Duncan Bell is social distancing
“Online connections may have saved the world during lockdown”
What a year it’s been! The big winners of 2020 in the tech world have been Amazon and, in fact, anyone with a functioning online shop. With an honorary mention going to Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, whose respective consoles must have made them a mint.
The tech losers this year, the cynical might say, would include much of the remaining population of the world. I don’t know about you but I’m knackered. Spied on and over-exposed to news we’d frankly rather not hear, we’ve been left paranoid and exhausted from online political machinations, online bullying and online shopping when there is a huge virtual queue and all you want is a box of nails.
Global rage probably reached a peak during the recent American election – I am saying ‘recent’ on the off chance that its ensuing drama might be over by the time you read this. I don’t care what side of the political divide you are on; there was something to aggravate everyone on social media and rolling news websites.
It always makes me chuckle when I think back to the early days of the internet. Back then, its users genuinely thought it would lead to a utopian society. No, seriously. Early users of the internet were largely academics and liberalminded types with high ideals.
One day, these eejits thought, everyone would have all of history’s collected wisdom at their fingertips. As a result they would inevitably put aside their differences. Well, it was a nice idea.
Another early analogy for the rise of the internet and new tech was that it would be like Star Trek – another utopian vision. So when mobile devices came along that were essentially a communicator and a tricorder in one, this also seemed like a Very Good Thing. As did the subsequent arrival of social networks, which meant you could talk to your friends but also, in theory, to every single person on Earth.
Don’t get me wrong. All of these developments were Very Good Things, in themselves. Alas, the utopia envisaged hasn’t arrived yet because they also brought a lot of new problems that nobody had really considered. And because of, y’know, people. Bloody people.
Still, online connections may have saved the world during lockdown. People need to have human contact – though not too much – and they need to shop. That’s just simple science. When all the world’s lockdowns happened, the internet allowed us all to shop. Okay, once we had reached the end of the ‘virtual queues’, and subject to there being a delivery slot available. Don’t split hairs.
Almost as important, the web let us stay in contact with loved ones. During lockdown, even I joined a family
WhatsApp group. People complain about these kind of social messaging groups because they become a time sink, but I found all you have to do is completely ignore messages that you find irksome or boring. You can even yell about what idiots your relatives are, if you like. You can’t do that in person, unless you are very self confident. It was all very supportive and sanity-saving. I started to quite warm to the whole idea of people coming together through online interaction.
Obviously the second lockdown and political chaos that the latter part of the year brought – just in time for Christmas, yay! – rather took the gloss off of it.
Even then, there were moments that made the internet feel like a utopian and benign force. Perhaps the greatest of these was Trump henchman Rudy Giuliani giving a very serious speech on a bit of tarmac outside a gardening business on a dismal commercial estate.
I don’t care what side of the political divide you are on – we can all enjoy seeing an angry man giving a serious speech on a bit of tarmac in between a crematorium and a sex shop. Before the internet, that wouldn’t have been possible.