The Digital Civilizations Interviews

Downwards

With his sometimes annoying «I told you so» attitude, Al Gore had no difficulty in winning the November 2012 presidential election in the U.S. He had more trouble in achieving anything of substance. Everybody was scrambling for his or her survival. Pension systems where crumbling down all over the western world, forcing radical changes in pension schemes: Full retirement age moved up to 70, sometimes 75; in some countries, the very idea of «full retirement» disappeared; family solidarity was strongly encouraged and sometimes made mandatory. Seizing the occasion, 40 «Least advanced countries« officially and simultaneously let it be understood that their foreign debt would not be honoured. Insurance companies revised their policies to exclude most climate-related risks. Border were closed tighter than ever in the West and Asia, effectively maintaining economic migrants and the growing number of refugees displaced by ecological catastrophes or local conflicts over natural resources in a permanent no-man's land.

Diplomatic relationships chilled notably among most countries. Multilateral diplomacy was entirely replaced by bilateral agreements dictated by the need for securing markets and energy supply channels.

Faced with tough and unforeseen budget problems, countries cut down on all non-essential spending, and even on some core activities such as education or R&D. Corporations did the same. Venture capital disappeared, except perhaps in the core of the Silicon Valley. R&D and innovation became almost clandestine activities, although they never ceased to take place.

A few hacktivists felt it their duty to protect the free flow of ideas that was such an important part of the pre-2012 era. On top of the physical and heavily controlled Internet, they set up an encrypted, dynamic virtual network which came to be called the Altronet. The Altronet successfully resisted a number of official and not-so-official attacks and then almost seemed to be left alone, perhaps because authorities and bad guys alike knew that it filled a gap and that they could use it for their own purposes as well. By 2020, most Internet users were de facto Altronet users.