It may be comforting to some people, as they get older, to think that everything worked out for them just as they had planned; as it may also be comforting, in one’s youth, to believe that one’s life will unfold according to a meticulously drawn plan.
Like all of you, I’ve been coming across more and more articles about how the world is about to change as a result of the pandemic. With titles like “Ten Ways Your Life Will Never Be the Same” or “Twenty Changes Coming to the Workplace”, such articles purport to enlighten us about the post-pandemic world that lies just beyond our doorstep.
I just came back from my morning run and I mean this quite literally: I came through the front door a few minutes ago, went up for a quick shower, grabbed my computer on the way down, flipped it open and started writing the sentence you’re reading. The topic came to me two blocks out (working title: How Do You Make It Stop?) and I had the whole thing outlined in my head by the time I got back.
Social distancing measures have been in full effect for weeks and legions of people have retreated – more or less happily – to the relative safety of their homes. Workplaces and public spaces that used to teem with people lie eerily empty and many employees – fortunate ones for whom telecommuting proved possible – have carried on with their professional lives in a strange virtual world where newly disembodied organizations large and small continue to operate.
What we are attempting, as far as I know, has never been done. Some microorganisms such as yeasts, fungi and bacteria can go completely dormant for periods of time that can stretch over thousands of years, a phenomenon known as super-long anabiosis: a glacier moves in, the bacteria go into a deep freeze; the glacier pulls back ten thousand years later, the bacteria go back to their business.
Ever since I was a teenager, the dojo has been a second home to me. It’s where I do most of my socializing outside of the office. It’s where I clear my mind of whatever may be weighing on me and it’s where I go to exercise and stay fit.
I had lunch, a little while ago, with a friend who had recently vacationed in Japan for a few weeks. As we were waiting for our food to arrive, the sushi chef working close by behind his counter, my friend told me the story of a successful Japanese restaurant owner who had been asked if he had any plans to expand his restaurant—to get a larger space and add more tables.
I asserted a few weeks ago, in my last article, that privacy is everybody’s concern. Everyone seems to agree: Try finding an organization these days – any kind of organization – that doesn’t have a privacy policy.
The kind of social control that monitoring and surveillance make possible can take many forms and benign motivations will always be invoked (indeed, reasons given will always sound very compelling in the moment), but when it comes to the very foundations of individual and collective freedom, the bar should be set very high indeed.
Society as we know it is a vast tapestry of overlapping organizations – some private, some public – that serve to structure human activities and human relationships into an edifice of intricate complexity.
The essay that follows is adapted from the transcript of a keynote address I delivered on September 26, 2019. We have gone, as a species, through a number of transformative technological revolutions.
December 1, 2009. It was on this very day exactly ten years ago that I reported for duty with my new employer. Ten years later, I still work for the same company so today officially marks my 10th work anniversary.
