What did we do before Zoom was invented? Or more to the point, how would we cope during the current pandemic without it? I’m booked for three sessions this week, and my wife for another two. It is a wonderful means of sustaining sociability at a time when direct encounters with a group of people are not possible. What will happen, however, when the current crisis is over?
I’m reminded of two famous experiments in communication that turned out to be very short-lived, despite being hailed as tremendous break-throughs at the time. There was a time when an imaginative inventor in Budapest realised that it would be possible to broadcast concerts from the city’s major auditorium, by using simultaneously people’s telephone lines. Sadly, his brainwave came to him on the eve of the dissemination of radio as a popular form of communication. Then, of course, there was the celebrated Pony Express. As a child I can remember the frequency with which this figured in “western” adventures, either in comic books or the cinema. I formed the impression that this was a truly significant feature of the “winning of the west”. It came to me as quite disappointment to discover that, in fact, it only ran for a matter of months before losing out to the railways.
If I worked for Zoom I would be looking over my shoulder!