Not quite real
IN this COVID-adjusted world we now inhabit, they’re calling it ‘bookshelf envy’.
Anyone involved in any sort of meetings will now be quite experienced in numerous online platforms that enable real-time gettogethers.
Among these, Zoom is perhaps one of the better known.
Full disclosure: like millions worldwide, I’ve become a bit of a Zoom junkie in recent weeks. I’ve even bought a subscription so I can host virtual gatherings — meetings, coffee catch-ups, family gettogethers, games nights — for more than Zoom’s free 40 minutes (although some contend that this 40-minute limit is the world’s single greatest advance in meeting productivity).
With Zoom, you can create a ‘virtual’ background using a palmlined beach scene or your latest holiday snap (remember them?).
However, as for real backgrounds, bookshelves top the list.
Whether to add gravitas or just to impress, they say people are competing to feature the most fulsome library — whether or not any books on show have been read is entirely irrelevant.
I would not be at all surprised if you can download virtual bookshelves just to outdo your colleagues.
The first part of a Zoom meeting — particularly for technical Luddites like me — tends to be taken up in working out how to angle the screen camera: “You’ve got a lovely ceiling but we can’t actually see you!”
Likewise, the mute function can be very problematic.
Savvy hosts tend to put everyone on mute to take control of the meeting but then spend the next 15 minutes reminding participants to un-mute if they want to speak. And if the meeting host ends up on mute and forgets, we can all be up the creek.
On the other hand, some have suggested that the whole issue of not muting — and inadvertently making comments to the whole meeting which others are not meant to hear — is the new ‘Reply All’, with all the ‘joys’ that can create when used in error.
Pets are generally a no-no unless it is show -and-tell time — which, let’s face it, some meetings turn into, such is our desire to lighten things up.
But with such marvellous technology readily available to us, even the most well-run virtual meeting cannot quite replace the real thing.
The first challenge is of course a sound internet connection, which can vary widely — even within the Geelong region.
Even with a stable platform, a virtual meeting cannot easily substitute the convivial banter around the table, or the random conversations that take place on the side that can often be so important.
More significantly, what is largely missing is the body language that, when in an actual meeting, can give so many clues about how people are actually feeling.
Such virtual meetings cannot easily offer genuine expressions of empathy or care, or the post-meeting walk to the car when a colleague may reveal a personal issue or concern.
New York Times writer Kate Murphy recently gave this further perspective: “The problem is the way the video images are digitally encoded and decoded, altered and adjusted, patched and synthesised … Our brains strain to fill the gaps and make sense of the disorder, which makes us feel uneasy and tired without quite knowing why.”
True. Despite not being required to drive anywhere or make a physical effort to attend meetings in person, people I know report how surprised they are at being exhausted after a series of online meetings.
Murphy continues: “To recognise emotion, we have to actually embody it. When we can’t do it seamlessly, as happens during a video chat, we feel unsettled,” concluding that “sometimes it is better to be heard and not seen.”
While not in full agreement with her conclusion — fundamentally, for me it is always good to ‘see’ people — her point is nonetheless valid.
While some social-distancing restrictions are now gradually easing, such virtual meetings will be part of our lives for the foreseeable future.
So we have little option but to make the most of them, while not being blind to their ultimate limitations — a small compromise among so many in this brave new world of ours.