Privacy – We have already been in this battle since we opted in to share our lives on social networks, our mobile phones follow us wherever we go, and our devices are always listening to what we talk about because we’re always connected. The confluence of all these data points is valuable to companies that want to do targeted campaigns and pay for our attention. Hopefully the technology we create to keep us safe does not become the tech that removes other freedoms.
26. Self-Sovereign Revolution – I am optimistic that the more tech savvy generation that cares about privacy will also care more about self control of assets. The user experience needs some work, but we can create a network where we own our credentials and get notified when they’re used.
27. Resurgence of Science – Science has always been around, but the battle of trusting science has been an interesting upward struggle. I don’t understand anti-vaxxers and I hope this is no longer something we need to waste time quashing.
28. Exodus of Cities – There’s even less of a reason to pay more to live in a small apartment. I think people will buy houses in more open areas and care more about nature. Now that the Remote Working Experiment can show some level of productivity, some may opt for a lower paying remote job than a higher income in-person effort.
29. Calm Before the Storm of Climate Change – If we think this is the only curve we need to flatten, we are highly mistaken. Climate change will have multiple orders of impacts on natural disasters that will hit much harder than this pandemic.
30. Decentralized Money / Programmable Money Rebirth – Quantitative Easing blows my mind. Central Banks have been injecting capital and pulling this lever of printing infinite money without any repercussion. Honestly, I don’t know if there is one if it’s part of how the global economy maintains order. I do think programmable money has a future in leveling the playing field and providing the proper economic controls.

~See Lemons Surviving a War

Originally posted on seelemons.com