I hope that is the direction we are heading, since the other reality (of coronaviruses always having been around) seems to be off the table for them, or rather never been an option in the first place. There are some realistic mainstream articles popping up here and there in the German mainstream throughout the whole last months, but it gets drowned out from the sheer mass of propaganda. The way our German politicians are talking about it is still nowhere near the sound of the WSJ article, it tends to go even more in the opposite direction.
But it still leaves a bitter aftertaste that the better alternative is basically what they have been planing for in the first place:
https://norberthaering.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Scenarios-for-the-Future-ofTechnology-and-International-Development.pdf
Technological innovation in “Lock Step” is largely driven by government and is focused on issues of national security and health and safety. Most technological improvements are created by and for developed countries, shaped by governments’ dual desire to control and to monitor their citizens. In states with poor governance, large-scale projects that fail to progress abound. Technology trends and applications we might see:
- Scanners using advanced functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology become the norm at airports and other public areas to detect abnormal behavior that may indicate “antisocial intent.”
- In the aftermath of pandemic scares, smarter packaging for food and beverages is applied first by big companies and producers in a business-to-business environment, and then adopted for individual products and consumers.
- New diagnostics are developed to detect communicable diseases. The application of health screening also changes; screening becomes a prerequisite for release from a hospital or prison, successfully slowing the spread of many diseases.
- Tele-presence technologies respond to the demand for less expensive, lowerbandwidth, sophisticated communications systems for populations whose travel is restricted.
- Driven by protectionism and national security concerns, nations create their own independent, regionally defined IT networks, mimicking China’s firewalls. Governments have varying degrees of success in policing internet traffic, but these efforts nevertheless fracture the “World Wide” Web.
I just don't understand what is the endgame on this. If the lockdowns continue and economies are destroyed, and people are out of a job, where is the money to feed them going to come from??? UBI is not really possible without a working population to at least partially fund it.