In a new world where long gone are the days of firm handshakes and employees gathered around a table for daily meetings, it’s easy to think that life has ever so drastically changed. Virtual conferences and catch-ups, online learning and working from home have become our new norm. But are things really that different to how they were before?
Of course, this is somewhat a dramatized version of living in the digital world, with technology’s uses being heightened and more invested in than ever, but I feel we had some good practise in this field already. As services such as online dating, facetiming and takeaway services like Deliveroo and Just Eat have become more popular over the years, we’ve been training for a digitally led world.
Taking meetings at your dining table whilst rocking a half formal half PJ combo may seem like a sudden leap into the unknown, but wasn’t this where we were headed anyway? As technology develops and more innovations are made, we are constantly preparing ourselves for changes to come.
Once upon a time you had to get out and about to meet a partner. Nowadays, you can find that spark from the comfort of your own home. Changes have been coming for years, and pandemic or not, we were surely heading towards a more digitalised world so we could use these modernisations to our advantage. We’ve just accelerated and moved at pace towards this way of life sooner than we thought.
Some of these changes make life more accessible to many and show just how we can get around such problems as a pandemic, when the daily norm is forced on hold. It’s been a modern blessing to be able to carry on somewhat business as usual from our homes. Businesses have suffered, and many have lost throughout this year, but technology has at least let virtual concerts, meetings and sociable gatherings take place. It’s allowed for busts of normality amongst the surrealness we’ve endure. Furthermore, convenience comes above all these days, as we find comfort behind our screens and wish to make things as simple as possible. After all, isn’t that part of what technology is about? Making life more convenient?
I often think of the film ‘Wall-e’ when I think of technology and using it to make our lives as comfortable and easy as can be. Just floating around on chairs with everything we could desire at our fingertips. A sense of dread and pessimism encompasses me when I realise just how realistic that dystopian world in the film is in our current reality. Surely, we won’t let ourselves become so unhealthy, unsociable and greedy? Greedy for ease and accessibility. We must prevent a future where our lives are purely led from the tips of our fingers on a screen.
Whilst it’s all well and good that we’re running our live thanks to the power of social medias and technology, we mustn’t let it conquer us in such a way that we don’t know how to interact in-person anymore. We run the risk of becoming too accustomed to talk over text and asking Alexa to turn off the lights, dishwasher or TV. Who knows? One day we may see having to get up to grab a remote an arduous task if we have bots who can do it all for us. I like to think we’d never allow this happen, and we’d remember that there’s more value in a group BBQ or dinner in a restaurant than endless food arriving whilst we’re fixated in front of our screens.
But maybe, we’re more like this now than we think, and a future enclosed in automation isn’t as alien as it may seem in the movies.