In this accelerated world in which we live, everything begins to change when it has not yet been consolidated. Nothing has just grown, surely not even thought. Everything was going to be disruptive, but the cryptocurrency giant (FTX) suspends payments and sinks this market, Twitter is in crisis after the purchase of the social network by Elon Musk and has stopped the verification fee after the chaos caused by a storm boycott. And even Netflix is trying to survive after the unexpected drop in subscribers. The disruptive world is not what it was. Or, at least, as we had been told.
The new rich, after appearing in Forbes, begin to fall off the cliff. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, had a fortune of 22.5 billion dollars (or euros because they are worth the same today) at just 29 years old. Only Mark Zuckerberg had gotten higher sooner. But his loot has vanished in a few days. Zuckerberg also suffers: he has fired this week 11,000 employees of Meta (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp). It is the first cut in 18 years of history.
The disruptive world has put an end to cinema, the press, music and almost ruined restaurants, it has also changed the way we work, communicate and have fun. But it starts leaking. We had entered a new paradigm, where flexibility, critical thinking, permanent negotiation or collaboration were the new skills. But in this universe, the lie has confused the truth, hackers try to steal our wallets every day, the new money has turned out to be little more than Panini cards and social networks have messed up our planet, glorifying ignorance and discrediting knowledge.
We have gone from Enlightenment to disruption, when they should have coexisted. And worst of all, institutions have been weakened, particularly political ones, in the hands of people who have wrapped themselves in the populist toga to rule the Earth. And on top of that, the algorithm has told them how they could achieve it. But we must not lose faith even if it no longer moves mountains, because at least it causes small earthquakes like the one these days.
