Coronavirus on a beam balance

Some years ago I was visiting an exhibition in Pisa (Italy) about History of advertisement. There I saw for the first time the below poster by Radior, a London based company that started in 1917 marketing cosmetics containing Radium.

When Pierre and Marie Curie discovered Radium in 1898, the world was on the top of the industrial revolution and science was the cause of that bright achievement. Everything coming from science and technology was positive news, no one could even think about possible drawbacks. People where happy to buy radioactive cosmetics, “it can energize my skin!” could be one of their thought, I suppose.

Later on, during 20^th century unfolding, things have changed. People started to understand that technology positive achievements brings negative collateral effects with them, as Marie Curie experienced later on her investigation or as climate change showed clearly. But technology development did go on, and growth did not stop. If we put metaphorically negative and positive effects of technology on a beam balance, the deviation was still on the positive side.

Then Coronavirus (COVID-19) arrived, I don’t want to go through pandemic events but just to remind that the “nothing will ever be the same again” adagio reappeared, as in all occasion when history is making. Among many viral video circulating these days on social media, the interview of Luc Montagnier looks confirming that technology public  acceptance is on an historical turning point. Professor Montagnier supposes that 5G waves (Wuhan is one of the cities with more 5G antennas in the world) could have modified a harmless Coronavirus into the more dangerous Coronavirus. Of course I don't agree with this theory, but this thesis and its scientific accuracy is not the matter of this post. The point is that if those ideas go viral to common people it is because some of them consider them potentially true. Finally, the discrediting trend of technology comes full circle, the beam balance is definitely in the negative side if people feel that 5G could be the cause of the pandemic.

If this is the case, that’s a really new historical paradigm. People of the future could think: “why should we make effort to develop a new technology (or build a new factory) if this is creating more troubles than solutions?”.

Coronavirus and avalanches

“All breakdowns have certain characteristics in common: they are always collective phenomena, that is, they appear only in so-called complex systems, that is, in network structures of ‘nodes’ that are interconnected by links, a collapse is the rapid restructuring of a large number of such links." said Prof. Ugo Bardi. Put it simple, it is quite a common physical event, like snow avalanches or bursting balloons. Some invisible change in the snow is happening, but unseen change continues and then something abrupt happens, no longer invisible.

It can apply also to social structures. It is the case of revolutions, or wars. Nobody thinks that on July 13th 1789 people in Paris were all happy and the day after the Storming of the Bastille happened. It was more than a century that France state had financial problems and people were overtaxed (link in italian). Or, as we are all taught at school, it was not the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand itself starting the first world war: hate between European states was well present since decades before 1914.
So, coming to the main idea of this post, it is my opinion that Coronavirus (COVID-19) is an avalanche event like the ones just stressed. What’s the main feature of avalanches? It is that they do not change the ongoing trend, they just accelerate it. So, do not expect decreasing the impact of IT or the centralization of energy generation or a more equal society from an economical point of view. Those trends were present well before Coronavirus outbreak and they will just accelerate. No change of direction: have you ever seen a snow avalanches moving upward to the top of the mountain? The French aristocracy public acceptance was declining in the 18^th century and July 14th 1789 was just the start of bourgeoisie conquest of the world.Another important consideration, the avalanches itself it is not the preview of the future organization of the system. It is just the restructuring event. So, if during 1790’s people saw a lot of beheading by Guillotine, that was not the preview of the future situation. That was a temporary event paving the ground for bourgeoisie taking the lead instead of aristocracy. Coronavirus and social distancing will probably not be the common condition of the future (in one year of so a vaccine will arrive). But the disappearing of some industrial landscape of the 20^th century (energy and metal intense, assembly lines etc.) yes, probably yes. Heavy industrialization, welfare state, full employment, private car and many other aspects of the 20^th century already on the decreasing path will fade away. Science is at stake as well, unfortunately. Scientists already were not the most popular category some years ago. But now that people need some answers from virologist and the answers are not coming, well, that’s not going to increase popularity indeed.