Its hard to avoid any mention of SARS-COV2 aka covid19 these days. So the good news is, that I received my second vaccination this week. A big thanks to all the restless minds who have made this possible!
A particularly interesting view of this situation is put together in this article by Drew Austin:
In some ways, a pandemic is the ideal proof-of-concept for the particular utopia that the tech industry has tried to build. Social distancing plays to digital technology’s immediately tangible strengths: ubiquitous and sanitary access to other people, maximum convenience, broad consumer choice, and endless entertainment at low cost. As the coronavirus brought countless global systems to a halt, the internet kept working, heroically filling the gaps.
https://reallifemag.com/home-screens/
Found via.
https://www.notechmagazine.com/2020/04/quarantine-is-the-future-big-tech-wanted-us-to-want.html
And yes I fully agree with the last paragraph.
After the quarantine ends, many stores, jobs, people, and even institutions won’t return. Significant economic and emotional pain will be distributed unjustly across vast populations. Cities won’t be the same as we remember them. But that doesn’t mean we must consign ourselves to a flattened and fully consumerized surveillance society in which digital platforms continue to spread us apart.
I honestly think, that these times are extremely interesting. Changes of unseen extent currently unfold in timelapse right before our eyes. I have the privilege to live in a rural area with ample space. However, had I to live in a (crowded) city I would have tried to take pictures of the street at approximately the same time every day and make a timelapse movie --- actually for a long time. It's been unfolding for well over a year now, and we are not anywhere near the "normal" we remember from before. I'd argue that a number of things will take a long time to return, for example the distance I need to sit with others at lunch, say, is still much larger. I cannot imagine to have neighbors sitting as close as they used to any time soon.
Cheers,
~ew