The most dangerous phrase in the world right now is 'the new normal.' It is a seductive idea - that out of all the chaos and upheaval unleashed by the pandemic, a new stability might emerge. But what if the new normal isn't normal at all? It is a divisive question. For some, the current crisis is but a brief time out on 'business as usual.' But for others - the rapid adoption and spread of automation, robotics, data surveillance, virtualization, and machine intelligence - is neither temporary nor reversible. It is a one-way trip to an entirely new, Cyberpunk-themed reality. What will it take to survive and thrive in such a world?

The current crisis is not only a test of our resolve and our health infrastructure; it is a test of leadership as well. With many employees working from home, companies are discovering that the challenges of remote work go far beyond just having the right technology and connectivity. How do you reset an entire organizational culture based on the politics and rituals of a corporate head office? This is particularly acute for leaders: what does it take to be an effective leader when there is no one around to lead?

We live in a time of exponentially improving machines. First chess, then Space Invaders, go and most recently poker - our games now seem mere taunts in a struggle for supremacy between humanity and AI. Even in losing, however, we may learn something about what makes us special.

Most of us are familiar with Google’s moonshot projects that span everything from self-driving cars to AIs that can beat world champion GO players. Less well known are the ways that Google is re-inventing how it designs and optimizes its own internal operations.

I met Sean when we both in Tokyo speaking at an intimate summit for banking executives. As an information junkie myself, I was fascinated by his company, Quid, which offered analysts and decision makers a visual platform for seeing patterns in complex data. Not surprisingly, Sean’s background is also a nexus of complexity. He is a physicist, decathlete, political advisor, and a TED fellow. Sean studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where he received a PhD for his research on the mathematical patterns that underlie modern war. In this episode of Between Worlds we talked about the power laws behind violence and insurgency, what Kasparov learnt from his infamous chess defeat by Big Blue, the merits of creative exploration through visualization and the art of defining the 21st century concept of manliness.