Zoom

Back to the Past: A COVID-Free World

Just when we’ve all barely managed to adjust to this new normal, we are mentally preparing ourselves to get back to some of our old ways. With vaccinations happening all around the world, we have plenty of reason, and hope, to start preparing to re-enter society.

Medical professional administering vaccine to someone

Medical professional administering vaccine to someone

As much as the internet has kept us laughing during these trying times, we are all looking forward to the day where we won’t have to sport a mask. While in-person activities will resume, they will not be without rules and regulations. Even now, as people are getting vaccinated, SOPs continue to be in place. This is because we are still trying to determine how long the vaccines will protect people.

It’s safe to assume that many of us have grown used to working from home, not meeting up with others, and sanitizing our hands (after everything we do). Only one of these things should be held on to in a post-pandemic world. No points for guessing which one.

Jokes aside, it will be strange to once again be in public spaces. The concept of shaking hands and hugging is already in somewhat alien territory. Let’s not even talk about kids who have grown up during this time; they think wearing a mask has always been the norm.

Complain all you must about those never-ending video calls, but the fact is that if it weren’t for them, we would have had zero contact with the outside world. While we’re still on the topic, apparently 30% of us don’t even bother changing into professional attire to take these calls. Don’t Zoom in too close!

Photo of four men dressed in professional shirts but just undergarments on the bottom half of their bodies. It says "Me and the boys ready for Zoom."

Photo of four men dressed in professional shirts but just undergarments on the bottom half of their bodies. It says “Me and the boys ready for Zoom.”

On a more serious note, even the economy seems to have acclimated to the pandemic. One company, in particular, has managed to secure a place in the history books during this unprecedented time. Zoom has been the go-to for all things work-, birthday-, and anniversary-related.

Interestingly, this piece from Colin Lankshear bears testament to the same. Talking about the features of what he calls a ‘new capitalism’, there is one aspect that stands out in particular.

He says, “sources of productivity depend increasingly on the application of science and technology and the quality of information and management in the production process.”

He goes on to state that the greatest innovations during the past thirty years have led the way for improved productivity.

The kicker, if you’d like to know, is that Lankshear wrote this in 1997.

What we can infer from this is that if the economy was so reliant on technology back then, we can only imagine what that means in the present. Two main things to factor in are:

  1. Technology has come a long way since 1997, and
  2. The pandemic has only fueled our dependence on it.

Pandemic or no pandemic, the world was already in the grips of technology. The past year of working and surviving under lockdown has proven that productivity has not only been stable, it has even risen in some cases.

More importantly, this leads us to understand the importance of communication. No matter what the situation, the exchange of information is what will keep us, and the world, going. Ultimately, it is the one thing that will, without a doubt, shape the future.

How the Pandemic Has Changed Classroom Etiquette: Will In-Person Class be the Same?

A couple weeks ago, I was logged in my Colonial and US Literature Zoom class when the chat started blowing up.  A number of my classmates were engaging with the material in a nonconventional way. They were memeing with the class content.

Watching the events of class unfold got me thinking about how the pandemic has revolutionized school. Students wouldn’t say what they were saying in the chat in an actual classroom. In less than a year, a new school etiquette has formed.

Now with school being done virtually, students log in, mute themselves and turn off their camera. A lot of the time, the only person visible to the class is the professor. Hardly any students speak in class; the professor talks to black screens with student’s names. The chat feature is popular and contributing to the class via chat is acceptable now.

While ruminating about online class, I began to worry about the eventual transition back to normal, unrestricted in-person classes.

There is no chat feature in the classroom. Students cant mute themselves, turn off the camera and walk away. Will students be able to sit around others, look them in the eye and participate in person? I sure do hope so.

Nicholas Carr discusses the internet and it’s implications on our brain and life in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr addresses some concerns about the internet that I share. He too fears that humans have become too reliant on the internet, and in effect, humans do not perform intellectually like they used too. But thankfully Carr also offers us hope. Habits learned from the internet are not permanent:

The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers have discovered that that’s not the case. James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind “is very plastic.” Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. “The brain,” according to Olds, “has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.”

I’m sure we will readapt and adopt a classroom environment similar to before, but perhaps we won’t. Either way our brain will adapt, and school will go on.