Technological Revolution 2020

In the second half of March 2020, I was witnessing a technological phase shift never seen before.

Four years at Skype left aside, my prior understanding of conference calls and video meetings was “wailing and gnashing of teeth”. Participants dropping in and out. Microphones that only work when they shouldn’t. Screen sharing, which works so badly that it’s easier to send everyone a file and ask them to open it from page 267.

Today, people enter virtual meeting rooms with muted microphones (and oftentimes a couple of minutes before the announced start of the meeting). They whose computer’s audio quality leaves to be desired, use headsets. Meeting participants take smoothly turns to share the content of their screens or specific application windows. In the text chat running beside the voice and video, people ask questions from the presenters, vote 👍👎 and share files and links.

Thank you, #covid19.

Of course, the revolution that took just a couple of weeks didn’t actually happen in technology but in the heads of people who adopted the technology. And quite a few of those who have been forced to understand that effective meetings are actually possible without physically meeting each other, will continue that way even after the end of quarantines.

Airlines, naturally, will hate that, but they’ll certainly come up with something. At least those of them who want to remain alive. In the meantime, we enjoy cleaner air and observe, smirking, the conspiracy theorists who maniacally search for another means for spreading the NWO, now that the chemtrails are out.

Originally posted on LinkedIn