Pandemic times are extremely painful for everyone. Lost of dearest lives are the ultimate suffering for all of us. Lost of jobs and company bankruptcies are also adverse outcomes hurting thousands of families all over the planet even months ahead the end of pandemics.

For social and economic perspectives, pandemic times are also useful experiments to stress some hypothesis regarding ongoing transitions, current phenomenas and quite noises about future trends. All of them combined will eventually shape social lives and economic dynamics, influencing prices, value drivers, employment and company performances.

It has been now more than a decade that iPhone completely changed mobile phone territory, including its strong impact on personal computer and internet territories. Suddenly, devices converged to the palms of our hands with amazing computing power and seamless digital connections. The infamous black mirrors of our devices changed the operation system of societies, influencing our thoughts, feelings and actions. Social media only improved mobile phone abilities to control everything in our ordinary daily lives, transforming them in a global digital data capturing machine dedicated to model public opinion, brand affection and consumer behaviour.

That doesn’t changed because of Covid-19. On contrary, it was boosted in exponential scale as never seen before. Isolated at our homes, black mirrors became our only window to external world, avoiding a total mental blow-up for the majority of us. Entertainment, social interactions, information, work engagements and online commerce have been all delivered through our dear mobile phones. And that is surely a good thing to everyone isolated at home. After all, we now have the opportunity to expand our world beyond physical boundaries.

The downside of this hyperconnected atmosphere refers to the risk of being just a plug into the digital matrix, breathing, walking and eating without the human conscious about what really means to breath, walk and eat. Crystal screens hijack our ability to independently think and feel as we start suffering from Crystal Squared Minds – minds programmed accordingly to the best interest of algorithms designed to stimulate us to consume certain brands, think in certain ways, walk in certain pathways and feel certain emotions.

The dystopian end game would be to look itself reflected in some river course and don’t recognise our own soul over there. But we don’t have to move further in some sci-fi trilogy to imagine something closer to our current way of living. Crystal Squared Minds already exist in our current world as we move apart from culture, nature, family and spirit. The digital matrix around us is extremely important for human evolution even beyond this planet, but it should not prevent us from being just the imperfect human being that we all are since our birth.

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Daniel Motta is the Founder and CEO of BMI Blue Management Institute, a leading niche consulting firm. He is a global thought leader focused on culture, strategy and leadership. He has a PhD in Economics, MSc in Financial Economics and BA in Economics. He is also an OPMer from Harvard Business School. He is the Managing Director of USA-based VC company White Fox Capital and the Senior Tupinambá Maverick of Bossa.etc. He was a co-founder of Brazilian Society of Finance. He currently serves NGO UNIBES as Strategic Planning Principal. He is the author of the best selling books Essential Leadership and book Anthesis. He also has three articles published by Harvard Business Review. He is a Board Member of MASP.

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