In the midst of coronavirus lockdowns just about everywhere, I suppose it’s natural for some people to wonder if the Internet can hold up and not collapse under the strain of millions of people suddenly working at home, schooling at home and playing at home, all during the so-called working day and beyond, for an extended period of continuous months.
As someone who works for an organisation that’s all about the resilience of the Internet, I also suppose it’s inevitable that I’d be the one to proclaim, “There’s no risk of the Internet going down anytime soon!” as I did in discussion with Thomas and Sam in the April episode of the Small Data Forum podcast
It’s a good backdrop to our discussion – a riff, really – on how the world of (home) work reflects today’s new normal and what might comes next, once this is all over or, at the very least, diminished.
In the show notes introducing our latest episode, Thomas writes: For all the disruption that the lockdown has brought to the nation (if not the world), for the cast of the Small Data Forum little has changed in the way we work: most of our 34 episodes were recorded “in the Zoom where it happens” (with a bit of Whereby here and there).
Sam is still delivering training on data storytelling and insightful thinking, just now with participants on screen. Neville has been commuting the few meters to the home office for years, and I’m not at all missing the occasional trips to a London WeWork office – video calls do the job just as well.
And isn’t the fall of WeWork and the rise of Zoom (ignoring security and privacy issues for the moment) just the metaphor for our times …
Listen here, right now
Also, head over to our podcast blog to read the rest of Thomas’ excellent narrative show notes with his usual trenchant opinion on the political landscape and links to sources and opinions about some of our discussion topics.
It’s a terrific complement to the audio.
(Photo at top by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash)
