The current social and economic pause that the COVID-19 public health emergency is forcing upon us, is offering a great opportunity to slow down, catch our breath and take stock of our new digital world, which has been racing ahead for the last 20 years, in the wake of the latest technological revolution.

Indeed, time seems to be running faster and faster since the year 2000, the door to the new millennium, despite all the computer tools and countless “apps” that are supposed to make our daily lives easier, if not better.

In fact, the digital revolution is shaking up our social and economic worlds, very much the same way that the industrial revolution and the agricultural revolution had turned people’s lives upside down.

In short, in 2020, our contemporary societies have not yet adapted to the new World 3.0. born out of the digital revolution.

Yet, all the while, human beings have been forced to plunge into the whirlwind of this new emerging world, having to adjust their ways of life without help or guardrails.

The personal computer

Indeed, it has barely been 40 years since the personal computer turbocharged the digital revolution, in the 1980s. Then, the widespread public access to the Internet in 1993, with the World Wide Web (“the web”), boosted the already rushing technological change, leading to the emergence of our current world 3.0.

For instance, it was only back in 1976 that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded the private company Apple, after tinkering their Apple I compact computer in Steve Jobs' garage.

A year before, Bill Gates and Paul Allen launched Microsoft, in 1975, after designing a software to run the first personal computer.

Ten years later, in 1985, they released their MS-DOS operating system, installed on the first IBM personal computers (that were launched in 1981.)

That’s 35 years ago or a blink of an eye. Since then, waves of socio-economic changes have been unfurling in our daily lives and disrupting our worlds like a roaring tsunami would ravage through a seaside village. (See sidebar 3.0.)

The steam engine

This world 3.0 arising out of the digital revolution is built onto the world 2.0, born out of the industrial revolution 200 years earlier. 

Back then, the steam engine gave rise to the factories and triggered a major migration of population from the countryside to cities, which in turn generated air and water pollution, ultimately bringing the first public health hygiene measures in the urban environment.

Steamboats increased international trade, which contributed to the spread of cholera pandemics. Meanwhile, higher food production induced an explosion of the world's population.

In short, demography, economics, urban habitat, public health, ecology, geopolitics, language even: 200 years ago, the James Watt’s technological innovation of the steam engine turned life completely upside down, giving rise to our world 2.0. (See side bar 2.0.)

Agriculture: a socio-economic revolution

Before that, 12,000 years earlier, the domestication of plants, of animals and irrigation techniques fundamentally transformed humans’ life. Our nomadic ancestors became sedentary, discovered the concept of ownership, the specialization of labour and social hierarchy.

Better nutrition also contributed to a slow, gradual population increase, while agricultural practices reshaped ecosystems. Ecological crises ensued, leading in some instances to the collapse of agrarian civilizations, as witnessed in Mesopotamia. (See sidebar 1.0.)

Technology and society 

Each of these three major technological revolutions (let’s not forget the mastery of fire, way earlier) has generated profound social, economic, ecological and geopolitical changes.

Yet, the transition from one lifestyle to the next did not happen overnight. So the pressure of change weighed first and foremost on the daily life of humans. Several generations were hit by the full force of these socio-economic upheavals bulldozing through the old ways of living.

In other words, average men and women and their families had to adapt to the changing world of work before society could react and modernize the rules of the game.

Our most recent innovation, the digital technology (named after the digits 1 and 0 that make up the language of computers) only dates back 30 or 40 years. Yet it has already altered significantly the lives of humans, while also magnifying certain existing imbalances.

Rethinking our world 3.0

So the current slowdown following the lockdown imposed in order to curb the public health crisis due to COVID-19 could be an opportunity to catch our breath and take a look back at the last few decades of our budding world 3.0, born out of the euphoria of the digital revolution and speeding up since the dawn of the new millennium.

Interestingly, the rapid spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide was mainly due to the rise of global transportation, manifold over the last 20 years (since the SARS-CoV-1 epidemic in 2003 for instance), thanks, in part, to digital tools. 

Very much like two hundred years ago, the cholera epidemics in London or Paris in the 1850s were after all a consequence of the industrial revolution. These public health emergencies led (in part) to rethinking and improving the then emerging world 2.0.

What if the COVID-19 public health crisis were to do the same for our emerging digital World 3.0?

World 3.5 or 4.0?

Indeed, what if this pandemic was a unique opportunity to take stock of our emerging world 3.0? While the next version 4.0 is already peaking through with the advent of artificial intelligence. For instance, the risk of the SARS-CoV-2 virus had been flagged as early as December 31, 2019 by a smart health surveillance system.

After all, to rethink means “to reconsider” or “to reassess”, and simply: “to think again about (something such as a policy or course of action), especially in order to make changes to it.”