The search for a compass that allows us to orient ourselves on the map of a new frontier between order and disorder has revelata even more difficult than expected. The failure of globalisation, at least in the forms we have become used to knowing it, was analyzed in detail in the latest edition of the Trento Festival of Economics, the one held from 2 to 5 June 2022. Now it is a question of going further. The war in Ukraine, which apart from the bombing of Serbia was the first real armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War, has left its mark and lacerations which will not be easy to remedy. And the winds of war are blowing around the world. In particular, the real sword of Damocles, the one that must arouse the greatest concern, is the case of Taiwan, considered by China to be an integral part of the People’s Republic.
Pendulum between West and East
In these scenarios, which can easily become dramatic, the pendulum of power swings between East and West. A West full of contradictions and in search of new values after the decline of ideologies, from sustainability to the circular economy to gender equality. And an East that seeks to impose itself on the thrust of autocracies, apparently much more solid than quarrelsome and too often powerless democracies but very similar to giants with feet of clay, undermined at their base by the unknowns of dormant peoples, which history teaches can transform themselves in popular uprisings with a disruptive force. The need is to look beyond current events to give everyday choices a perspective that goes beyond the daily emergency.
New paradigms for industry, services, and territory
We need to imagine a better future, a necessary prerequisite for knowing how to build it. The preliminary step is to increase awareness of choices that are already being made, without the necessary awareness, dragged by the succession of events. A river in flood for over 30 years, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the exit of the Internet from the confines of the military industry, where it was born way back in 1969, on the initiative of the United States Department of Defense. But it is easy to foresee even more disruptive changes which, moreover, are already underway. Even if, overshadowed by everyday life, we don’t realize it or we only partially realize it. On the contrary, a future awaits us in which life for all of us will be radically different.
It is an illusion, for example, to think that having defeated Covid-19, which has not yet been definitively defeated, pandemics represent a closed chapter. It won’t be like this. And it is better to try not to be caught unprepared once again. After all, all of medicine is at the center of a revolution that sees artificial intelligence and robotics, in this case nanorobotics, as protagonists. The same protagonists who will set new paradigms in industry, services, organization of the territory, starting from the cities.
Rediscover a system of values
The future of the future, as the title of the 2023 edition of the Festival of Economics suggests, passes through the challenges of a new world: first of all, climate change and energy transition. But also the need to bring the public debt of the states under control, to beat inflation, to avoid recession. The scale of the coming revolutions transcends the boundaries of both the imagination and the earth. And in fact one of the most fascinating chapters is the economy of space, with the return to the moon and private entrepreneurs as protagonists together with the States. Certainly, to be successful, it is necessary to rediscover a system of values swept away by consumerism and nationalism in their most obtuse version. With the ability to put sustainability, circular economy, inclusion and gender equality first.