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ACTS Post opinions with a wide range of perspectives to encourage constructive discussion.
Commentary by Ivaylo Dichev for “Deutsche Welle”
Today, 50-80% of those who work online say they prefer to stay home after the pandemic. Even in less developed digital economies, like ours, the numbers are similar. Shared platforms, video connectivity, access to all kinds of files and programs make working online more productive. We save hours in traffic jams, lying on the couch in our pajamas with our favorite cat on our lap, and the boss saves office expenses.
But all progress has a price. Remote work exacerbates inequalities between people. Some have home comforts, some don’t; some families have a room for everyone and take place in a neat villa in nature, others can be isolated only in the closet. There is a desire for universal and free access to the Internet, and if the quarantine continues, policies in this direction are likely to be adopted. But for now, the main burden of digital migration falls on the shoulders of the worker. I don’t know what it feels like to Bulgarian professors: at university we switched to teaching online without the institution paying for our internet subscriptions from home or buying computers from us. You will say: a little, the point is that a lot of those trifles are collected.
The near turned out to be so far
The new telecommuting tends to blur the gap between work and leisure. Yes, but you are always available. To the difference in Internet skills that some were fortunate enough to learn before the pandemic, others were not, I will add a purely psychological inequality that remote work reinforces: the ability to plan for yourself, to control yourself without anyone getting in the way. his head. A quality that supersedes the current winning ability to make connections. So to speak, the gregarious have been displaced by the focused.
Online meetings present a specific problem. On the one hand, employees prefer them: while the boss’s boring report is running, they’ll cook something or order a solitaire. This trend existed even before COVID, especially in the larger hallways, where you could monitor your phone without being noticed, apparently listening. The serious question is whether virtual meetings can replace physical meetings, which are already unbearably boring.
We imagine ever more perfect communications that perfectly convey the expression of each participant, the intonation of their voice. The artificial intelligence will probably even start to zoom and magnify the individual angles of the faces, as cameras do in reality games, we will have data on the body temperature and heart rate of our interlocutors.
However, previous civilizations have developed an almost religious belief in face-to-face physical encounters, in handshakes (which we are about to eliminate due to limitations), in formal dinners, in short, in the shared bodily experience that strengthens contact. When two presidents meet, it is an event; when talking on the videophone, every day. The conference leaves a feeling of simulation, like the civil protests on Facebook, which try to replace the physical presence in the square.
Why is it easier to hate the Internet
However, alienation doesn’t just cool the relationship. Research shows that aggression (racial, homophobic, class) is inversely proportional to whether we know people personally or to us they are just virtual images. That is why there are such hateful hurricanes on the internet, swept away by meek people in pajamas on the couch.
Think of the homeless people begging on the corner: your “business” is actually the one most affected by the transition to life online, because passersby have become Internet surfers. On the other hand, those organizations that have websites and digital PR are thriving today due to increased traffic and, as we recently learned about HelpKarma, they are making a lot of money.
In the same way, Facebook and Amazon are flourishing, according to the (ironic) “rule of Matthew” that those who have are given and those who do not go bankrupt. It goes without saying that the shopping revolution is about to turn stores into exhibitions where you simply browse and then order online. The price for this new convenience is the death of neighborhood stores, small bookstores, and startups.
The migration of humanity to the virtual world has made us live with the distant: we hope to see the new series on Netflix immediately, we are excited about the American elections, we are watching the love drama of Chloe Kardashian. On the contrary, things around us turned out to be far away: the quarantine made going outside a journey. Do you remember how we stopped going to the movies? Today we run the risk of not physically visiting museums, concerts, theaters. Not that we are going to lose interest, but we will get used to using them remotely and this will change them, as the cinema changes when you enter the TV and then the phone.
Life – in hybrid mode
People learned how to organize dinners on Facebook, with crystal glasses and chandeliers, each on its own side of the screen. It is not only cheaper, but also practical: everyone can cook whatever they want. We are prepared for this kind of communication thanks to the poignant parenting on Skype, where a mother from Italy asks her son in the village of Rhodope what he had for breakfast and if he learned his lessons. What happens to friendships when people start visiting fewer neighbors and dining with people from all over the planet?
The little ones dance in virtual parties. You say, what party, if you’re not, on the spot? It seems that the emotion manages to spread from a distance. The main thing is that something is experienced simultaneously: coincidence in time replaces coincidence in place. Such broadcast communities make their way to party rallies, scientific conferences, and even church services. Perhaps after the pandemic we will sometimes begin to return to the square, to the auditoriums, to the temples, but it is very likely that life passes in a hybrid way.
The deepest imprint will be the Internet hermitage on love relationships, those in which physical contact is inevitable. The older generation has already experienced the drama of AIDS, which forced then-young people to drastically limit their sexual freedom. Today, the elderly are indeed in danger, but fear of the foreign body has penetrated all folds of society. And here the quarantine is knocking on the door: online landfills have become part of the culture, and it is no longer a shame to find a partner or husband on a dating platform.
What to do, we must learn to navigate in the weightlessness of the new virtual world. If there is any use for this damn virus, it will be.
Bulgaria
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