Mar 23, 2020
The Future Has Arrived
It’s strange to say it: “I have been preparing for this moment my entire life.” And I know I am not the only one.
I suppose humanity is never truly prepared for wars, natural disasters or epidemics, partly because we don’t ever want them to come. It might be naive or unfair to think that we are particularly ill-prepared — because of corrupt systems and questionable leaders — for the COVID-19 pandemic currently wreaking havoc around the world. But in my mind the most important message is that so many of us have been expecting it — not specifically the arrival of the Coronavirus, but the catalyst for a significant inflection point that, to a large extent, will alter the trajectory of the 21st century.
This is a history-defining moment. The future has arrived a bit earlier than most would like to believe. That means for us future architects, a clear and urgent design brief has just landed on our laps.
We are seeing scary projections: In one of the worst-case scenarios, if ~75% of Americans get infected and 4% die, that’s 10 million deaths, or around 25 times the number of U.S. deaths in World War II. If China, Italy and the U.S. are scrambling to meet required healthcare capacity, what will happen when the virus makes its way to places with less developed healthcare systems?
In my attempt to understand the threat, I have been compulsively analyzing WHO and CDC data in real time, reading countless articles, speaking to public health experts and checking in with hospitals and community organizers. While I can speak cogently about what seems at the moment to be the most effective solution — coordinating a difficult balance between comprehensive testing, strict social distancing, and increasing healthcare capacity — the truth is that nobody knows what’s going to happen. We can make the most scientifically reliable projections, but we cannot control human behaviors, especially when panic is involved in navigating intricate interdependent systems. Any uptick in the fear of the unknown could send us into collective denial and paralysis.
As the world wakes up to the necessity to enforce extreme measures of social distancing, we are witnessing an unprecedented global shutdown. While recessions loom, we are also finding a major drop in carbon emissions due to dramatically decreased travel. What does all this tell us? We CAN change our behaviors; we CAN change our systems. The question is what motivates us to change.
We have been forced to change because millions of us could perish within months, but such forced change comes with the hope to return to “normal.” Worse yet, we may want to slam our foot on the gas even more to make up for the loss based on a capitalist mindset. The privileged still want to preserve structural inequality, while the vulnerable continue to struggle with or without the threat of the pandemic. Jeff Bezos will likely not only recover from temporary economic loss but emerge as a bigger winner, seeing no reason to change.
Where is our imagination? Is this not the perfect moment to reorient and reorganize ourselves? Do we really need the climate to collapse and exponential technology to control our destiny before we realize it’s too late?
Yes, I am seeing beautiful human spirits as I watch Instagram explode with Italians singing on their balconies and volunteers delivering food to those in need. I am seeing innovative responses including entrepreneurs 3D-printing ventilators and alcohol distillers stepping up to make hand sanitizer. I am also heartened by swift policy changes in the U.S., such as telemedicine now being covered by Medicare and doctors being allowed to treat patients across state lines.
But there are bigger questions: how will we establish a new normal that’s fundamentally more just and equitable? What will motivate us to see this crisis as an opportunity for transformation?
Of course, we are all worried about our own health and the safety of our loved ones. We are frightened that we don’t have a big enough nest egg to weather this storm. Frankly, we are not even sure if we can endure the social isolation without losing our minds. We hate all the unknowns, the ambiguity and the endless headlines reporting rising death tolls, steep drops in the stock markets and inadequate government responses. The bottom line is, we don’t know how to handle this, physically, mentally and emotionally. We have entered into a collective liminal phase, a sacred time for our collective rite of passage — a spiritual awakening powered by radical imagination.
My fellow future architects, the future is now. We cannot and should not neglect our human responsibility to help mitigate the most urgent threats. AND we must rise to the occasion to honor our calling: design with a long view; design through the lens of co-creation; design to fundamentally change culture and achieve shared prosperity; design for thriving interdependence, beauty and transcendence. We can help to put out the raging fire, but what we are really meant to do is to help humanity not set itself on fire again.
Let 2020 be the stress test. Let this decade be our rigorous prototyping process; let the next 100 years be the transformation we seek. We WILL usher in a more beautiful world for more people. This pandemic just gave us hope.
