Friday, January 2, 2015

MAN OF THE YEAR 2014: MY CHOICE.

Everybody (it seems) has his/her man/woman of the year.  Some choices are predictable, others are absurd.  It is normal that the Pope, President Putin and others were chosen.  I, personally, would have gone for Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.

Actually, the choice should be less about the individual than what he stands for.  He is the torch carrier for a new transformational era. Today we are mostly victims of an infantile trend. Tim Cook and his peers stand for a break with those habits and values and stand instead for the dawn of what might be a new "social contract."

We have already witnessed the potential pros and cons of this Hokusai-type cyber wave. Steve Jobs and Edward Snowden/Julian Assange are the opposite sides of the same coin.  The Internet, with its siblings, avatars or descendants, is changing the moral code but has not been able to codify its parameters as yet. It remains a work in progress, under surveillance, both for the better and, potentially, for the unknown.  Social networks have already crashed conduct and privacy. Google is at the same time a source of "streamlined" (by whom?) information and a pre-drone predator.  Communication, war and peace, sex, economy, among others, will all be structurally affected and drastically changed.

We are all adrift in this treacherous ocean and we do not know where the tides will lead us. Tim Cook and Co. are writing a new Nibelungen. There are many demons around and no Swan King is to be seen! The treasure might even be booby trapped, but this gigantic upheaval will, hopefully, end up being a new step toward, furthering enlightenment.

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