What Digital Leaves Behind

A new normal means a new relationship with our virtual selves

I have a sense that just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, people were on the edge of realizing the power and danger presented by the digital technologies around us. The 2016 election seemed like a watershed moment for runaway social media. The harmful effects of heavily edited photographs on teenagers were being explored. People were gearing up for a 2020 election season dominated by deep fakes. And then the pandemic happened and changed everything.

The violent transition to a more completely digital life which has taken place over the last several months will likely have effects we will never be able to fully process. Young children will now know their teachers through video calls and their friends through chat boxes. Some jobs which made the transition to “working from home” will never return to the physical office. While the implications of these new modes of interaction on the business and social worlds are likely going to be significant, there is a more pressing question about what this might mean for our humanity at large. Digital technologies, in a very real sense, provide an alternative to the physical layering of society. There is a new depth and breadth to the types of interactions which are possible with digital communities which are both global and instantaneous.

When I was coming up with the idea for Igloo, a co-living house startup that I have been working on, I was interested in figuring out what kinds of tools we can use to transform this digital layer. One of the major drawbacks of the digitization of work that we noticed was that virtual interaction lacked what I’ve termed “collaborative spontaneity”. Because digital tools are so prescriptive about what you can and cannot do, the shift to working from home has severely reduced the ability for people to chat with those around them and harbor spontaneous, conversational ideas. I saw that group living might be a really cool opportunity to transform that interaction. By putting people who might not otherwise have lived together in medium-term living situations, there is the possibility of forming real long-term friendships in ways that are both collaboratively spontaneous and structured by digital technologies.

The post-COVID future of digital technologies will have to make use of both of these things. That means that being anti-technology or afraid of virtualization can no longer work. We’re far past the point of no return. The only thing we can do is treat digitalization with the honest recognition of our own needs as people. Let’s make technologies that actively put us back in the real world. Let’s lean into “low tech” things that make us feel better about ourselves. The other options are almost definitely worse.

If you want to see Igloo for yourself, head to igloo.team and join our winter 2020–2021 cohort!