The European economic growth policy has nurtured the tech corporates for years. The expansion of their activities and mergers with corporations from other sectors has increased their dominance. Along with several dozens of multinationals from the banking business, the food industry, the transportation sector, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, they form a strong oligopoly. Like other Europeans, Ghentians live increasingly longer, and their material opportunities are growing. The standard of living is high. Privacy has become a concern of the past. Being tracked by machines is common (and, in fact, quite useful) to people.
TECHNOLOGY: Global digital communication technology controlled by CORPORATES is everywhere. Technological innovation enables sustainable production and sustainable mobility. Cybersecurity for connected devices receives a lot of attention and is a well-functioning economic sector. Privacy, on the other hand, is hardly protected.
POPULATION: The majority of Ghent’s residents can easily meet all material needs. In the European member states, people grow older with the help of biotechnology. As a result, the ageing of the population occurs on a large scale. However, elderly people who can no longer participate often end up in poverty.
ECONOMY: Research, development, and education are funded by private stakeholders. The local university is closely connected with commercial interests. In industrial production and the services industry, robotization and automation prevail. Cyber systems* steer processes. Nearly all economic transactions take place in the digital environment.
*A cyber system is an integrated combination of facilities, materials, personnel, procedures, and communication for providing services, controlled by algorithms. For example, cyber systems can provide business transactions, production and distribution control, or access control.
ECOLOGY: Global corporations concluded a mutual climate agreement that has now been in effect for 20 years. This way, the lowest emission values are achieved.5 Moreover, climate mitigation and response projects are big business. In retail trade, acidity meters for water are regularly sold. But at a larger scale, too, capital is made out of the remediation of locations affected by floods or violent weather.
ENERGY: Strong corporations are the largest producers and buyers of sustainable energy. The government has no part in this. Urban mobility is guided in the right direction by the Artificial Intelligence of SLIM (urban living intelligent mobile). Only electric or human-powered vehicles are still used for this. The internal combustion engine has disappeared from the streets.
CULTURE: Digitally controlled mass consumption is a global phenomenon. This also creates a dominant and homogeneous global culture. People can have multiple virtual identities. The commercial offer provides them with an apparent diversity within uniform limits. The user profiles that corporations have at their disposal are fine-grained to an improbable extent and allow for hyper-individualized services.
POLICY: European, national, and local governments serve as local facilitators (mouthpiece, contact point, logistic coordination, implementation of territorial regulations, caretaker) for corporations. These corporations control nearly all formerly public services. The scarcely remaining public space is made available to citizens as commons*. The government, which has increasingly withdrawn, has not given shape to it.
