In some ways, a pandemic is the ideal proof-of-concept for the particular utopia that the tech industry has tried to build. Social distancing plays to digital technology’s immediately tangible strengths: ubiquitous and sanitary access to other people, maximum convenience, broad consumer choice, and endless entertainment at low cost. As the coronavirus brought countless global systems to a halt, the internet kept working, heroically filling the gaps. Some longtime critics of the tech industry, having spent much of the past decade complaining about its toxicity, seemed ready to acknowledge a silver lining if not praise it outright.
But rather than prove that nearly anything is possible with an internet connection, the quarantine is calling attention to what digital technology can’t do. It was easier to think of the domestic cozy, online-first existence as not only possible but preferable when it was strictly a lifestyle choice. Being forced to live it, many of us are now discovering how much of the physical world we have taken for granted. Without distinct places for doing different activities like work and exercise, and bombarded by an accelerated news cycle, we’re losing our sense of time as well as space. Spatial variation helps structure the rhythms of everyday life and without the structure imposed by commuting, gathering with friends, and doing errands outside the house, days blur together and scheduling begins to feel arbitrary.
Read more: Home Screens, Drew Austin, Real Life Mag, April 27, 2020.
