The Digital Civilizations Interviews

So we grew. India vowed that the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games would be even grander than Beijing, to which China responded by pumping more money into the Shanghai 2010 World Expo. The oil barrel hit $150, then $200, and that hurt, although not so much: There was plenty of money and besides, the careful planners knew there were always a few weeks each year when prices went sharply down, despite the clear upwards trend.

In many ways, we felt that global warming and the shortage of exhaustible resources such as oil and water would go away. We would discover inexhaustible energy sources, we would become able to control climate or recapture the CO2. Besides, we bought hybrid cars, we have 2 or 3 garbage cans for recycling, we almost gladly paid new taxes for our fuel and air travel, we videoconferenced a little, we worked from home most Fridays – enough, then, to let us feel entitled to oppose the wind turbine that would ruin the view from the back of our country house.

These were fun times, really. Until it hit us.

Rupture

It started on an Olympic year as well, 2012. In May, a skirmish between China's and the U.S. Navies over two supertankers that both countries wanted in their own ports, illustrated how depleted oil inventories were. This alone triggered a chain of events that sent oil prices to the roof, grounded 40% of UPS and Delta airplanes, caused several factories to shut down until oil supplies were regular again and led whole cities to forbid climatization despite the hot summers. Then, despite – or perhaps thanks to – the massive deployment of security and surveillance technology, 3 deadly and really cunning terrorist attacks created havoc just before the last day of London's Olympics. First, Wembley stadium's safety system was highjacked during the football final, and use to create panic while all doors were closed, electric fences were on and contradictory announcements were made. The second attack was biological, in the closed stadium where gymnastics took place. Meanwhile, a distributed denial of service attack disabled the city's communication networks, surveillance nodes and sensors as well as all geo-located information services, effectively preventing all kind of timely reaction.

At the end of August, an unusually stormy rainy season in the Gulf of Bengal resulted in flooding the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, killing and displacing millions of Bengalis and effectively destroying most of Bangladesh's infrastructure. But the rest of the world was so caught up in its own problems that, after the initial mobilization of media, NGOs and military assistance, solidarity was truly minimal.

These events had devastating ripple effects. Stock markets tumbled, of course. Air travel was hit hard, first by fear of other attacks and by security measures that made boarding planes a living hell and created total unpredictability in schedules, second by the price of fuel and last, by government air traffic restrictions. Heavy in debt due to their liberal purchase of new aircraft, several airlines filed for bankruptcy. Airbus only survived this blow by operating some of its own airplanes while finally agreeing for a 30% Russian investment. Public trust was shattered, savings went up, consumption, construction and investment plummeted. Security agencies at last succeeded in regulating the Internet, allowing national – and de facto U.S. – control over most of what circulated on the Net. In 2013, the world economy decreased by 2% and international trade by 22%.