Easterine Kire
The reduction of life to digital meetings still makes me nervous. There are so many additional things to remember when going for an online event. On top of it all, how intimidating it is to be greeted by a sea of faces on your screen, all of whom seem to know what to do, except you. And the feeling never leaves you when you start speaking that you are maybe, only talking to yourself. You feel a bit of a fool trying to explain issues to a computer screen. I’m sure I am not the only one who thinks digital meetings are surreal, and no matter how hard one tries, nothing can beat physical meetings. I do see the advantages of digital platforms for institutions. Webinars save them loads of money, especially on hospitality since they no longer have to pay the air fares of speakers and put them up in fairly reasonable hotels. Now universities and colleges simply reach out, cast nets and haul them in. More likely than not, there would be a few reluctant speakers in the net. But the institutions can fulfil their quota of webinars with the reluctant. Surprisingly, no one thinks of paying speakers at a webinar in spite of the speakers having spent many hours preparing for the session.
Organisers seem to forget that screen time is different from real time. At physical meetings, there is time to pause, look at the audience and gauge their interest, and continue speaking. There is time to throw out a thought and wait for audience reaction so that the speaker can digress upon the response he gets. When he gets a question from the audience, he can ponder on it for some seconds and then come back with an intelligent answer. None of this is feasible at a digital meeting. People are in a hurry, and fifteen seconds of silence is too long. It is somewhat like shooting a movie. Every moment has to be action packed, every second accounted for. Okay, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but a half hour on screen needs much more material to fill it than a half hour in front of a physical audience.
I admire those people who take it all in their stride. Got your pass code? Mute, unmute, share video, screen share, and all that. Last year, when webinars started off, a teacher complained that people left their camera on and multitasked while the webinar was going on. They cooked food, spoke on the phone, washed clothes and more. This year, the complaints are fewer, but people do leave a meeting abruptly, which I thought rather rude. (Why attend in the first place?)
I understand that the world is moving more and more towards a digital presence, and we are increasingly being made to embrace netizenship. Fine. And in the 21st century we are learning to adapt to new ways of doing things. So be it.
But there are some ideas and practices that should not be embraced so quickly and readily without question. I mean the practices that interfere with human lives. Perhaps the world is moving much too fast and therefore, governments are not getting time to think carefully over life and death decisions before making them. I truly think we are in great danger of leaving our humanity behind in the race to embrace newness or whatever the politically correct term is. The news that 200 dogs were airlifted at Kabul airport while hundreds of Afghans who had worked for the British government were left behind, screams a big question at where our sense of humanity has gone.
Sam Ashworth-Hayes, who wrote an excellent piece on the matter warned, ‘Sentimentality unchecked can cause people to behave in deeply evil ways.’ The UK government bent to heavy domestic pressure to airlift the dogs, with no thought of human lives forfeited. I do love animals, but in that situation, does not conscience dictate what choice to make? We are living through such a time when governments would process papers for animals but hesitate to do so for human beings. It should shock us and it should make us protest such actions. Do we mute when we read about such things happening in our day and time? Or do we unmute?
