You are now living in your own future!

I’ve entered the future; a place where I am dependent on the Technojungle to support my life. If it fails me, I wonder if I can survive. My life is a vast complexity of technology I could never have imagined when I was younger. I get used to the constant changes in the ways I live my busy daily life. But, what is really happening to me? Where am I going? How human am I if I am so reliant on the Technojungle? I like the Technojungle, yet a huge part of me is concerned about what is happening to me, to us, to our world. It seems that so many corporate technobeasts have incredible access and influence over my life. There is so much to know and understand, but knowing and understanding who we are and where we are heading is difficult. Then came the pandemic!

You won’t be prepared to read this book if you have not yet read book one called, The Future Never Arrives… at least not as expected, and it always brings baggage. This is book two of a beginners tour of our technology dominated lives and world through my experiences and observations. This can also be your tour, that is if you participate in the safari of this book and your own safaris. I’m calling it, The Future Always Arrives…

In this book, we pick up where we left off in book one—literally. I originally had one book, however, it became too large, so I split it. We are still on our safari and we shall now go a bit deeper into the Technojungle.

The great Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic hit while I was doing some final editing of book one. I managed to fit a few points in as they related to the pandemic. As I now edit book two, the pandemic is still raging across the world in a second wave, or first wave that never ended. Thus I can fill additional points in as I go.

The pandemic itself has seemed like a safari through a jungle—a safari with no prepared guide and a jungle that is growing even faster than the Technojungle. But how does the Technojungle fit in to the pandemic story? Let’s set the stage with an overview.

In the beginning we heard of a respiratory flu-like illness in Wuhan China. A metropolis of 11 million people the world had hardly heard of, or paid much attention to. We were told the outbreak began at a wet market where live animals were sold for food. In a matter of weeks the city, the market, and the illness were all famous.

As the weeks passed, the virus spread across the globe at an unpredictable and unprecedented rate by people who managed to travel before travel lock-downs. The illness was determined to be caused by a Novel Coronavirus similar to SARS-CoV. It was thus called SARS-CoV-2 and the public came to know the illness it caused as COVID-19. Travellers were required to self-quarantine and everyone else had to self-isolate and social distance keeping at least two meters apart. Care homes of the elderly were severely hit. Hospitals cancelled all elective surgeries and prepared for an inevitable tsunami of COVID-19 patients. Many hospitals ended up triaging who to treat and who to let die.

Governments stepped in to help people who could not work due to confinement while frontline workers, such as medical, grocery, and supply chain workers, attempted to keep necessities flowing. Panic buying emptied shelves of usually common, but extremely necessary items. Personal protective equipment (PPE) became impossible to find. Toilet paper disappeared overnight.

Early on in the pandemic, I was sent to Costco for groceries, and particularly, toilet paper. I had to line up all the way to behind the huge store warehouse, keeping two meters (six feet) away from anyone else. When I finally got to the door, I found I was entering a mad dash race down one side aisle where two people were allowing only one package from a choice of two makes—and the one we normally would get was nowhere to be found. People were running to the toilet paper.

Streets emptied and stores, restaurants, coffee shops, schools, businesses all closed as people were told to confine themselves to home in self-isolation. Travellers and anyone suspecting they might be infected were told to Self-quarantine. Soon people were wearing face masks to go out. Governments stepped in with stimulus and financial support packages, but businesses still found, if they could not be viable through online commerce; cut back on their business, or closed their doors for good.

The online Technojungle became a lifeline and even a salvation of sorts.

How all this came about is of great debate depending on your views. The initial story stated that the virus made a zoonotic jump from bats to humans, perhaps through an intermediary such as Pangolins, or a cat-like mammal called a civet. The wet market was soon viewed by many people as not the origin and eyes turned to other possibilities, including the Wuhan Virology Institute (WVI) nearby. The WVI is a relatively new BSL-4, the highest bio safety level, lab where virus research is done, including the Coronavirus. It seems they had been collecting bats to obtain the virus for experimentation. They experimented on monkeys and some thought they could get away with animal experiments that would not be approved of by western cultures.

As the months passed, experts changed their minds about what to do. Face masks, quickly adopted by the Chinese people and showed success, were initially deemed unnecessary. Experts discovered that the distance the virus can travel in the air is far greater than originally expected. As the mainstream media and medical advice was altered, so called conspiracy theories made plausible claims as to the true nature of the calamity. To me it seemed necessary to keep my eyes on both sides of the coin. With some digging, many possibilities emerged. There was certainly plenty of confusion. Could some truths or realities be getting skewed, or discredited to cover up some larger plans? There is definitely more going on than what is being presented.

It is interesting to me that I actually read about experiments showing that the virus primarily spreads through water droplets from the mouth, however, if the droplets are not large enough to fall to the ground immediately, they can remain in the air long enough for the moisture to evaporate and leave the virus in an aerosol state where it can float in the breeze for some time. I read about this a couple of months prior to a paper from over 200 doctors demanding that the WHO (World Health Organization) change how it describes the characteristics of the virus. I read this in the mainstream media which shows that, if you read enough in mainstream media, you can find important information that contradicts what experts and governments are stating. I also recommend reading alternate sources as well.

I’m not going to promote what might be construed as conspiracy theories. I leave it up to you to safari through what is happening in our world.

By the time you read this, you may have chosen to have the vaccine. You may be living in an even more surveilled world than I ever imagined when I embarked on these books. To manage the spread of viruses requires that people be monitored. If you have not been vaccinated, you may find some restrictions levelled on your life and what you can do.

How does the Technojungle play into the pandemic picture? Many of the ways may seem quite evident, however, there is always more—even the unexpected. I urge you to dig deeper below the surface. The Technojungle is everywhere in the pandemic. While this is not a book about the pandemic, the pandemic has become an important aspect of the book. What I wrote prior to the pandemic has become ever more important and relevant.

How do technology corporations, governments, and other actors, control and manipulate your life? How has this changed due to the pandemic? Can you take back control of your life somehow? How can you be prepared for the future? Do you feel prepared for the future? What would help you to feel more prepared? These, like many questions I ask, may be impossible to answer fully and completely. Still, I encourage you to consider them, if only for a few moments.

We are all hurling as a rocket into the future. Are you feeling in control? Do you have a grasp of what to expect? When the unexpected comes along, such as a pandemic, do you feel pushed to the edge of what you can cope with? Are you comfortable with your options? Can you unpack any of the baggage? What do you find?

Always remember, The Future Never Arrives—at least not as expected, and it always brings baggage. Be prepared!

The pandemic is a war. We are told it is a war with the enemy being the Coronavirus. This will not be the last virus. This will not be the last war. But one thing that is sure about modern warfare, it takes technology to fight it and technology always advances as a result of war. Lives are never quite the same afterwards.

It is more important than ever to keep your eyes on what it means for you, and all people, to be human by being informed and learning how we can redeem and reclaim that which we may have lost, retain and maintain what we have today, and protect our humanness and humanity in the future by being human beings and living in a world of technology—the Technojungle.

Remember that the future, particularly following a war, will never arrive as expected. It will definitely bring baggage. The future is now. Now is the time to act. Are we, are you prepared? Be prepared!