MEETINGS: Physical meeting to discuss important business issues or even routine communication with employees is already being replaced by Zoom app. Let us Zoom! It is the new slogan in the business world!

By Rajan Narayan

Even after Covid-19 our lives will continue to be very different. We may not be locked down but may still prefer working from home rather than going to the office. Travelling may come down as people rely on video calls and new platforms like Zoom. Retail shops may disappear with online making them redundant. Above all the world is going to be digital and the digitally challenged are going to be badly affected. …..

THE first revolution in the civilized world is the agricultural revolution. This led to human beings settling down permanently in areas where they could grow their own food. The existing food grains and other food items were used to buy or exchange other items they needed ranging from clothes to agricultural implements and small comforts like may be the first fan or the radio. With the first revolution villages came up and were followed by towns of tradesmen who met the needs of the farmers.
The second revolution is the industrial revolution. With the industrial revolution items of mass consumption could be produced in large numbers in factories on an assembly line. Most of the cotton grown in India was transported by the British to their textile factories in Lancashire in England. With the discovery of electricity and the steam engine the industrial revolution became bigger and bigger.
It was possible to mechanise even agriculture so that labour could be a released to work in the factories. Most of the products we take for granted like clocks and watches, fans and even washing machines, air-conditioners, were the result inventions triggered during the a 2nd World War revolution. The second revolution got a further boost from the 1st and 2nd world wars which provoked inventions like the telegraph service which is now the omnipresent mobile phone. Most of the new products that came up in the 19th and 20th centuries were due to the inventions and more importantly innovations made upon on the discoveries of the second industrial revolution.
Nothing basically changed excepting aeroplanes became bigger, cars faster, fancier, bigger, as roads became wider and smoother, and so humankind had much wider choice in attire and accessories of personal gratification and presentation.
WE are now already in the middle of the third revolution which might change the way our children will live dramatically in the near future which is already here. Covid-19 has only expedited the new technological revolution. Who would have thought even a decade ago that we would be able to not only speak but actually see persona and people in video calling. This reduces the need to visit people physically as you can talk to your parents, children, friends and just about anybody every day and anywhere you want providing there is digital infrastructure set up.
Covid-19, because it is very contagious, has changed the way people live and work. Covid-19 is the first of the epidemics which demand that you maintain a distance of at least one meter between each other to avoid infection. Due to the criminal indifference of Donald Trump, who did not even believe in wearing masks leave alone social distancing, several lakh people are dying in the United States. The lockdown in so severe that the majority of the people are working from home. The concept of going to an office to clock in and work in offices with everyone else is a fast disappearing scenario, at least in most parts of the modern world.
Thanks to the communication infra-structure you may not only work but learn whatever you want from your home. Except of course in countries like India and the third world where we are yet to develop an infrastructure for co-ordinating either work or studies from home. Ironically, even banks in the country and in Goa do not function a lot of the time because their servers are down!
The new digital technology revolution will have a profound effect on the way we live, work, study, shop, travel and eat. We need not spend huge amounts of money buying flats close to work as can and will have to work from home which may be anyway. Even if your office is located at Patto Plaza in Panaji in Goa you need not travel from Pernem or Canacona but work from your own home in your village Andona – providing your communication infrastructure of Internet and mobile phone permits you to do so.

You do not even step out to have a bite for there are online companies galore and the digitalisation of cities and towns and villages anyway means you may order anything you want, be it humble pizza or a speciality four-course meal of any local, national or international cuisine. It will be delivered to your home in minutes or half-an-hour depending on the delivery logistics. Not just food but textiles and electronic appliances and indeed, anything you want and desire, can be delivered to you. This means that you do your shopping on line with Amazon or its clones.
This means you can stay put all the time anywhere and do whatever you want. It means you do not have to travel to school, college, office. This means that you will possibly communicate with other people less and less. It could even lead to virtual dating but perhaps not virtual marriages. Covid-19 or not you cannot maintain a distance of one meter between partners if you want to have babies. There could of course be a hi tech test tube solution to acquiring children. Many of today’s wealthy film stars and celebrities have any number of additional children courtesy donated sperm and surrogate mothers, this includes Amir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Shilpa Shetty and innumerable others.

NEW REVOLUTION

THE new revolution will perhaps reverse the process of globalisation. We thought that we were heading towards the world where every country would be dependent on every other country. At present goods and products are mad e not in the country they were invented in but in countries where they can be manufactured at the cheapest cost courtesy the cheapest labor. Which is why the latest Apple costing more than a lakh is made by Chinese workers paid less than a dollar for your $100 I-phone. This is true of all commodities from planes to shoes now.
The largest manufacturer of footwear in the world is India. Similarly, most of the footballs and tennis balls used worldwide are manufactured in India. The new revolution might lead to either countries becoming self-sufficient or demolish the idea of different countries or nations. Just as India is a confederation of 28 states the whole world may be governed and administered from one city or country depending on its control over the emerging new technologies. Your children and grandchildren may not even live on earth.
According to Bezo, manufacturers of space rockets, it could become possible to put human beings on Mars within the next four years. You have to take Bezo seriously as he is the one who built the new space capsule which took the astronauts from the US and Japan to the space station set up in collaboration by the Soviet Union and the US and many other countries.
To keep up with the technological changes we may have to change our educational systems. The present syllabus even in the most sought after colleges like the IIT might not be relevant to the new worlds and new normal lifestyles we’re moving into. The writing on the wall is already visible and getting clearer. There are 500 vacant seats in the private engineering colleges of Goa. All the syllabus taught to our children from KG to whatever level they want to may become irrelevant. It will not be the apples we eat for breakfast but the computers we use. They will have to learn new skills because petrol and diesel cars will be phased out in the next five years to be replaced by electric cars. You will be finally liberated from extortionate Goan drivers as driverless cars are already on the market in the United States.
There will be dramatic changes not only in the way we live, travel and study and interact, but even in the religions we practice. In the new technological order it will be Facebook and Google who tell us what to do and not Christ, Allah or Ram. Already the social media is deciding who will become presidents and prime ministers. It is alleged that Facebook actively supported Modi and Trump.
In fact, it is social media which seems to be making all the difference in forming opinions and determining not only political changes but even our lifestyles of how we need or want to live. Who would have thought of vegetable meat created in a laboratory which is becoming increasingly popular in the United States? Who would have thought of Ohh chicken idly’ to be launched in Goa soon? Print Media is already dead as everything is online and you don’t need to buy newspapers or television sets because everything is available online. Only the online should work unlike in India. But very soon with a lot of help from Narendra Modi, Reliance will become the Microsoft and Google of India. We might scream at the top of our voice against the 400 MVP transmission line coming up in the middle of the Mollem sanctuary. But the government will bulldoze it through as it is part of the new technological revolution and world . Alvin Toffler who wrote aThird Wave’ predicted that there would be a third and the most powerful revolution of them all. A revolution which would be much more dramatic that the agricultural or industrial revolutions. Clearly the digital revolution which has shrunk our world and changed the way we work, learn and even pray and eat, might compel us to change many of our present habits and dramatically affect the world our children will inherit.