DIGITAL LIFE | COVID-19
Is the Future a Thing of the Past?
Corona, the cosmos and these strange digital days
An interesting feature of the present is that we’re all time travelers now. I can’t believe we’ve spent over two entire years like this. None of us can. I’m hardly the first to point it out, but the “Tiger King” phase of Corona feels as though it was a decade ago. Vigorously wiping down all of our food and groceries with disinfectant wipes feels like a distant memory. They feel like memories from a different world, from this very brief limbo period when it was okay not to be okay. Maybe I just imagined it; it didn’t last for very long.
But 7.7 billion routines were all upended simultaneously. It felt like walking into a brave new world. It felt different enough for us to maybe, finally, transcend the ills of our old world. It’s ironic that a pandemic could do that to us. It was painful growing to accept that little of it could last — little besides our inflated prices, our heightened neuroses, and an over-saturation of the N-95 masks that conceal the few smiles we have left. The tombstones are here to stay as well; we’ve surpassed one million. It’s all a standard part of our routine now.
What felt in March of 2020 like something we could never grow used to had worked its way into our…
