Will COVID-19 reset the internet?

I read this article by Peter Wehner in The Atlantic the other day identifying COVID-19 (a.k.a. Coronavirus) as the beginning of the end for the Trump Presidency.

Wehner believes that Trump and his Administration are uniquely unprepared to deal with a pandemic disease threat like the Coronavirus and he may be right, but there is way more at stake right now at this precise moment in history.

Everything is at stake. It’s all blowing up right now in front of our eyes. It’s over.

This Coronavirus pandemic is the big reset button.

The President of the United States intentionally lies about the virus only to back track spectacularly and ban all travel from Europe for 30 days. If Wehner is right, Coronavirus will rid the world of Trump.

But China hides the numbers, Iran hides the numbers, everybody  hides the numbers so the current political power structure itself is at risk. When power destabilizes, the world freaks out.

People panic and start stockpiling everything. People fight over toilet paper. It’s all on social media and television 24 hours per day.

While consumers are fighting in the line up at Walmart, the world economy is quickly falling over the edge into the biggest recession since 1987, maybe the biggest recession ever.

There is a very real possibility that the airline industry goes bankrupt. As well as the cruise industry, hotels, tour companies. All the people who clean, fill and operate all the above industries could lose their jobs.

No sports. No concerts.

Everybody a meter apart.

While our leaders isolate and the planes stop flying, the world gets a brief respite from a looming global climate change catastrophe that has you convinced that we are all screwed anyways.

Everything stops. The Coronavirus is like a zombie apocalypse. Or maybe it is just a more virulent version of the common flu? It’s often hard to know with so much misinformation on social media, where most people get their news.

BOOM! The world economy goes BOOM!

Billions lose their jobs. Millions of companies are lost. Those that survive are hanging on by their fingernails.

A year from now some guy sneezes somewhere, and it starts all over again.

BOOM!

There is no media spin for a pandemic so we’ll never know the real truth in time to save the current world order because we cannot trust the messages we are receiving over the Internet nowadays.

This Coronavirus infodemic on social media has really shown how completely in control of your digital life Big Tech really is. Social media spreads the outrage and panic because outrage and panic are good for business. It is despicable and we can’t trust them. At a technical level, they can’t be “fixed”.

WIRED’s Steven Levy bemoans the selective application of misinformation controls and dreams of a future where content could be easily verified by users. The application of the “rules” on social media are up to a few rich individuals making a lot of personal wealth over the spread of misinformation.

BOOM!

It’s awfully depressing but it is also an opportunity. It’s a reset button on politics, the economy and the Internet. We could reset the political order and vote with our conscience, making climate change and equality key issues.

We could reset the world’s economy back to something more globally focused on things like cooperation towards common goals for the planet, not just strategic goals competed over by countries.

The Internet is also going to have to change too if we are going to reset the Digital World Order.

And what about you?  What can you do to take this golden opportunity to reset your digital self? Why not just walk away?

Unplug yourself from all the outrage and garbage and reset your digital self. Start a new digital life on a new network that you own.  A network where everyone is real and has a real, persona, including business, universities and governments

Build new relationships on a blockchain and establish your self-sovereign identity on a new decentralised Internet owned by real people.

Relationships on the blockchain are the future, join us!