Zooming into the future
Nov. 25th, 2020 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ruthct21I have just attended a poetry workshop run by one of the local writers groups I attend at home, facilitated by Zoom, during which we sent poems to each other, edited them, shared them with other participants and discussed different techniques for enhancing the impact of the words within them. Not mind-blowing techniques, but lots of little pieces of communication that have become familiar during the Covid era.
I am a Zoom fan. It opens up access to events and will be, in my view, as powerful a force towards diversity and integration as any of the skills we have worked on in the past. Zoom events are readily accessible and avoid the need for waiting for buses in the cold, cramming into inadequate meeting places, or travelling for many hours to attend a fundamentally unsatisfying occasion. Zoom allows people who are sick or disabled to attend on equal terms to most others and it is a great equaliser in that nobody looks very clever or beautiful or well-dressed in a Zoom screen: the need to dress up for meeting people has been eliminated.
If Covid continues in its present devastating form, we could be Zooming for a long time. The promise of vaccines and more reliable testing brings face-to-face meetings closer, but I think the very real savings created by Zoom meetings, as well as the better rate of attendance for many events will keep Zoom competitive. The reduced costs for a business based on home-working, both in terms of the health risks to commuting workers and the high costs associated with town centre HQs will, I am sure, persuade many chief execs to think differently about their future business model.
Human beings are great at learning and evolving. We have been fighting against a dreadful threat to our very existence as a species, but dreadful threats are the kind of evolutionary pressure that stimulates us to adapt and change. As a result of Covid, we are going to be different. Get ready for the future!
I am a Zoom fan. It opens up access to events and will be, in my view, as powerful a force towards diversity and integration as any of the skills we have worked on in the past. Zoom events are readily accessible and avoid the need for waiting for buses in the cold, cramming into inadequate meeting places, or travelling for many hours to attend a fundamentally unsatisfying occasion. Zoom allows people who are sick or disabled to attend on equal terms to most others and it is a great equaliser in that nobody looks very clever or beautiful or well-dressed in a Zoom screen: the need to dress up for meeting people has been eliminated.
If Covid continues in its present devastating form, we could be Zooming for a long time. The promise of vaccines and more reliable testing brings face-to-face meetings closer, but I think the very real savings created by Zoom meetings, as well as the better rate of attendance for many events will keep Zoom competitive. The reduced costs for a business based on home-working, both in terms of the health risks to commuting workers and the high costs associated with town centre HQs will, I am sure, persuade many chief execs to think differently about their future business model.
Human beings are great at learning and evolving. We have been fighting against a dreadful threat to our very existence as a species, but dreadful threats are the kind of evolutionary pressure that stimulates us to adapt and change. As a result of Covid, we are going to be different. Get ready for the future!
