OnlySubs: Back to Normal: We Tried the Zoom Experiment

We constantly hear how we’re never going back to normal, that we have to go to some “new normal.” This is a reflexive statement, not a truth, that becomes true or false according to whether or not we believe it (we shouldn’t). Perhaps the most conspicuous interface of this so-called “new normal” is video conferencing by apps like Zoom (and Skype, etc.). In this episode of James Lindsay OnlySubs, my subscribers-only podcast, I go through my own experience adopting this approach for a great deal of human connection and business, then being invited and able to travel (despite Covid restrictions) and to do things in person, and the difference is stark. Our “new normal” can involve Zoom, but it cannot be Zoom-dependent. There’s too much in the realm of human connection that gets lost. Join me here to hear my discussion of this issue and my experience with it, including how doing things in person again showed me just how much less human, thus damaging, placing Zoom at the center of our networking experience really may be.