2022: The year of Transformations

Rise of China

China might be the next superpower by 2030, with it’s Belt & Road Initiative. Chinese resurgence is softer in its nature, and hence more impactful. As it hands out loans to the world, particularly developing and underdeveloped nation-states: cementing its sphere of influence. Major beneficiaries spread across the globe, from the Strait of Malacca to the Strait of Hormuz, Horn of Africa, back to the Caucasus, and here, in South Asia. China is gathering momentum, and its sphere of influence extends to all over the world. This would come off as a challenge for the developed nations.

Surveillance Capitalism

Surveillance Capitalism could be defined as marketing strategies in the twenty-first century. This is the age of personalized ads and data-fueled transactions and sponsored social media campaigns. These ad-campaigns might get more mainstream in 2022. All the social media websites including Meta, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram use personalized data sources to sell products. Modern day capitalism would continue to outsource personal information of their products: the people are the products, as well as the consumers.

Hybrid Work

Pandemic paved ways for the people, particularly the employees: it showed the world that work can be done remotely. And that indeed helped the people. Post-pandemic world, and now there’s a new concept of working, Hybrid Work. Hybrid work is the combination of working remotely and in a traditional office setting. 2020-2021 were the years where hybrid work had more leverage, due to the COVID-19 restrictions and protocols. Will the world turn back to a traditional office or remotely? Only time would tell, but given the case of the Omicron variant, a hybrid setting is more likely to follow pursuit.

Artificial Intelligence

As much as Artificial Intelligence fascinates and glows, it can pose serious challenges to the already jobless society in the coming years. Machines might take over, and that will change the nature of course of contracts between employees and employers. Tech-boom will surely help mankind, but that would come with negative impacts on society. The situation could get alarming in the coming years. Which have been alarmed by intelligentsia. It would thus enhance the joblessness in the society. And particularly the underdeveloped and the developing nations. Corporate sector won’t take an instant to switch from manpower to a man-powered system.

Cryptocurrency

All the years of trade and doing business: the currency exchange system has evolved from barter trade to selling goods with coins, to paper money. During the evolution phases, ATM and online transactions shocked the world some 15-20 years ago. Critics even argue about the nature of online transactions. That it is a mere construct, only an abstract of it. Currency and exchange rate systems have evolved now to another construct of money: i.e. Cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency, if simply explained, is data-money. It exists in the form of datum. Cryptocurrency emerged during economic collapse, 2008. And now its popularity has grown to a larger extent.

Metaverse

An alternate universe, where one can meet people in an alternate reality but as holograms. Metaverse is a virtual world where users can explore using personalized avatars. Its users would be able to carry out their everyday tasks, but in a cyber space. These tasks could relate to; economic and social. The CEO of Facebook/Meta believes that Metaverse is the future of the internet and his trillion-dollar company. It also includes augmented reality that combines aspects of the digital and physical worlds.