A TECH NIRVANA? NOT SO MUCH

If I were to write a science fiction novel based on the coronavirus pandemic I might start with a sinister premise: global technology corporations unleash a deadly virus on the world, knowing the only sensible public health response will be to order everyone to stay inside their homes, physically distant from each other. There people will be forced to rely on their computers, their smartphones, streaming services, WiFi, online school and shopping, and the Internet and satellites that support them. Normal business and commerce will be disrupted, but the tech giants will rise to rule forever! BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

 

One vision of a tech future: READY PLAYER ONE

Unfortunately, even without the conspiracy theory, this is the effect of stay-home orders all around the world—the developed world, at least. Even people who may never have attempted a video chat in their lives before are now downloading any number of apps and blithely chatting away with friends and family as if they’ve been doing it forever. I myself could use Skype, Facetime, Facebook Messenger Live Chat or Houseparty to chat, and I’ve had to fend off requests to participate in Zoom and another app (which I can’t remember) because others prefer those. I’ve resisted, arguing that, really, how many platforms do you  need to have a conversation? My doctor’s office called yesterday and insisted I add yet another app so he could charge me for an unnecessary annual check-in by teleconference. *sigh*

Then there is my television, which is a veritable cornucopia of temptation right now, with all the various streaming services offering free trial months to get me hooked under the guise of “community service” during the pandemic. Right.

I consider myself to be relatively tech-savvy for someone of my age cohort. I’m a skiffy rommer, after all, and used to thinking in futuristic terms. But I still carry a flip phone, not a smart phone. I read my emails and scroll through Facebook on the laptop or my iPad, because it’s easier to see on the bigger screen. 

That's because there are limits to technology for older folks, even though some 70 percent of us are online and using technology on a regular basis, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. We still need brighter lights, better colors and bigger text on our devices, and we often have problems when every new upgrade or app needs a whole new skill set. And those of our age cohort who are tech-savvy are the wealthiest, most urban and best educated among us, according to a study by the National Science and Technology Council.

This is all to say that I fear a large number of folks are being left out of the virtual Brave New World, many of them older.  I’ll give you an example. I got a call from a retired friend of mine, a well-educated, urbane professional woman who had worked in the communications industry for many years. She’s single, my age, living in a large city. She was going nuts sitting at home alone. She is not tech-savvy at all, not on social media, and was decrying the fact that she had downsized in preparation for a move and given away all her books. Now she had nothing to read. 

She was resistant to the idea of ebooks, even though she can’t go to a bookstore or a library, and really can’t start stacking up paperbacks again. She was resistant to the idea of video chatting, though she has a smartphone. But social isolation is a real problem for her in this time of #stayhome. And I’m sure she’s not the only one. I can’t imagine what it’s like for those who are not educated or well off.

Still, that’s just the older folk. What about people in rural areas, who have no access to the Internet? Here in my part of Western North Carolina, for example, we are lucky to have had a small company that provides excellent broadband service, through line-of-sight signal beamed from a central server on a nearby mountaintop. We serve as a local hub for the houses in our little community. 

But that company had to sell out to a larger company in Asheville because of competition from the electric coop in our area, which recently got a major grant from the Federal government to supply fiber optic Internet service to rural households. Ironically, that slowed expansion of service to new areas of the county WAY DOWN, not coincidentally because the company doing the installation is owned by a relative of the man in charge of the coop. We are in no hurry to be added to the coop’s expansion list. We’ll stick with what we have, thank you.

So, a lot of rural kids can’t do their homework online; a lot of rural folk can’t get Netflix or Prime Video or free online tours of the National Parks or museums. They’re stuck doing what rural folk have always done: farming, gardening, playing music on the porch, riding horses, playing in the creek.

It’s worth mentioning, too, that Netflix and Prime Video don’t come for free, either. Poor families, no matter where they are, can’t afford them, especially if they’ve lost their jobs in the coronapocalypse. And anyone who thinks poor inner-city kids have access to computers to do their homework online is fooling themselves.

Finally, I’ve oriented my post to the problems around tech here in the U.S. Multiply those problems when considering the Third World—Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, rural India. Not only do you have a lack of the income and the hardware to access the Internet, you have a lack of electricity at all in many places.

There’s a flaw in the thinking that envisions a rosy tech-dominated future. Repairing that flaw would mean addressing age and class divisions and overcoming the disparities of geography, not only here in our own country, but also worldwide. The tech giants may be geniuses, but those are challenges I’m not sure they are equipped, or willing, to handle.

Cheers, Donna