If there has been one silver lining in the Covid crisis, then it has to be technology. With the pandemic-lockdown, things would have ground to a halt had it not been for that one thing. Ecommerce stepped up and filled in the vacuum created by shutdowns and social distancing in the market. Drones were used for sanitization in Delhi and aided the police to monitor the lockdown in Punjab. Contact tracing meant that governments could keep track of citizens who had Covid. Israel sent alerts to those who were in proximity to Covid infected thanks to the wonders of GPS.
Video collaboration zoomed and ensured that offices would engage with each other as best as they could, meetings and decision making would continue and the company wouldn’t come to a virtual standstill. It also aided schools and colleges. Students complained of the stark coldness of the screen as compared to the warmth of friends in the campus, but that was still much better than sitting at home, doing nothing and getting on the nerves of parents. Insurance agents met clients on video calls, got them to fill online forms and new policies continued unabated.
OTT players like Netflix, Prime and Disney+ Hotstar ensured that the shutting of malls and cinema halls would be at least bearable. Regional OTTs saw to it that there would be no language barrier. Every Indian would be entertained. All this has ensured that 2020 will be remembered as the real beginning of the Work From Home Era. The mobile workforce got a fillip and the flexibility that employees now have is manifold. Telemedicine can take care of at least the first doctor’s appointment to know if something is serious or not.
It has been proved that we can both work and get entertained in the cloud world. There are millions of data centers in the world and their numbers will only grow. The amount of data flowing in has increased in the Covid era, but analytic tools are getting more powerful and Artificial Intelligence will be able to take care of a huge lot of problems in the future.
Delivery. Surveillance. Planning. Photography and film shooting. The things you can do with drones are endless, especially in war zones and hazardous areas. They may rule in just a couple of years. Driverless cars could lead to mobile rooms that could be used for anything. Virtual Reality could transform both office collaboration and remote education.
Digitization has been speeded up along with digital transformation. While one aspect of Covid is the tragedy which is unfortunate and cannot be denied, the other side is that it has already ushered in a new technological era which we have called the New Normal which in fact is Normal 2.0.
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