[ad_1]
It is a sunny morning in April 2020. While a virus for which there is no vaccine yet is spreading across the world, a normal and average family begins the day.
Around 9 a.m., after her Zumba zoom course, mother Kim, 36, sits at the PC and works on first orders until the Skype conference at 11 a.m. 11-year-old daughter Mia leans over the tablet at the kitchen table and does arithmetic in the Flipgrid e-learning app. Father Jeff, 41, a currently unemployed factory worker, searches for an online job exchange that temporarily places skilled workers between companies.
At noon, the family orders pasta in a nearby ghost kitchen. In the afternoon, Mia borrows books from an online library, which is currently free. Kim orders groceries for her elderly parents at the online supermarket. Jeff signs an application for unemployment benefits through the electronic signature. In the evening, he meets friends at an online bar.
The fictional middle-class family could come from Asia, North America, or Europe. Since the pandemic crown paralyzed public life, the digitization of important areas of society has accelerated in many countries. Work, school and many other activities in which physical presence seemed to be largely compulsory until now abruptly switched to virtual space, with the aim of continuing life as well as possible despite social distance.
Much of what is being experienced is likely to remain in society after the crisis, in the form of new emotional connections, behavior patterns, cultural norms, and techno-economic structures. Along with these, new problems, dependencies and social imbalances arise.
It seems advisable to deal with the problems early to counteract an even stronger elite formation. It also seems advisable to maintain and expand the positive aspects of post-crisis change, because they can take our society one step further.
A look at four megatrends that are just emerging.
1. Economy: more capitalism at the push of a button
Mobile phone users in Singapore
Olaf Schuelke / imago images
I would never say that your company was benefiting from a global health crisis, Kitchen United CEO Jim Collins said in an interview with Yahoo Finance in early March. But he is definitely one of the pandemic winners. Kitchen United operates so-called ghost kitchens in several major US cities. USA: kitchen areas from which chefs supply food to residents. Kitchen United also provides the software to place dishes on common delivery platforms.
Chefs who rent Kitchen United often don’t have their own restaurant. They are completely dependent on takeaway food, which is a bonus now. Classic restaurant owners somehow try to get their store rent along with out-of-home deliveries. Ghost chefs have no downtime due to empty tables and hope to increase demand.
The market model behind companies like Kitchen United is called economy on demand: products and services are delivered to the customer in a short time after touching a smartphone app. In times of blockages, such button services are among the big winners, especially if they satisfy basic human needs.
Grocery providers or online pharmacies are currently experiencing gigantic growth rates. The often scolded Amazon group is celebrated as the provider of the trapped. To this end, platforms are created that show which supermarkets currently have toilet paper, pasta and other coveted products. And online markets, which also make it easier for small stores to sell their products online.
Thanks to the contact ban, the first autonomous delivery vehicles are currently being tested on California roads. Human drivers are a major cost factor for many on-demand and e-commerce services. If it fell, its competitiveness would increase massively again.
This would not only have advantages for the economy of tomorrow. Businesses on demand sometimes employ precarious lone workers, without wages, health and safety at work. According to an analysis by the Cologne Retail Research Institute, the store dying in fixed retail is likely to accelerate as well, as customer shopping habits are shifting more rapidly towards e-commerce.
Digitizing the economy, therefore, not only increases productivity. It also creates problems that spatial planners and social authorities have yet to find the correct answers.
2. Education: more interactive learning material
Video classes in Hong Kong
ISAAC LAWRENCE / AFP
A typical day of class for a sixth class at the ICS International School in Milan currently looks like this: At 8:30 am, students log into classes through the team chat platform and social learning network Edmodo. There is head-to-head instruction via video chat, group work in smaller chat rooms, and individual chats between students and teachers.
The daily structure of the offline world has been largely preserved, including breaks. ICS also tries to align the teaching process with the offline world as much as possible. Lessons are not recorded because attendance is compulsory. Homework, for example, solutions to mathematical formulas, are sometimes submitted by video, handwritten tasks by photo.
ICS is now considered a role model for effective online learning. Schools in France and Spain have adopted the Milan model. In closing times, work strategies are required to learn from afar.
According to OECD estimates, around 421 million children and adolescents were affected by the closure of schools in mid-March. Classes were national or regional in more than 60 countries. Most schools try to teach children at least some of the material through online classes.
There are dozens of ed tech offerings that are being increasingly experimented with: online classrooms from companies like Google or WizIQ; Learning animations from companies like BrainPop; Collaboration apps to share tasks like Seesaw; Multimedia software such as Panopto, which can be used to integrate interactive questionnaire formats into video conferences.
The quality of programs fluctuates, as does the competence of teachers and students to deal with new technology. However, the crown crisis illustrates the possibilities and opportunities of e-learning. Classic teaching concepts can be enriched with modern technology. Multimedia experts and professionals in the entertainment industry can help prepare the learning material in a contemporary way.
E-learning will not completely replace going to school, just because schools relieve working parents of caring for their children. A clever combination of classroom and distance learning is also conceivable once the locks have been completed.
However, there is also a danger that children will be disadvantaged in class. For example, because they have technically inexperienced parents. Or because they come from homes that can’t afford computers or a broadband connection. Such students need support at an early stage.
3. Daily work: more flexibility
Office worker with mask
Maskot / Getty Images / Maskot
The most obvious structural change in the crown crisis is that suddenly millions of people are working from home. Judging by the speed of this change, the home office looks like a low, ripe fruit – it’s easy to harvest, just do it.
Technical concerns about home office jobs turn out to be excuses in many cases. The problem seems to have been less the establishment of a VPN connection, rather the alleged loss of control by the employer over its employees. Now that home office work often has no choice, employee tracking is suddenly booming.
Companies like Interguard, Activetrack, Vericlock or Time Doctor have tripled their sales in recent weeks, according to the “Süddeutscher Zeitung”. Its software allows managers to record employee keystrokes, among other things. Or the websites they visited. Or take a screenshot of the screen surface at regular intervals.
In addition to such dubious privacy interventions, tax law reforms to eliminate a home office are discussed. And tips on how to stay productive at home. And tips for executives on how to coordinate dispersed teams. Many seem to assume that the home office will establish itself as an additional working environment in their company once the locks have been completed.
People who cannot do their work from home have twice as many problems. Some of them are currently not making money and remain less flexible even after the crisis. Labor law and welfare state compensation seem necessary to avoid an intensified digital divide in the world of work.
4. Social life: more virtual socialization
Fitness course through video chat
Andrey Popov / imago images / Panthermedia
Daily life in the running of the bulls is less lonely than it initially seems. You can watch videos with friends using the Netflix party tool or watch Facebook party, participate in sports or yoga classes through conference applications, participate in online wine tastings, play with other musicians through the application Endless or join others in a live cloud nightclub session. Dancing DJ set.
Forced distancing obviously has a lovely side effect: The internet seems to be a bit more of a place than idealists have always wanted it to be. A place that connects people instead of encouraging solitary escapism with free shows from HBO and Amazon Prime.
From the psychologists’ perspective, passive consumption, like navigating Instagram, sometimes contributes to depressive states. Interaction, like sharing and discussing posts, tends to foster a sense of connection. The Internet has always been able to do both; only in times of blockages, the active connection side seems to flourish.
Virtual activities, of course, are not an equivalent substitute for a pub soiree or a gathering in a café. But it is a fundamental benefit that dozens of new forms of prosocial behavior emerge online. And that these are lived more and more.
