Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo
A Chicago high school student does schoolwork remotely, March 17, 2020.
A number of people have pointed out that we are fortunate in that unlike in the 1918 flu pandemic, we now have countless ways of working and living virtually.
In most office jobs, people can work from home. Thanks to Amazon, we can order essentials online and have them delivered. When movie theaters shut down, we have Netflix et al.
Brandeis, where I teach, has shut down live classes. My students and I did our first class via Zoom this week, and it was great fun. I could see close-up cameos of each student, complete with name prompts. I could display data.
But when this epidemic ends—and it will end—there is a severe risk that we will like virtual all too well.
There is a risk that college presidents will conclude, hey, we don’t need all these live classes, let’s just save a ton of money by going virtual.
There is a risk that cinemas—and symphony orchestras, and theater companies, and dance companies—will go broke during the Corona Depression, and never reopen; that people will become even more extreme couch potatoes than they already are.
Our ability to connect online is convenient, but even before the virus epidemic it was already a plague. Kids were already far too obsessed with social media and video games. Tinder was already crowding out courtship. Online organizing was displacing face-to-face political engagement.
As social beings, we need live contacts. Psychologists have a useful term—“learned incapacity.” The younger you go down the age spectrum, the more people have a learned incapacity for real socialization.
So when this epidemic is finally over, we need to reclaim our precious capacity for real rather than virtual connections with one another.
