Coronavirus - when the future arrived early

How we miscalculated our surprising entry into a more sustainable, tech driven future

3 - 5 min read

In light of covid-19 I, like many in the world, am working from home. Whilst on the one hand this has made me much more productive, it has also sent me down a plethora of internet wormholes. In one such wormhole, I discovered that this week Jared Leto emerged from a 12-day silent meditation retreat and re-entered into a very different world from the one he left. Having had zero communication with the external world, I can only imagine how dystopian stepping into abandoned streets and empty supermarkets must have felt without the media build-up to provide the context. 

In 12 days our entire day-to-day lives have been tipped upside down. Personally, my concerns extend only as far as being moderately irritated that I paid for a 30-day unlimited Triyoga pass just three days before the studio shut.  But I know that I’m lucky. For others the prospect of children at home whilst balancing a full time job is the stuff of domestic nightmares; and I can only express heartfelt support for those separated from vulnerable loved ones.

Unlike Jared Leto, the rest of us have been exposed to both the Covid-19 pandemic and, what the World Health Organisation describes as an infodemic, or the excessive amount of information concerning a problem so the solution is made more difficult. This has roughly played out in the UK as panic buying loo roll, or Turmeric if you’re in the Cotswolds. However, it has also bought us a little time to make preparations for a mass working from home (wfh) culture. 

In the UK, most offices have been closed since Monday.  However, even four days in I can’t help but feel that all the futurists’ forecasts and “vision of the future - the world in [insert arbitrary decade]” whitepapers are unfolding before our eyes. Read any well regarded report on the topic and you will see various beautifully rendered images of immaculately coiffed people in autonomous pods dialing into hologram conference calls. In these futures we all have entirely connected lives, where we won’t even have to order our items and collect them from the nearest click and collect point. Instead smart devices in our cupboards will know when we need to restock any item before automatically and seamlessly delivering the replacement via a driverless pod straight into our home. Our data will be our biggest asset. Our services will know so much about us and our wants and needs that we will no longer lose hours trawling through ASOS or Netflix to find the right choice. Everything will be served directly to us in a voice and tone that appeals to our tastes and values. Interactions with tech will become even more invisible, but all the more critical to our day-to-day functioning. In this future we will live almost entirely online. Which is where we’ve accidentally been catapulted by covid-19 - working from home and relying on Zoom and good WiFi.

The trouble is - the future is fiction. We can map scenarios based on analysis of current trends and drivers to make informed predictions but that doesn’t make them real. However, saying something out loud (or in a whitepaper) gives a prediction a much higher chance of becoming reality. I’m convinced the inventor of Find My Friends was inspired by the Marauder’s map. 

Thanks to Coronavirus, we’re conducting business from our sofas. We’re not commuting or travelling abroad and already seeing pockets of improved air quality as a result. We’re consuming less, buying only what we need (albeit not in a sensible fashion) and speaking only to those we truly care about. 

We’ve crash landed into a version of a more sustainable, tech driven future. But, we miscalculated. For some there is simply no choice - their jobs cannot be completed online. Cleaners, plumbers, doctors, catering staff, emergency services, nursery school teachers, delivery drivers, construction workers, factory staff, mechanics, transport services - the list goes on and on. The professions that allow us to function smoothly and safely at home are the very ones that are being most acutely impacted. We may have arrived in our whitepaper future, but we accelerated headlong into it and forgot to put our seat belts on. 

Coronavirus is of course devastating, but it has afforded us a snapshot of what the future could look like if our stakeholder mapping and scenario planning is even slightly off. Now it’s time to recalibrate and consider a future that supports everyone.

As mobility companies we have a unique and valuable opportunity to reassess exactly how we want to play our part in shaping the future. There is a high chance that we will all emerge bleary eyed and squinting from our social distancing with a new perspective on how we move from A to B, who we want to spend time with and how willing we are to travel for our work. We can make predictions based on trends, but we cannot possibly predict how events will change societal behaviour. It gives me tremendous faith that, so far, many of our work conversations have not focused on the potential loss of productivity, but concerns for each other’s well-being, mental health and possible loneliness.

The doom and gloom has been beautifully complimented by an explosion of creativity within communities. In the virtual world; yoga teachers are turning to Zoom, AA meetings are going digital, museums are offering us virtual tours. Meanwhile in real life, supermarkets are ensuring the first hour of opening is reserved only for the elderly and neighbours are corralling to look out for those less mobile or in need of childcare help.  

We’re confronting a global challenge but acting very locally. Perhaps by pivoting away from the outlook of  increasing urbanisation and focussing instead on building and serving communities we can safeguard our future for everyone? 

We wrote the “The vision of the future” whitepaper and have found ourselves living it. It’s rapidly becoming evident that, on this occasion, we got it wrong.  Now it’s time to go back to the drawing board and substitute personalised quinoa for humble pie - in order to, at the very least, ensure we can support the inevitable “Quaranteens” in 18 years time*. 

*Quaranteens - the baby boomers resulting from self-isolating shenanigans