‘Tech-celeration’ During Covid

‘Tech-celeration’ During Covid

Covid-19, the ongoing devastating pandemic has altered the way of living and the way we do certain work. If we keep it under the categorization like loss of life, shutting down of small businesses, downfall in the country’s economy, rise in unemployment, etc. the pandemic has presented a catastrophic result. But if we take a look at the brighter side, we can see rapid technological advancement. Even before the pandemic, technology was growing at an exponential rate, but, this rate has been further boosted and is pushing the world further into the future with advanced technologies as shown in sci-fi movies. The rise in demand for technology due to changes in people’s lifestyles and work has provided innovators and tech companies with a great chance to bring out new game-changing technologies and services. The quote once quoted by Bill  Gates – “The advancement of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so its part of everyday life is proving to be very true,” if we consider it with the technology now that has been an important part of our life to perform our necessary work due to sudden changes in the world’s condition.

If we phrase the term “Adaption to the New Normal,” all thanks go to the pandemic’s influence on our lives that has created the need to shift to the so-called “New Normal”. As we know to survive is to adapt constantly. People now are finding technology as a strong medium to adapt to the current situation and it is playing a key factor in tech advancement. Different sectors such as healthcare, education,  food, business, workplace, etc. are now going digital and becoming technically advanced for survival and growth.

Now, throughout the blog, we will take a glance at various sectors of tech-celeration that has been the result of Co-vid.  

Tech in Digital Communication and Entertainment:  

Digital Communication and Entertainment have greatly evolved during the Covid era. Many virtual events were conducted so that people could attend those events from their homes. A startup company named ‘Hopin’ which would let organizations conduct virtual events online through their platform with up to 100,000 attendees with tools for virtual talks and one-to-one networking boomed in the pandemic. Recently, the announcement by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, that their company is now working to build a whole new virtual world named metaverse which would have a virtual world where people could meet, talk, watch movies, attend meetings, and many more as they do in the real world with the help of advanced technology that merges virtual world,  augmented reality, and physical reality. The outbreak of Covid-19  resulted in quarantine which didn’t allow people to travel and this led to international heritage sites and museums providing virtual tours.

Tech in Business  

A great digital transformation like never before was seen to have taken place in the business industry during Covid. To survive and stay in the race, most of the companies during the pandemic have adopted different digital means and advanced technologies. Online shopping systems are now more enhanced by the use of robots for delivering the goods to the customer to eliminate the chance of spreading the virus. Zipline(a medical product delivery company using their manufactured drone) delivered  Covid-19 vaccines in various countries using their drones  [2]. Goods and Furniture selling companies now use AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual  Reality) technology to show their furniture to the customer virtually in their room. The use of Chatbots for customer services and virtual assistants for selecting suitable products for the customer also increased rapidly during Covid.  

Tech in Healthcare  

Covid has had the greatest impact on healthcare services. The struggle to keep providing the services to the patients has led to some of the major progress in the healthcare sector. One of the most popular services given to patients by doctors in most of the developed countries was telehealth services on virtual conferencing platforms like Zoom.  There was also an increase in the use of robotic technology for the treatment of patients where possible. In May, Apple and Google also launched their jointly developed service which through Bluetooth technology helps governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus through contact tracing which was a great help. Lockdown and the covid crisis have increased mental health issues for many people and during this time downloads of mental health-related apps increased in number.  

Tech in Education and Workplace  

Educational institutes were one of the first things to shut down during Covid. To continue giving education to the children and youths, remote learning or online classes replaced the traditional practice of traditional physical classes. Even though the developed countries used to conduct online classes, the concept was new to the developing countries and it has been well adopted by such countries. Platforms like Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc. were some of the most used platforms for conducting online classes.  

Due to lockdown and quarantine, workplaces were immediately shut down to minimize the spreading of coronavirus. This led the working population to stay at home which was one of the major factors for the downfall of many organizations. To avoid this most of the workplaces adapted to the concept of work from home. This led to the increasing adaptation of digital technologies and the same work which was done from the cubicles of the office was now comfortably done from the couch of their house.  

Conclusion:  

Technology has become a great saviour in this Covid Pandemic and is serving as a backbone to all of our work, and the sudden reliability of the technology has now increased its use in various sectors and also will be introducing us to a more advanced world post-Covid. One of the few positive sides of this devastating pandemic is that technology that would have been developed several years later is already here and is being well adopted by mankind in different sectors for their benefit. Technology is accelerating at a very fast pace and due to this acceleration or “Tech-celeration”, the future that we used to visualize after seeing science fiction movies is now knocking at the door.  

Sushankya Chapagain

Undergraduate, Kathmandu University

Documentation team member, 2021-2022