
There will be no 'back to normal' - yread
https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/there-will-be-no-back-normal/
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4cao
While it does make for an interesting read, most of the conclusions seem too
far-fetched to me. In fact, I expect everything to be back to more or less
where it was within a year or two, with only a couple of major lasting changes
related to: (1) the political dynamics within the EU, (2) the position of
China in the world economy, (3) specific industries and regions being
disproportionately impacted (cruise ships gone, airlines forced to consolidate
further across country borders, tourism-dependent economies heavily affected
and slow to recover, etc.).

In particular I don't believe anything like the following will happen:

> We will see moves away from ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing, and major shifts
> towards practices which reinforce resilience (e.g. stockpiles, redundant
> capacity, duplicated systems) at the expense of efficiency.

Perhaps, for a year or two, at which point all the "resilience" will be
optimized away.

> We anticipate lasting interest in remote working models

> The normalisation of remote working might also slow the trend of people
> moving from countryside to cities, whilst prompting more interest in
> distributed organisations

People working remotely will be the first to get fired, at which point they'll
have to get another job, and it'll likely be a traditional one again.

> More people will voluntarily surrender personal data (such as medical and
> genomic data, contact data, location data, etc.) to help the common good.

People already surrender all of their data, most of which happens
involuntarily. Governments might attempt to use more of this data but they're
unlikely to have the wherewhittal to do so consistently.

\----

Many of the changes on the list have little to do with the virus and were
already underway before, at most the pandemic will have only accelerated them.

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jhwang5
Yep.

1) It's against human nature - in aggregate - to prefer working in solitude at
home. WFH may increase, but remote won't anywhere be the "mainstream"

2) No, the position of China in world economy will ironically grow. Getting
supply chain out of China will introduce unwanted inflation into developed
nations in EU and US - that's not what these countries need after printing
many trillions of dollars.

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LatteLazy
There are a lot of baseless claims here. As far as I can see, the authors are
just making big claims hoping the readers' prejudices will prevent them from
questioning it.

We all yearn for at least some major reform. But this (coronavirus) isn't it.
And this definately isn't 101 different major societal changes all wrapped up
in one.

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dpau
I hate to be that person, but I find the use of an accordion collapse for the
article sections to be unnecessary and exasperating. I tried a page search for
"automation" and the browser showed one hit, but I couldn't find _where_ the
word was due to the collapse feature. What does hiding text with an accordion
add to the experience? Why not just publish a full article? Ugh.

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netsharc
On my mobile browser, as I open one accordion, the others collapse, but the
browser doesn't scroll to the top of the opened section. Pretty annoying.

That presentation plus the IMO shallow insights left me unsatisfied.

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rezendi
It's a _little_ unfair to say that I'm strongly reminded of this very funny
tweet, but only a little:
[https://twitter.com/NicholasDanfort/status/12464658526329569...](https://twitter.com/NicholasDanfort/status/1246465852632956930)

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joyj2nd
"alternative schooling methods (e.g. AI remote teaching, virtual classroom
environments)"

My bullshit indicator went far into the red...

Let my try: "alternative schooling methods (e.g. AI remote teaching,
blockchain enabled holistic virtual classroom environments)"

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xupybd
We don't tend to change that much after things like this.

Economic and political forces still end up pushing the same wheels.

Yes this may push some things in the direction they were already going. Like
more people working from home. But this is not likely going to fundamentally
change the world. Not any more so than the twin towers attack or the 2008
crash. Little changes to a massive system.

~~~
steveeq1
What about hyperinflation?

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DennisP
Inflation, sure, but hyperinflation mainly happens in countries that have to
borrow foreign currencies. That was the case for Weimar Germany, for example.
If you can sell bonds in your own currency you're much better off.

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gregw134
Could you explain more, or provide a link?

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DennisP
Let's say your currency is marks and you owe dollars to foreign investors. You
have trouble paying so you print more marks. The marks devalue relative to
your debt, making it even harder to pay off, requiring even more printing.

Now say your currency is dollars and you owe debt in dollars. If you print
more dollars, they devalue, but the value of your debt goes down right along
with your currency. It's bad for the lenders and you might have to promise
more interest to borrow more, but you don't spiral into oblivion just trying
to pay off your existing debt.

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H8crilA
I truly don't understand why so many people think it will be a V-shaped
recovery. It certainly can happen (everything can), but have they looked at
the data? Nobody alive has ever seen this kind of volatility in the
"fundamentals", and not just in some of them - in all of them. Literally,
doesn't matter what you look at, as long as it has a fresh enough measurement.

Social and political volatility is not here yet, but the potential is _huge_.

Financial volatility is currently hiding / being suppressed, but again, the
potential is _massive_. I'm not just talking about a normal white swan like a
stock market drop - I'm talking about the "true black swans", like a potential
collapse of the current iteration of the concept of money.

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meheleventyone
I think it’s hard to understand for a lot of people. I know it is for me. If
you’re cooped up at home, working remotely but basically normally and haven’t
really been impacted by things so far other than the inconvenience it’s pretty
easy to expect things will just go back to normal. All the local indicators
aren’t visible and the news slips into this comfortably surreal space where
there is a dream like dissonance between life and the reality outside our own
homes.

~~~
netsharc
Your comment got me thinking, there must be a lot of anxious people out there,
out without a job and/or worried about dying. At least where I live the social
system is very robust (here's hoping my judgement is right), so there should
be less of said anxiety; in India there are millions of day workers who had
zero savings before the crisis and are now jobless and homeless, and unable to
travel to their hometowns because the train network is shutdown. A week or two
more of the shutdown and there will probably be riots there.

Elsewhere, anxiety will lead to bad behaviors and crimes...

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zobzu
Some people have a lot to gain from changes like these and want the changes to
be socially accepted through conditioning. In general it's worse for the
general population. This can include things like swapping the USD for another
money, extreme inflation, travel bans, additional tracking of your actions and
movement, new taxes, etc.

See past wars, 9-11, etc.

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Mountain_Skies
What's normal changes all the time. The pandemic certainly will accelerate
some changes and move other changes in a new direction but modern society
doesn't stand still anyway. Normal just doesn't stay normal very long anymore.

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lz400
The coronavirus crisis seems to be an excuse for pundits to peddle all sorts
of wild clickbaity speculation. I hope that after all this is over we go back
and tell people look at all the silliness you wrote, look at all the
opportunistic political angling you did here on no evidence, look at how
contradictory you were under pressure, etc, etc.

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lihaciudaniel
See you guys in 2022 July

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jrockway
I don't really believe this. There was a "back to normal" after 20% of the
human race died off in the Spanish Flu pandemic, and we're not going to lose
20% this time.

I've thought about this a lot and I think once things are safer (everyone got
it, there's a vaccine, whatever), people are going to go back to normal.
People are dying to eat at a restaurant. They have watched 100s of hours of
travel vlogs and want to visit the places they've learned about while locked
inside.

I guess I'll pick apart each "technology" point this article makes:

> Working from home

I think employers are probably seeing a massive drop-off in productivity with
everyone at home, and are probably going to want to go back to normal. They
have 10 year leases and probably want to get some value out of that.

> Telemedicine and online learning

Telemedicine has been pushed aggressively on me through my insurance plan.
I've never used it; I never have those problems where I just need to see a
doctor to get drugs. I either have a cold and there's nothing they can do, or
I have to go in to get allergy shots. I don't see telemedicine helping me much
there. (I suppose if someone mailed me a flu shot, I could do it myself,
though.)

> Regulatory barriers to online tools will fall

I think things are going in the opposite direction. See the "EARN IT Act".

> Cyber-crime will increase.

I doubt it. More and more tools are becoming available to make systems easier
to secure. You get mTLS for free with GKE, and languages and libraries are
getting better. TLS certificates have never been easier to get. Browsers have
never been more likely to drop shady CAs. Even governments have a hard time
intercepting traffic for criminal investigations. Things are far from perfect,
but they're getting better. A bunch of people with the flu doesn't change
that.

> VR tools will flourish

Maybe, maybe not. VR tools are expensive, and nobody's going to spend a
million dollars on a house after seeing a photoshopped virtual tour. They are
going to show up in person before writing the check. It might not be possible
to buy a house in person at this exact instant, but someday it will be.

Meanwhile, people seem to be enjoying Beat Saber -- COVID or not.

> Collective intelligence and open science.

No idea whether anything changes here. Arxiv exited before the pandemic, and
will exist after the pandemic.

> Interest in digital trust will increase

Yeah probably. This is why people use Facebook Messenger instead of Email.
Less spam, because you can ban accounts. Again, I don't see a connection to
COVID-19 here.

> The trend towards online shopping has hugely accelerated.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've gone to a store to buy
something in the last decade. The trend is already here. (I do love things
like B&H and Microcenter for same-day purchases, but I have never walked into
B&H just to browse. The only thing I know about that store is where to pick up
my online order.)

> Food security concerns will prompt increased interest in AgTech.

Maybe. I went grocery shopping today and everything seemed normal. I managed
to get meat, frozen pizzas, and bread that isn't hot dog buns for the first
time since the outbreak. Will some computer program improve this situation?
Maybe?

> More people will surrender personal data to help the common good.

They already surrender it to help random tech companies. 2020 is a census year
and everyone is mailing in their personal information to the government. (They
did it in 2010, and 2000, and 1990, and 1980, and...) Don't see a big change
here.

> "AI is reinventing the way we invent"

Yes, fund my startup, we use "AI". Totally new idea, all due to the pandemic.

> We are seeing an increase in 'frugal innovation'.

People have been hacking together industrial equipment on the cheap pretty
much forever. You can find articles on how to build your own CNC mill, atomic
clock, single-board computer... whatever you want. This is nothing new. (Prusa
sure did a good job marketing the whole "we printed out some curved pieces of
plastic". But people have been making neat things with 3D printers for quite a
while.)

TL;DR: I regret reading clicking this link and I regret replying to this
drivel. But it's too late, so now I'm clicking "add comment".

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triceratops
> 20% of the human race died off in the Spanish Flu pandemic

The most generous estimate for the 1918 flu death toll is 100 million, which
is 5% of the population. Still massive, but not 20%.[1]

Perhaps you're confusing it with the % of the population that contracted it?

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu)

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shorts_theory
Great article. Sums up many of my concerns about the post-COVID19 world.

