Covid-19 and a lagging step of the Digital Revolution

Computers are great. Internet is great. It has been a revolution for human life. But despite the potential to revolutionise work and employment, a large part of that revolution just didn't happen. The technology is there, but the human mind lags. Covid-19 might be what triggers that step

I am talking about so-called white-collar work, office and administration. People still spend hours commuting to their offices and meetings. Companies still spend a fortune on large office buildings.

Don't they see how foolish they are?

Offices are obsolete, or ought to be obsolete. For over a decade, the office is superfluous in most cases. Equip the employees with a laptop, internet, and perhaps a telephone, and then they can work from home. Documents can be shared online, meetings can be held online, essentially everything in the work of an office can be handled that way. People don't have to spend an extra 10-20 hours every week on going to and from work, that saves money and releases a lot of extra time for the individual.

For companies and public authorities it would save money. They don't need to maintain huge buildings on expensive land for the purpose of administration.

It would also contribute to a better environment. After all, the pollution generated by traffic is enormous. That is a huge problem that is never attacked from the right angle. Everywhere they just try to apply more efficient traffic planning, building more bridges, more trains, more everything, when the only reasonable solution is to diminish the traffic – to reduce the need for people to travel so much in their everyday life.

I know that some of you would protest now: “What about the social life at work? How to manage without it?”

If we consider human life in an historical perspective, we must ask ourselves if such a social life is really natural. Employment society, where people are going somewhere to work is a recent innovation, and it brings many disadvantages. People lived and worked more or less in the same place and the major social life took place in the family – which both lived and worked together. This created a strong bonding, which contemporary families lack. Where people are spending almost all their non-sleeping time apart, together with other people, bonding will occur elsewhere and the family will continue to decline.

Another huge winner from a development in this direction is education. With a consistently applied digital revolution, schools, as we know them, would also be obsolete. This is especially advantageous for higher education, where it would save students a lot of money if they can manage their studies from home. Just imagine attending a university abroad, anywhere, from home! It wouldn't give the experience of living abroad, but it would make this sort of studies possible also for those who have limited financial resources.

(I am aware that this cannot apply to everything. For instance: you cannot learn surgery only over the internet. But the exceptions are comparatively few.)

Covid-19 has generated the concept we all know as “social distancing”, which means that, in order to reduce the risk for infection, people should avoid meeting in person. This has triggered steps in the direction I have been sketching above. Offices are re-organised so the work can be handled digitally from home. Even governments have started to think along these lines, not only in the developed world: on the 26th March 2020, the Egyptian government held its first virtual cabinet meeting!

The present crisis has become a breakthrough for a, to a large extent, missing step in the digital revolution, a step that should have been taken long ago. Just let's hope that some of these changes remain also when the crisis is over.

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