Part I: The Technological Challenge - 1. Disillusionment

THE END OF HISTROY HAS BEEN POSTPONED
In the 1990s and 2000s this story became a global mantra. Many governments from Brazil to India adopted liberal recipes in an attempt to join the inexorable march of history. Those failing to do so seemed like fossils from a bygone era.
However, since the global financial crisis of 2008 people all over the world have become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story. Walls and firewalls are back in vogue. Resistance to immigration and to trade agreements is mounting. Ostensibly democratic governments undermine the independence of the judicial system, restrict the freedom of the press, and portray any opposition as treason. Strongmen in countries such as Turkey and Russia experiment with new types of illiberal democracies and downright dictatorships. Today, few would confidently declare that the Chinese Communist Party is on the wrong side of history.
大概2020年的covid更加加剧了对民主政体的怀疑吧。
以及人类什么时候才可以放弃这种简单的单线条思维（幻想）。
To have one story is the most reassuring situation of all. Everything is perfectly clear. To be suddenly left without any story is terrifying. Nothing makes any sense.
FROM KILLING MOSQUITOES TO KILLING THOUGHTS
THE LIBERAL PHOENIX
The Liberal Set Menu
Economic field:
- National level: Free markets, privatisation, low taxes
- International level: Free trade, global integration, low tariffs

Political field:
- National level: Free elections, rule of law, minority rights
- International level: Peaceful relations, multilateral cooperation, international laws and organisations

Personal field:
- National level: Free choices, individualism, diversity, gender equality
- International level: Ease of personal movement and immigration
每一条都离民主和自由太远了。
This is arguably already happening all over the globe, as the vacuum left by the breakdown of liberalism is tentatively filled by nostalgic fantasies about some local golden past. Donald Trump coupled his calls for American isolationism with a promise to 'Make America Great Again' - as if the USA of the 1980s or 1950s was a perfect society that Americans should somehow recreate in the twenty-first century. The Brexiteers dream of making Britain an independent power, as if they were still living in the days of Queen Victoria and as if 'splendid isolation' were a viable policy for the era of the Internet and global warming. Chinese elites have rediscovered their native imperial and Confucian legacies, as a supplement or even substitute for the doubtful Marxist ideology they imported from the West. In Russia, Putin's official vision is not to build a corrupt oligarchy, but rather to resurrect the old tsarist empire. A century after the Bolshevik Revolution, Putin promises a return to ancient tsarist glories with an autocratic government buoyed by Russian nationalism and Orthodox piety spreading its might from the Baltic to the Caucasus. 
Similar nostalgic dreams that mix nationalist attachment with religious traditions underpin regimes in India, Poland, Turkey and numerous other countries.
作者的眼光太毒。