Page 128 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

Now that information and communication technologies
permeate almost every aspect of our lives and forms of social

participation, any digital experience that we have can be turned
into a “product” destined to monitor and anticipate our behaviour.
The risk of possible dystopia stems from this observation. Over
the past few years, it has nourished countless works of arts,

ranging from novels like The Handmaid’s Tale to the TV series
“Black Mirror”. In academia, it finds its expression in the research
undertaken by scholars like Shoshana Zuboff. Her book
Surveillance Capitalism warns about customers being reinvented

as data sources, with “surveillance capitalism” transforming our
economy, politics, society and our own lives by producing deeply
anti-democratic asymmetries of knowledge and the power that
accrues to knowledge.

Over the coming months and years, the trade-off between

public-health benefits and loss of privacy will be carefully weighed,
becoming the topic of many animated conversations and heated
debates. Most people, fearful of the danger posed by COVID-19,

will ask: Isn’t it foolish not to leverage the power of technology to
come to our rescue when we are victims of an outbreak and
facing a life-or-death kind of situation? They will then be willing to
give up a lot of privacy and will agree that in such circumstances
public power can rightfully override individual rights. Then, when

the crisis is over, some may realize that their country has
suddenly been transformed into a place where they no longer
wish to live. This thought process is nothing new. Over the last

few years, both governments and firms have been using
increasingly sophisticated technologies to monitor and sometimes
manipulate citizens and employees; if we are not vigilant, warn the
privacy advocates, the pandemic will mark an important

watershed in the history of surveillance. [127] The argument put
forward by those who above all fear the grip of technology on
personal freedom is plain and simple: in the name of public health,
some elements of personal privacy will be abandoned for the

benefit of containing an epidemic, just as the terrorist attacks of
9/11 triggered greater and permanent security in the name of
protecting public safety. Then, without realizing it, we will fall

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