A new edifice of the world economy cannot be built overnight, but, obviously, the process of its construction has already begun. We can see firsthand that although the current crisis has complicated international economic communication, at the same time it has awakened many new forces that are willing to seize the moment to take a better place in the global economy, writes Valdai Club Chairman Andrey Bystritskiy.
The modern world is trapped in a crisis, and the crisis is worsening. It is obvious that, in general, the general bitterness is growing; the fault lines between different parts of the world, states, and opposing forces are deepening. However, at the same time, the interdependence of countries upon one another has not gone away, and, in a certain sense, is even increasing.
So, the dimensions of the global crisis unfolding in recent years include an intellectual one: you need to understand what things depend on each other and how. Perhaps, by the way, this is the most important thing: after all, to resolve any difficult situation, you need not only the strength, or, for example, the will, but also the ability to foresee, to develop intelligent solutions in which it will be possible to look for ways to resolve even the most complicated situations. Whatever one may say, the main difference between a person and other living beings lies precisely in the ability to imagine, predict the future, and to come up with ways to achieve what you want, despite obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable.
I have written before that in many respects, the reasons for the current, very complex and dangerous state of affairs lie in the fact that over the past decades, if not centuries, interdependence in the modern world has been growing, while the ability to regulate this dependence has obviously lagged behind. Whatever sphere of life we explore, the connectedness of mankind increases everywhere. The most obvious sphere, in my opinion, is communications. Incredible communication platforms have grown before our eyes, powerful social networks have appeared; people have massively plunged into the waves of a raging information ocean, in which confident navigation has turned out to be impossible. The technological revolution has overcome national, state, religious, and in general any borders and unambiguously raised the question of the ability of mankind to regulate this sphere, to develop some kind of rules that can be followed throughout the world. Alas, so far, the results of various attempts to develop the rules and regulations are, to put it mildly, extremely sad. The rules did not emerge. Nation states faced a difficult choice of necessary measures to protect the national information space, ways to provide the population with reliable information about what is happening.
The communication sphere is the most important in people’s lives, since it creates sociality, that is, a space in which people can act as they want. For example, they can love, choose a profession, achieve success, and so on. It is clear that the economy — and it has always been, in fact, a material form of communication between people — is highly connected with communication, with the interdependence in which the world is immersed. Accordingly, the immersion of the entire communication sphere in the digital environment has had the most decisive impact on the situation in the global economy.
To a certain extent, imperceptibly we found ourselves in a world of various apocalyptic forecasts. Digital slavery has arrived. The manipulation of data, including personal data, has become common practice. Even the notorious cryptocurrencies were “under surveillance”. Why this happened is a separate question.