This Pandemic Has Pushed Us 10 Years in the Future
But I think I want the good ol’ days back
Let’s not lie to ourselves here. Whether you like it or not (and I’m definitely on the “not” side), the Western World has been heading towards a technological-centered landscape for the past few years.
I mean, five-year-olds have iPads. Photo albums and scrapbooks have turned into social media feeds. ‘Written papers’ are no longer actually being written on paper… instead, they are typed and emailed. Boxes and boxes of files have been consolidated into digital databases. Videoconferencing is replacing frequent business travels.
There is no question that many parts of our lives revolve around technology. (If you don’t believe me, wait ‘til you’re stuck in a power outage with a dead phone and laptop, and let me know how comfortable you feel.)
Technology has many strengths. It has given us the power to do more and learn more than anyone could have ever imagined. However, it also has its weaknesses. It makes us forget the old-fashioned ways, it makes it too easy to disengage from life and avoid human interaction.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic happened. And then the worst part of online work and overdependence of tech — i.e. human interaction — became its biggest strength.
Suddenly, within a week, we went from a technologically reliant to technological dependent. We went from enjoying using social media, to individuals who could only ever be social on the web.
The things that many peeople reubked or fought against — say: interacting exclusively on the internet conversation, taking online classes, avoiding commute time by working at home interacting —became the law.
Life changed because it had to. When life can go back to normal though, what will normal mean?
I am very very interested in what ‘normal’ will look like when this is all said and done.
I am not a fortune teller. Believe me, if I was, I would be very very rich right now. (And if anyone actually can actually predict what the world will look like a week from now, a few months from now, a year from now… please enlighten me — or better yet run for presidency.)
But if I were to guess, I’d bet that the new “normal” will not look like pre-pandemic normal.
Just as World War II and 9/11 shaped identities and forced systemic changes, so will COVID-19. Beyond the fact that we will be paying off the economic debt for the rest of our lives (yay taxes), I have no doubt that the pandemic will imprint many other lessons to our lives.
But when that time comes, the question will be:
Did we adapt these new habits because they are better or because we are now used to them?
As humans, we like to be happy. (Ok, maybe we are less that perfectly happy a lot of the time, but the goal is happiness.) So ya, this pandemic has probably been a sucky time, but you have also probably found some liver linings.
It can be anything. You connected with your distant relatives now that everyone has Zoom. You spent more time with your family. You enjoyed those hellos with your neighbors more. You picked up that new hobby you never had time for. You eliminated your hourly work commute time. You learned how to bake bread. You gained a newfound appreciation for hairdressers.
It is great to find those little rays of sunshine in life. However, anything looks bright when it’s pitch dark outside. I wonder if we will remember that when we look back at the lessons we want to take from this pandemic.
Will this long hiatus from actual real-life cause us to forget the advantages of being a living and breathing person?
Will we walk out of this with habits that looked great when compared to the shitshow that was the pandemic world, but are less-than ideal in normal conditions?
Here is my fear: this pandemic is pushing us 10 years into the future. And we are not ready for that yet. When this global health threat is gone, will we still continue following these paths that the pandemic has pushed us into?
We all miss in-person interaction with friends and family. Six feet is nothing… until you want to hug your best friend. Or take off your mask to eat thanksgiving dinner with your extended family. It sucks. It sucks. It absolutely sucks.
Social interaction will come back. I am confident of that. The bar scene, the crowded beaches, tackle sports at the local park, amusement parks… those will come back as strong as ever (for the ones that even stopped in the first place I mean)
But how much will change?
Too much, in my opinion.
Most tech companies have been open to the work-from-home concept for the past couple years. However, even at the most forward-thinking companies, remote work positions were not commonplace and employees normally only took the work-from-home option a couple days a week.
With COVID-19, almost every company that is fully remote. And every day there is a new announcement about a company that is going to keep work-from-home as the default model even when there is no more safety concern.
I truly believe that we would’ve gotten to that point in the near future. I mean wfh has its advantages: flexible hours, less travel time, more uninterrupted work. And I think by 2030, working from home would be a common practice.
But if that decision were made 2030, it will because we have learned how to balance how to leverage convenience of working from home without throwing away the human interactions that feeds human creativity in the workplace. (More on that thought here)
Here, we are starting this change because a global health crisis forced us to be here. And I don't think we are ready.
It’s more than just a question working from home. It’s also a question about the other ways we might approach things in a post-pandemic world.
Thnk about Zoom. And FaceTime. And every other video-chat app you’ve come to rely on during the pandemic. Let’s be honest here. We are inherently lazy as humans. Are we going to choose to chat with our friends on video call instead of walking that km to go see them when its over?
Will we continue to order every single thing possible online, instead of taking a quick trip to the store to pick it up? Maybe it’s more convenient, but online shopping will reduce the amount of jobs that working students depend so heavily on. Not to mention, how much waste have you produced from all the excessive packaging that comes with every Amazon package. Remember, global warming has not stopped just because there is a virus afloat.
Innovation is all about pushing the world forward. Progress is about embracing the new things that make our world better. Nothing compares to the opportunities and experiences technology has brought us.
However, maybe I have old-school ideologies. Or maybe my parents told me one-too-many times that too much screen time will hurt my eyes and TV kills brain cells.
But this pandemic has accelerated our dependence on tech to where it probably would’ve arrived in 2030. And I quite frankly, I don’t think our world is quite ready for a technological revolution yet. Afterall technology does make things more convenient. But there are some things more important that convenience.
Maybe by 2030 technology will take over. And hopefully by then, we will have sufficiently adapted so the tradeoff is not so high.
But right now, I’m quite content living in 2020.
