“Barely a twelvemonth after
from The Horses by Edwin Muir
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.”
This afternoon I missed a panel of illustrious people in my field talking about how best to put our work online. At first, I considered joining … someone in Germany had gathered experts worldwide and I had merely to enter a Zoom code to listen. Further, my field happens to include how to do computer-mediated communication well; these were not just experts, but the right experts. So there was an irony to the fact that by the time they were scheduled to speak I had been in so many online sessions that day that I couldn’t bear to look in.
But my question is bigger and trickier to answer than theirs. I don’t just want to do my work well online while locked down. I want to speculate on the shape of things to come.
For some years, my interest in technology has been influenced by environmental as well as social concerns. Whereas, for some colleagues, inventing new things is a goal in itself, my attention is on the implications. Can we afford to become dependent on big tech for our services, use tonnes of C02 for Google searches, empty town centres with our online shopping, displace jobs with new automation, and focus on our phones instead of the wonders of nature? Put simply, no. Not if we still want a real world to live in…
But suddenly online communication is rescuing us. As most countries across the world get a taste of lockdown, the only way that many of us can see and speak to our families is using virtual meetings software. Work, play and care has gone online. Sitting at the screen has replaced travel, reduced pollution, and saved companies thousands in lighting and heating alone. It has allowed many jobs to continue, at home. It has kept us sane, as theatre, exercise classes and cocktail hours stream into our living rooms. It has provided distraction for kids taken out of school and even some classroom facilities.
There is no going back. But what should forwards look like?
I am going to write elsewhere about caring for neighbours and neighbourhoods. I will also then consider how economic collapse affects our chances of creating a gentler and more attentive world.
Here I am going to stick with what I know about digital tools and using them badly.
The first aspect is using them too much. Sitting. I have learnt to stand for some of my virtual meetings where I have to focus on the screen. I have gone back to phonecalls for variety. I have spread meetings out, because, without walking between meetings, I am starting to get backache. I have begun to appreciate ambient meetings where I can switch off audio and video and do something else, but still be present. I have even learnt how to be on two meetings at a time.
On the plus side, I have participated in things I would have missed from my home. I have started to talk regularly to friends abroad instead of planning visits. I have rolled off my yoga mat and got straight into bed, no journey home to break my mood. I have found beginnings and endings abrupt, but learnt that there are ways of navigating that (check in with each other at outset; linger at the end). And I have watched theatre and films with others, remotely, but coordinated in a way that I had only imagined in the past. The online world is very much to hand…
For me…
I help run a project on social justice that looks at digital divides. It has noted the failures of the UK’s Universal Credit system that supports people with the costs of children, housing, losing their job, managing on low pay, etc. Not only has the system been overwhelmed this month by people losing their jobs, working zero hours, or sent on furlough with no sign of the Government’s bail-out; the system is usually supported by people who understand it in job centres and libraries, all of which are now closed. Some people have found help; some have muddled through. But another group are showing that the online world is a privileged place where skills and access are part of some worlds but not others.
So, if we want this transition to work for us longer term, we have to manage the online fatigue that many people will be experiencing (and the desire to get face to face), alongside the exclusion that will be other people’s take home. We will have to learn from the online nightclubs how to hang out. We will have to find the equivalent of meeting new people standing in the corridors and hallways of conferences. We will have to find a way of having an informal word in someone’s ear that doesn’t need timetabling. And we will have to make that available for all.
I will end with the strangest experience I’ve had in working exclusively through the computer. In another irony, I was attending a workshop on embodied practice. The participants had all been muted for a while to cut down background noise. Then the presenter, a highly-trained and articulate physical therapist, started feeling jumpy. She was used to judging the impact of her words by the response of the people in the room and found the blankness of the computer space intimidating. She could see us, but not feel us. She was talking about steadying nervous systems, without all the feedback that makes it possible. Into that vacuum, she felt anxiety take over. Someone else would not have been so sensitive… or so quick to solve the problem. She unmuted a few of us so she could hear breathing and she was back to normal. Being with her showed me how much we don’t even know we are losing. We will feel the gap, but struggle to know what we are missing. If we are thinking about implications, we need to be careful we have explored the richness of embodied experience to the full.
In a few months’ time or maybe more, the events that have become virtual to survive social distancing will be free to resume their former shape. And we will want to burst back into full dimensions. But there will be economic challenges and environmental pressures. So my question now is: what will we have learnt?
Edwin Muir’s poem ‘The Horses’ .. “Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.”