How would you advise politicians like Romano Prodi to deal with the crisis in Europe?
Jeremy Rifkin: Wake up! Don’t be pessimistic, but feel a bit better because of what is happening in Europe. But what problems have to be solved? Europe is certainly in a difficult phase of transition. But European crises are also global crises: the oil crisis, that is, the end of the energy era, global warming and the natural disasters it brings, terrorism: this is all now affecting central Europe as well. Then there is the disappearance of work, which is due to the intelligent technologies. That was only a selection of issues that have to be solved in the future, something which a nation-state can not do so well alone. We are in an increasingly complicated world. The irony of the technological revolution is that it is directly connected with the nervous system of the entire planet. We are compressing time and space more and more. We are living in a complex world that makes us not only dependent, but also vulnerable in a psychological sense. The general situation is one of vulnerabilit
