This week Politico published predictions from 34 “big thinkers” about what the future will be like after the coronavirus pandemic. (An associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland argues that “The Reagan era is over. The widely accepted idea that government is inherently bad won’t persist after coronavirus.”)
Others predict a future with voting from mobile devices (and possibly higher voter turnout), and one author even predicts a society that accepts “restraints on mass consumer culture as a reasonable price to pay to defend ourselves against future contagions and climate disasters alike.”
But several also predict the rise of telemedicine, including the editor-in-chief of Reason, who also argues that the epidemic “will sweep away many of the artificial barriers to moving more of our lives online.”
The resistance — led by teachers’ unions and the politicians beholden to them — to allowing partial homeschooling or online learning for K-12 kids has been swept away by necessity. It will be near-impossible to put that genie back in the bottle in the fall, with many families finding that they prefer full or partial homeschooling or online homework. For many college students, returning to an expensive dorm room on a depopulated campus will not be appealing, forcing massive changes in a sector that has been ripe for innovation for a long time.
And while not every job can be done remotely, many people are learning that the difference between having to put on a tie and commute for an hour or working efficiently at home was always just the ability to download one or two apps plus permission from their boss. Once companies sort out their remote work dance steps, it will be harder — and more expensive — to deny employees those options. In other words, it turns out, an awful lot of meetings (and doctors’ appointments and classes) really could have been an email. And now they will be.
Not everyone agrees. Author Sonia Shah argues that “The hype around online education will be abandoned, as a generation of young people forced into seclusion will reshape the culture around a contrarian appreciation for communal life.”
But the president of Vassar College even wonders if the pandemic will be a boon to virtual reality, hoping for a program that helps self-isolated people socialize. “Imagine putting on glasses, and suddenly you are in a classroom or another communal setting, or even a positive psychology intervention.”
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot