It could be the relentless news agenda, but the news has been relentless throughout my 11 years as editor-in-chief of the Guardian. It could be age, but I’m not that old. It could be menopause, but I’m on all the drugs.
No, I think it’s because of something that many of us feel in this moment. That our attention spans have been degraded, our thinking skills blunted.
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At the grandest scale: the environmental crisis. In February, scientists warned that the world is closer than previously thought to a “point of no return” after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped. … At the same time, the global consensus on the need for urgent action has been attacked by rightwing populists as an elite concern ….
There is also the global political crisis. For the first time in 20 years, autocracies outnumber democracies. Even in many established democracies we are seeing the dismantling of democratic norms, the erosion of checks and balances.
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Next there is the economic crisis, as the failures of neoliberalism become ever clearer and the richest people in the world become ever richer and more powerful.
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I believe these interlinked crises are driven and compounded by the digital revolution. We are in the midst of an historic transition from one era to another. …
This tidal wave of data contains much that is valuable, but that doesn’t prevent it from being destabilising.
