Jane McGonigal is a video game designer who creates simulations to help gamers imagine the unthinkable.
In January 2020, when the coronavirus appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the world, the Jane McGonigal began receiving a barrage of emails from Silicon Valley executives, government officials and heads of NGOs. Everyone had the same question: Didn’t you do a simulation for a pandemic of a respiratory disease?
Indeed, he had done it 2010.
McGonigal is a video game designer. What it does is make simulations to help players imagine the unthinkable. And in 2010 it had invited nearly 20,000 people to imagine a future world surrendered to a global pandemic. “How would you change your habits?”he asked them. “What social contacts would you avoid?” “Can you do your work from home?”
A decade later, after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, many of the people involved in that simulation came into contact with it. “I am not afraid. “I already overcame the panic and anxiety when we imagined it, 10 years ago”, one of them wrote to her.
“Futurists love to look 10 years ahead because that gives us enough mental distance to think creatively.” So, Jane McGonigal was looking at the years 2019 and 2020. And then, the simulation focused around “How are we going to survive and adapt to a respiratory pandemic that started in China and is also complicated by a series of crises?”
“We were also thinking about how to survive and adapt when we have breaks in the supply chain, when misinformation and conspiracy theories about the pandemic are spreading on social media, when there are historical fires and extreme heat waves due to climate change. And that is exactly what we experienced in 2020. “he said.
What should we look out for now?
Governments that plug in the internet are a huge future trend that is spreading worldwide, he says. “If you are unaware of this phenomenon and you are not potentially ready to live for weeks or months without the internet, because the government has shut it down, this is something to think about.”he said.
Climate migration is something else. “We have to be willing to think about the dangers in the place where we live. Are we in a climate-safe and resilient place that will receive migrants from climate-unsafe areas? If so, we should be prepared to live in more densely populated conditions and welcome those who have been forcibly displaced. Are we emotionally ready for this? Are we financially ready for this? We also need to think about the path we will take to migrate, if necessary. “explained.
