I don’t know if that reference is only relevant to Boomers, geeks, geeky boomers, or geeky Gen Xers. In any case, the world is about to reboot.
We are fixing to see (now, I know that’s an old time Southern phrase) what happens when we all start working at home as well as seriously curtailing our and our children’s extracurricular activities. FOR MONTHS. People: MONTHS!
This is not a two-week delay-of-game. I believe Japan has been working at home since January 25th. Their schools are still closed, too. They are heading past 6 weeks and into 8 weeks of socially isolating. We are probably looking at similar time frames.
It’s a hard reboot on the world’s society in order to flatten the curve and save lives! So what is going to happen? Good question! As one of the people who said NO WAY! WE DO NOT NEED THE WORLD WIDE WEB! WE HAVE GOPHER AND FTP, I feel uniquely qualified to throw some ideas out there. Also, that was at the beginning of my grad career, and now I have tenure. So I’m extra fancy smart now. ((Note: I am not))
But I do see a few things positives that may develop from this hard reset:
1) We are going to be less busy running all over town driving our kids and ourselves to appointments. While that may sound horrible to you, I for one look forward to slowing down.
2) Our work is going to get down to the essential components. (I hope) All the fluff that justifies some middle managers may (PLEASE) be deemed unnecessary as we do what needs to be done to keep this world running.
3) We’re going to learn how to enjoy our neighbors, our neighborhoods, and even–gasp!–our families. A walk around Plaza-Midwood yesterday was packed, even when we kept our social distance
4) Finally, for now, we’re going to help the environment by learning that telecommuting actually works. Pollution is down in China. Venice’s streams are clear. If we can figure this out–keeping socially connected while working at home–we might be able to save the planet as well as our fellow humans.
This is the positive outlook. We’ll see what happens after we’ve been home for a few more weeks.