Mistrust over the Davos project to reset the world and increasing doubts over whether health authorities fully anticipated the consequences of the anti-Covid MRNA vaccines have dismayed the proponents of governance. Are we facing an era of disorder or just learning to cope with uncertainty?
The era of a unified narrative is probably over, felled not so much by the emergence of conspiracies so much as the explosion of information. There are likely to be multiple narratives going forward, some of which may predominate but rarely as absolutely as before.
The knowledge explosion probably means that going forward, grants of institutional authority and expertise should be renewed more frequently. Shorter term, evolving responses may prove more useful than multi decade projects.
For every answer we pry out of God or Reality if you prefer, we get multiple questions. The Reversopedia grows faster than the Encyclopedia. Our great gains are in Known Unknowns more than in Known Knowns. The institutional challenge of the coming decades is how to govern in a world dominated by the Reversopedia.
The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee. The book tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new humans. Told in six parts, it is panoramic but is also intimate, laced with Mukherjee’s own experience as a researcher, doctor and prolific reader.
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power by Daniel Yergin. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Prize recounts the panoramic history of the world’s most important resource – oil, the struggle for wealth and power that has surrounded it for decades and that continues to fuel global rivalries, shake the world economy, and transform the destiny of men and nations.