Through that lens, it becomes increasingly clear
that the “information superhighway,” as it was
called in the 1990s, has, in the coronavirus era,
become more choked with traffic than ever.
“COVID has created an inflection point. Countries
are starting to rethink how they connect with each
other. It’s hard to imagine everything that has
occurred over the last six months occurring five
years ago,” says William Muck, a political science
professor and coordinator of global studies at
North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.
“Tech is one way they see that they can solve
problems and avoid political pitfalls,” Muck says.
Perhaps. Speaker after speaker said it was time
for the United Nations to be different, that the
pandemic had handed it an opportunity to
evolve. But this meeting suggested that for such
an intricate bureaucracy, even adapting in an
emergency may not be enough to jump-start
genuine, irreversible innovation.
Despite that, hope peeks through. Thanks to
technology, the people who rule us and, in the
aggregate, steer humanity’s destiny are still
finding ways to talk — even if “talk,” complete
with air quotes, isn’t quite what it used to be.
That’s what Volkan Bozkir thinks, at any rate.
“The fact that so many world leaders chose
to address this assembly is a testament to the
power and relevance of the United Nations,” the
president of the General Assembly said Tuesday
evening as he pronounced the gathering closed.
“No other organization can bring so many global
leaders together.”
And with that, he thanked U.N. tech support for
all its help with the prerecorded speeches and
was on his way.