Let us face another harsh truth from the world pandemic: We fear technology.
Yes we do. It is fine to organise meetings online, to play around with backgrounds and discover new features of software applications. Technology companies have had a field day during the pandemic, and for sometime we could feel that they and us are now finding common grounds to continue working together.
But when it comes to our privacy, and feeling invaded about it, we become less prone to open ourselves, our households (which in cases like mine also means letting children use online technologies) to the promised wonders of technology.
We can feel in control when we ask Alexa@ questions, when it is us who call to an online meeting and decide to switch off our speakers or cameras, to leave or terminate conversations.
But if something goes wrong, connection speed is slow, there is an unexpected guest, or even our own appearance gets noticed (for good or bad), the surviving animal mentality could quick in. The ideal of working from home, avoiding traffic, being able to decide when or how to interact with others, gets blurred. At this point, we are all hostage to our instinctive fears. As if we are called to question or scrutiny, and there is nowhere to escape.
Fear could then take centre stage. And to this, we could have two options: a) To accept that things are deemed to happen in unexpected ways, and plan to reduce possible failures, to breathe. Or b) to curse or blame the technology, ourselves, our governments, the pandemic.
These options are not mutually exclusive. But they could reveal that we are still far from learning to live in a new world that is full of uncertainty, fragility, a world that ask us to be bit more compassionate with ourselves and others.
I feel fear myself, I have been there, still do and will do. But maybe I am slowly learning not to see the problem as only residing 'out there', and slowly learning to laugh at myself.
And you?
