What do citizens need to fight COVID-19: more surveillance or empowerment? “As systems collapse, people rise” says the author of Theory U, Otto Scharmer, in his recent article, where he reflects on the changes brought about by the COVID 19 crisis. At the same time, the historian Yuval Noah Harari writes in his article about the world after coronavirus, “A self-motivated and well-informed population is usually far more powerful and effective than a policed, ignorant population”. These two articles complement each other: the first one talks about communities that have organized themselves from the bottom up, and the second one discusses how governments should encourage and guide the empowerment of citizens rather than using totalitarian surveillance methods.
