Of the various adaptions that have had to be made as a result of the on-going pandemic one having the greatest currency is that of home-working, especially in the field of education. In Italy, as in many other countries, friends who are in teaching have had their work cut out in preparing on-line lessons, marking distanced homework and ensuring that the technology can be accessed by all of their pupils. Most teaching staff have admitted that it is rather more exhausting to teach this way than in a traditional classroom!
(Lucca’s ‘Fosso’ near Porta San Jacopo where one of my teacher friends lives)
Home-working has also diffused itself in many occupations normally conducted in office blocks. Indeed, the UK government’s new encouragement for employees to return to their offices and give up home working has been met with a largely unenthusiastic response, almost as if it were a retrograde step. After all if one looks at the industrial revolution the original trend used to be home-working. It was only when, for example, Hargreaves invented his ‘spinning Jenny’ that factories began to be built and concentrated workers into one space and set up strict timetables.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was found that it makes better economic sense for many jobs to be more productive at home than in some skyscraper? Commuting on crowded and unhealthy public transport systems and traffic pollution could be greatly reduced and the time saved on often considerable journeys would be able to be spent on the work itself. Young families could spend more time with their children and pets. Work could also be rearranged to suit meteorological conditions. For example, if it’s a fine morning why not take a walk and make up for work-time when it’s raining cats and dogs? For me, however, one of the greatest benefits of home-working would be that those ghastly office skyscrapers disfiguring the City of London, like the ‘gherkin’ and the ‘cheese grater’, could be demolished and the urban sky-line restored to its former proportions where historic buildings could finally find their proper places again.
The same arguments would go for shopping. In London during the pandemic we’ve availed ourselves of on-line home deliveries of groceries from the likes of Tesco’s and Iceland and non-food items from such concerns as Amazon. This clearly saved journey time, queuing time and greatly reduced health risks when shopping in stores, especially when we found Covid-19 regulations were applied in some stores with disturbing flexibility.
The use of social media has also considerably expanded during this pandemia. If one is unable to visit friends because of Covid-19 strictures or organise a social gathering then technologies like Zoom can provide an alternative. In particular, Facebook has delivered a life-line for many people.
Which leads me to the question: how much does FB reflect our real-time social environment? How many of our real friends are FB friends and how many of our FB friends are our real friends? In my case I can say that the greater part of my FB friends are not my real friends meaning people I would take the trouble to arrange to visit and enjoy some activity (mainly eating!) together. Obversely, a significant part of my real friends do not use FB or, if they are on FB, do not use it from one year to the next.
FB is, however, useful in helping to select those on-line ‘friends’ one would actually want to meet in real-life. Of the many FB ‘friends’ I have in my list who spend part, if not all of their time, in Bagni di Lucca, it is the majority I have never actually met and am unlikely to meet except by accident. This is because I feel that I could take exception to many comments they make especially those on politics (particularly those two chestnuts, Brexit and Covid-19) or religion. (I will not say here what my views on these subjects are, except that if anyone wishes to know what they are they can refer to my own FB page…)
(An On-Line Lucca Fountain)
Are we then heading towards a world where our contact with work will be mainly via broad-band and our social relationships mainly via media like FB or WhatsApp? Who knows? If it has been difficult for us to adapt to an environment of face masks and (anti)social distancing it could be even more difficult for us to return to a world where we do not have to automatically cover our noses and mouths and where we will actually be able to shake hands, hug and maybe kiss that handful of real friends. After all, my dad would tell me it was much more difficult for him to return to civvy street life after six years in the army than to adapt to a world at war in the first place.