Businesses closed, anxiety levels rose, vacations were cancelled, and bread flour was in short supply. The pandemic has altered the world in many ways, big and small, and left many people longing for life to return to normal. Yet even if an effective COVID-19 vaccine arrives quickly, the world and the way we live has been permanently altered. Futurist Erica Orange offers a look at some of the key shifts in our new normal… 

Technology

The age of robots is upon us. Pre-pandemic, if you interacted with a ­robot, it was probably a toy or vacuum. 

The pandemic both increased people’s acceptance of robots and proved that robots can take on new roles. ­Robots checked patients’ temperatures at a hospital in South Korea and disinfected hospital rooms in the US. In one Boston hospital, a doglike robot carried an iPad around a triage area so that doctors could safely interact with patients. 

Big companies are making major investments in robots to serve in roles where they will interact with humans. Example: Walmart is “hiring” robots to stock store shelves, scan shelves for out-of-stock items and clean floors. What Walmart does, other retailers follow. 

Virtual reality will become mainstream. Virtual-reality goggles, which simulate real environments by positioning high-definition screens in front of the eyes, aren’t just for video gamers anymore. Products such as Oculus Rift, which consists of an optical and auditory headset, touch controllers for your hands and movement sensors, are catching on as a way to “travel” from home. 

Before the pandemic, virtual-­reality “travel” was largely considered a gimmick. When the pandemic ruined 2020 travel plans, downloads of virtual-travel apps doubled in a matter of months—people were taking mini virtual-reality vacations. 

Real-world travel will rebound, but crowded airplanes and tourist destinations won’t feel as safe as before, and the economic tumult of 2020 will cause many people to trim travel budgets. As the technology improves, virtual-reality travel seems certain to grow. 

Virtual-reality nature is likely to become popular, too. The psychological benefits of spending time in nature—­reducing stress and boosting mood—are well known. A recent study in Frontiers in Psychology found that spending time in a virtual-reality nature simulation provides remarkably comparable benefits. That could be tremendously useful for people whose urban homes, busy lives and/or mobility issues make it difficult to be in real-world natural settings. 

Activities 

Cooking will stay hot. People have taken up a range of at-home ­activities to fill their time during the pandemic. Creative cooking—and, with it, the joys of family dinners—seems likely to maintain its new popularity. There’s an endless supply of recipes and cooking videos online and, unlike most hobbies, home cooking usually saves money. 

Socializing will return—but in different ways for different people. Many people will steer clear of crowded places at least until there’s an effective vaccine. But by 2022, it’s likely that most people will be happily spending time together again. Humans are social animals, and nothing changes that. Smart businesses will create options that cater to people who want to go out but don’t want to be in other people’s faces. Many restaurants and bars will add or expand their outdoor dining and drinking areas. Walmart recently converted some of its parking lots into drive-in movie theaters, which may inspire other big-box retailers to also leverage space in new, creative ways.

Younger Generations

Today’s children will grow up to be more resilient than today’s young adults. While kids missed some schooling, many gained something that will prove more valuable—an ability to find solutions when problems arise. 

Online schooling created a multitude of serious issues such as isolation, stress, fading attention spans and anxiety for children…poor Internet connectivity in underserved areas…parents who were unable to help because of work demands, lack of understanding or poor teaching skills…and teachers who are new to online learning tools. 

Yet many students used online tools to rebuild social bonds, which shows resiliency, problem-solving abilities and the desire for human connection. Examples: Some schoolkids built virtual campuses for themselves and their classmates on Minecraft, a videogame for constructing simulated worlds. Others used Zoom, picking it up more readily than many of their parents. These children are likely to grow up able to roll with the punches when the unexpected occurs, a skill lacking among 20-somethings who enjoyed virtually challenge-free childhoods.

Postsecondary education will go online. Modern colleges were overdue for major change before the pandemic—their bloated budgets and crippling tuitions were unsustainable. Now that students have experienced online learning, it will be much more difficult for colleges to convince them to go so deeply into debt to study on campus. ­Forward-thinking schools will offer degree programs online for tuitions far lower than on-campus students pay and will be able to teach many more ­students online than on campus. 

To replace experiences and learning that now happen only on campus via sports, activities and community leadership, many students are using virtual ­environments to simulate experiences in an immersive way. Students at University of Pennsylvania re-created dorms, food trucks and local sculptures in Minecraft. Students from UCLA to Northwestern shared their creations in Facebook meme groups and Reddit threads. 

Competitiveness will rely on the creation of an entirely new skills-and-competencies framework. For instance, as “smart” is being automated into software, “intelligence” will become more valued because it requires strategic thinking, including factoring in external circumstances, extracting trustworthy and relevant information, and anticipating outcomes. 

The value of vocational training will take on greater significance particularly for jobs that are at low risk of being ­automated or that individuals are unlikely to be able to do themselves because the jobs require skills, dexterity and understanding that cannot be programmed into a robot…and as people see that an expensive college degree won’t necessarily provide the return on investment that it used to.

Career and Retirement 

Working from home will become much more common. Prior to the pandemic, employers feared that employees wouldn’t work as hard at home and that teams wouldn’t collaborate as well. In fact, work-from-home productivity remained strong during the pandemic and the lack of a commute improved work/life balance. 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has predicted that 50% of Facebook’s employees might work remotely by the second half of this decade…while a Walmart internal memo predicted that “working virtually will be the new normal” for tech employees and potentially other back-office roles. A major potential downside of work-from-home is the rise of surveillance technologies to measure productivity of remote workers. This will bring about a slew of privacy and security considerations. 

Workplace rituals will shift as well. For larger companies, hiring and firing will be increasingly handled by computer programs. Shaking hands, meeting new coworkers, staff meetings, baby showers, etc., will be ripe for redesign. 

Large numbers of recent retirees will seek to return to the workforce. Retirees typically fill the first years of ­retirement with travel and adventure, assuming that health and finances ­allow. The pandemic left them stuck at home with few diversions and little sense of purpose, and some concluded that they retired too soon. If the roller coaster stock market remains and bond yields languish, ­retirees will have a financial incentive to return to work. 

The catch: Landing a new job could be challenging if high unemployment persists. The health risk for older folks of the new coronavirus and other infectious diseases makes work-from-home a great opportunity for seniors, too. 

The doom-and-gloom narrative of 2020 will give way to one of ­reimagination and opportunity. One thing we can count on to not change is humans’ ability to respond productively to problems. New ideas that used to take months to gain approval are being pushed through in weeks. The pandemic has unleashed the urgency of extreme innovation…

3-D printing is going worldwide to quickly produce everything, including fast-needed medical supplies.

Crowdsourcing: Engineers, software designers, factory owners and self-taught makers worldwide are collaborating to turbocharge the rolling out of new ideas, experiments, products, services, delivery and distribution channels in every field of endeavor, including banking, medicine and science.

Fintech: Financial companies have rapidly initiated opportunities for ­essential businesses to go online in minutes, immediately rent office furniture for working from home, provide new forms of insurance coverage and settle same-day payments.

No-touch: One area ripe for entrepreneurs is the “Untact” Industry—eliminating physical contact in everything from socializing to medical delivery. 

Social causes: The current crisis has given millions of disenchanted young people more time, and time is the wildcard variable that threatens to push global social unrest into overdrive. The protests represent far more than a single issue. 

One of the positive outcomes from this pandemic might be the cultivation of a global generation that is civic-­minded and philanthropically engaged. The instinct to help out in a crisis is a sign of resiliency. Not only may we see the resurgence of civil engagement and volunteerism, but the move toward s­eismic societal change could be considered a source of genuine hope for the longer-term future. 

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