Last night I fell asleep, dreaming of the day I would become president of the United States.
Today, I woke up in a world that I never knew.
The New Normal.
If you don’t live in New Zealand, you probably know that the world has been hit by a slight pandemic. One that has forced me to use a tissue instead of toilet paper. News has traveled off the backstreets of Wuhan and into my local radio station, with numbers flashing every 24 hours, as, if we were living through WW2, experienced in the 21st century.
350,000 deaths, 5.5 million cases. People thought that nuclear weapons would be the next cause of world catastrophe, but a bat? Bane was right in his search for vengeance.
But the world is ever-changing and in the 21st century, we can literally live stream the evolution of our species. The New Normal is Change, and before you know it, what will unravel before your eyes are headlines that “The world is different”. Technology companies are affecting change in the areas of Safety, Communication & Privacy in a post-pandemic world.
Is this even clean?
Cleaning has always been a matter of show and tell. If it is clean you know. But what strikes me as change is that we are now living in a society where cleaning is not about rubbing the dust off your desk but killing the germs that you can’t see.
Sanitization is the new X. Strategically placed at almost every supermarket entrance, a dispenser to sanitize your hands. However, while we can protect our faces from our hands with masks how do we know that we have protected our hands from our desks?
After 9-11 the world of travel and airport security dramatically increased legislation and regulation. COVID-19 is about to do the same for the cleaning industry. Fear had struct the hearts of organizations and world governments putting hard laws in place to avoid another catastrophe. Regulation for international travel became so strict, that bringing a 100ml bottle of water is considered potential terrorism and technology wrapped around the idea that more security means more safety. It worked for the travel industry, and now at almost every international airport, you visit you are screened before takeoff.
But unlike flight, cleaning is a decentralized phenomenon. Anybody can clean!
Hotels, Rental cars, shared spaces all sell cleanliness as part of their product, and it is no wonder that major hotel chains are losing 70% of their revenue and Airbnb is caught laying off 25% of their staff. They have no idea how to assure you that you will be safe. People question the validity of cleanliness safety and hotels are left unable to answer the question, “how do you know that they have sanitized my room properly?”
Countries like Singapore and Malaysia have already realized this with local hotel chains partnering up with government agencies to verify that at least at one time they have followed the CDC protocols, and can assure safety to their guests. A good step, but an unbelievable stretch, as assurance comes from the continuous battle against the unpredictable virus. Assurance means certainty, and I won’t be certain unless you sanitized your property today.
What’s worse is that sanitization companies are popping up like mad! Every entrepreneur out there is realizing this cash cow and trying to get involved. Sure our choices have increased, but how do I even know these cleaners are reliable? Did they forget to clean my fridge handles because they are paid by the hour? There is no accountability in a world that’s gone mad!
In my search to find the next big thing, a particular company struct me by its witts. WipeHero does live auditing for all cleaners and hotels. With a backlog of assurance, guests can be fully assured that their office, hotel room, and local bar is cleaned to the regulatory standard. The revolutionary practice of ensuring safety through regulated cleaning is being pushed through this pandemic, and soon cleaning will be the reason you choose to stay at the Hilton or the Marriot across the street.
Like the ratings we see afront many restaurants, we are moving towards a world where cleanliness is regulated. Consumers will be driven by the perception of cleanliness and those that can’t keep up will be left without rapport. For hotels the game has shifted, and no longer will customers be screaming “Location, Location, Location”, but “Safety, Safety, Safety”! COVID is doing to cleaning what 9-11 did to air travel. It’s all about safety.
How is working from home?
Today I was asked 4 times this exact question. “How is working from home?”
With everyone sheltering from the storm like a zombie apocalypse just hit and going outside is now considered a national sin, businesses have looked to adapt to changes in the digital workplace. Through online meetings, digital checklist, and accountability markers, communication through the internet is being transformed in front of our very eyes.
Companies are being forced to allow work from home, and deal with the inefficiencies that arise and employees are forced to learn how to create work-life balance. Companies like Twitter are finding that with the development in online communication and the internet, that work efficiency has not changed. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO has announced that staff is able to work from home indefinitely, and coming to the office is optional.
The evolution of communication has hit another revolution, from the 1930 dial-up telephone to handphones and now virtual meetings. We are fundamentally digitizing the world of sensations and breaking down the barriers of communicating over distances. Email, text messages and facetime has evolved the speed at which we communicate with each other, a truly revolutionary technology.
However, we don’t notice the effect that digital communication has on our psychology. We are re-wiring ourselves to expect quick answers from each other not realizing the lack of emotional context that emails and text messages have. What would take a letter 2 weeks to communicate now takes an email 24 hours to receive an answer. Millennials expect their text messages to receive a reply in under an hour. Oh, the humiliation that it’s been 4 hours and he hasn’t texted me back!
Breaking up over text is the new normal, and working from home is the new casual.
With the hit of COVID-19, and the rush to shelter ourselves from the Apocolypse, we have naturally sped up the inevitable in the culmination of virtual expectation, and dilution of emotion transparency.
Businesses are figuring out how to replicate an office space, and AR will play a virtual piece in this. Facilitators like Zoom and Google are doubling down on providing the best experience for you to socialize online, and even Apple is working on their secret AR project the Apple Glass. We are moving towards a world where emotion will soon be able to be sent as a text message.
What does this mean for you and me psychologically? By the time we find out, it may already be too late.
Big brother is watching you!
Have you ever read the book 1984 or Brave New World? In an alternative universe, we are living it.
Data is everywhere, and infotech is the fastest growing industry today. The problem is that you and I don’t own our own data. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google have securely compiled and stored data, creating our virtual identities. Companies like 23andMe hold the largest records of commercial human DNA samples, and the Chinese communist party has installed traffic light cameras to ensure legislative compliance.
Tech companies are quickly learning your preferences, through your daily conversations and filling advertisements everywhere in your digital world. When the day comes that you and I will be wearing digital glasses and contact lenses, billboards will soon display virtual ads to your unique desires. You will not have to think about whether you can afford it because Mastercard and Visa already knows.
Privacy has always been the talk of the town, and governments are scrapped fumbling on how to protect their citizens. Just take a look at this conversation with Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Congress.
Through Siri, Hey Google, and Zoom technologies, companies are being able to track your tone and facial expressions during your conversations. Data points are being funneled into AI algorithms used to predict the outcome of your next meal or online purchase before overflowing your system with bumps and nudges influencing you to purchase. Every day we are slowly losing control over our own consciousness and surrendering it to the world of capitalism.
Today we might find the convenience of being told what to like, but tomorrow the freedom of consciousness will affect our kids, and they will be nurtured into becoming slaves of infotech. Even governments are not necessarily playing the promotor of cause to ensure that freedom and privacy remain a right. China has influenced its citizens in a race to global power and structured its economy like cogs in a machine.
The new normal is an autonomous one, and big data has shown the power of technological advances. These days we run our eyes through virtual menus and choose delivery fees for the convenience. COVID has fast-tracked our digital collection with you and me stuck in a place far from each other but made to feel like we’re close.
What remains important is the conversations that push forward ideas of safety, communication, and privacy, that shape our economy. Technology is shaping our emotional decisiveness and is influencing the way we think.
The new normal is the changing of self, that of which would change the world.
Legacy. Freedom. Hope. 