hat a year it’s been!
The big winners of
2020 in the tech world
have been Amazon
and, in fact, anyone with a
functioning online shop. With an
honorary mention going to
Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony,
whose respective consoles must
have made them a mint.
The tech losers this year, the
cynical might say, would include
much of the remaining population
of the world. I don’t know about
you but I’m knackered. Spied on
and over-exposed to news we’d
frankly rather not hear, we’ve been
left paranoid and exhausted from
online political machinations, online
bullying and online shopping when
there is a huge virtual queue and all
you want is a box of nails.
Global rage probably reached a
peak during the recent American
election – I am saying ‘recent’ on
the off chance that it might be over
by the time you read this. I don’t
care what side of the political divide
you are on; there was something to
aggravate everyone on social
media and rolling news websites.
It always makes me chuckle
when I think back to the early days
of the internet. Back then, its users
genuinely thought it would lead to
a utopian society. No, seriously.
Early users of the internet were
largely academics and liberal-
minded types with high ideals.
One day, these eejits thought,
everyone would have all of history’s
collected wisdom at their fingertips.
As a result they would inevitably
put aside their differences. Well, it
was a nice idea.
Another early analogy for the
rise of the internet and new tech
was that it would be like Star Trek- another utopian vision. So when
mobile
devices came
along that were
essentially a
communicator and a
tricorder in one, this also
seemed like a Very Good
Thing. As did the subsequent
arrival of social networks, which
meant you could talk to your
friends but also, in theory, to every
single person on Earth.
Don’t get me wrong. All of these
developments were Very Good
Things, in themselves. Alas, the
utopia envisaged hasn’t arrived yet
because they also brought a lot of
new problems that nobody had
really considered. And because of,
y’know, people. Bloody people.
Still, online connections may
have saved the world during
lockdown. People need to have
human contact – though not toomessaging groups
because they become a time sink,
but I found all you have to do is
completely ignore messages that
you find irksome or boring. You can
even yell about what idiots your
relatives are, if you like. You can’t
do that in person, unless you are
very self confident. It was all very
supportive and sanity-saving. I
started to quite warm to the whole
idea of people coming together
through online interaction.
Obviously the second lockdown
and political chaos that the latter
part of the year brought – just in
time for Christmas, yay! – rather
took the gloss off of it.
Even then, there were moments
that made the internet feel like a
utopian and benign force. Perhaps
the greatest of these was Trump
henchman Rudy Giuliani giving a
very serious speech on a bit of
tarmac outside a gardening
business on a dismal commercial
estate, seemingly due to a
misunderstanding about which
‘Four Seasons’ was meant to have
been booked.
I don’t care what side of the
political divide you are on – we can
all enjoy seeing an angry man
giving a serious speech on a bit of
tarmac in between a crematorium
and a sex shop. Before the internet,
that wouldn’t have been possible.“Online connections
may have saved
the world during
lockdown”
much – and they need to shop.
That’s just simple science. When all
the world’s lockdowns happened,
the internet allowed us all to shop.
Okay, once we had reached the end
of the ‘virtual queues’, and subject
to there being a delivery slot
available. Don’t split hairs.
Almost as important, the web let
us stay in contact with loved ones.
During lockdown, even I joined a
family WhatsApp group. People
complain about these kind of socialW
DECEMBER 2020 T3 29Opinion
Duncan Bell is
social distancing
Think of the internet like fire - it can do
terrible things, but it can do great things too