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My 9-year-old Blog
Mar. 25th, 2021 11:06 amNine years ago today, I started this blog. Here is what I wrote then:
https://blogcutter.dreamwidth.org/2012/03/25/
The main topic was introverts and the extent to which our society is geared to introverts - or not. It's strangely prophetic in some ways, although I certainly hadn't foreseen a pandemic lockdown that would last a year, and counting.
I lamented the popularity of the open-office concept that began around the seventies and was probably largely born out of necessity - the huge influx of the Baby Boom generation into the offices of the nation, and a number of other nations too. There simply wasn't enough office space for every worker to have their own private office with a door and windows you could actually open and close.
Fast-forward with a jolt to today's world of masking and self-isolation and maintaining a minimum two-metre distance from your nearest colleague. Goodbye, in-person teamwork and boring all-day meetings with flip charts and Post-it Notes!
An introvert's dream? For some, maybe.
In that same entry, I also decried the death of casual in-person interactions, substituting self-checkout stations, infuriating telephone trees with branches leading to bewildering cul-de-sacs, and demands that everything be done online - shopping, banking, registering for courses, paying taxes, applying for jobs, pensions and official documentation... and much, much more!
Suffice it to say that the above trends have flourished exponentially over the past year.
Just today, I got a helpful e-mail message from Shopper's Drug Mart informing me I could register to be informed when vaccines become available at my local pharmacy. I obediently filled in the online form providing all the pertinent information and confirmed my e-mail address. Then I had to enter a 6-digit code that Shoppers INSISTED it had just e-mailed to me, before the form could be submitted. I waited. And waited. Aaaand wa a ai t e d. Perhaps 20 minutes later I got it and filled it into the little box. And promptly got a message that the code was incorrect.
This is the Brave New World of 2021 that we live in today.
https://blogcutter.dreamwidth.org/2012/03/25/
The main topic was introverts and the extent to which our society is geared to introverts - or not. It's strangely prophetic in some ways, although I certainly hadn't foreseen a pandemic lockdown that would last a year, and counting.
I lamented the popularity of the open-office concept that began around the seventies and was probably largely born out of necessity - the huge influx of the Baby Boom generation into the offices of the nation, and a number of other nations too. There simply wasn't enough office space for every worker to have their own private office with a door and windows you could actually open and close.
Fast-forward with a jolt to today's world of masking and self-isolation and maintaining a minimum two-metre distance from your nearest colleague. Goodbye, in-person teamwork and boring all-day meetings with flip charts and Post-it Notes!
An introvert's dream? For some, maybe.
In that same entry, I also decried the death of casual in-person interactions, substituting self-checkout stations, infuriating telephone trees with branches leading to bewildering cul-de-sacs, and demands that everything be done online - shopping, banking, registering for courses, paying taxes, applying for jobs, pensions and official documentation... and much, much more!
Suffice it to say that the above trends have flourished exponentially over the past year.
Just today, I got a helpful e-mail message from Shopper's Drug Mart informing me I could register to be informed when vaccines become available at my local pharmacy. I obediently filled in the online form providing all the pertinent information and confirmed my e-mail address. Then I had to enter a 6-digit code that Shoppers INSISTED it had just e-mailed to me, before the form could be submitted. I waited. And waited. Aaaand wa a ai t e d. Perhaps 20 minutes later I got it and filled it into the little box. And promptly got a message that the code was incorrect.
This is the Brave New World of 2021 that we live in today.
