Good or bad? Time will tell.

This week, my daughter asked, “What would we have done during the shutdowns without technology? How would you still teach college? How would people work remotely? How would kids do school? How would people still be able to interact socially?”

What do you think?

My answer would be this: we wouldn’t have had the shutdowns. The technology companies didn’t save us during the pandemic. They enabled the shutdowns, with all their complex effects — many of which are devastating.

Let’s think about the pros of the shutdowns: less exposure to other people, so less potential for contracting the virus.

Any others? Nope, I can’t think of any either. How about cons? Let’s see:

• Slowed development of herd immunity
• Isolation of nursing home residents from their families, leading to the surge in deaths from dementia. (This one hits close to home, as my mother is in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s and has tipped into an unrecoverably steep decline since the shutdowns)
• Epidemic of depression, opioid-related deaths, increased addiction and abuse issues
• Ruination of countless businesses
• Prevention of a rigorous presidential campaign season that would allow us to see both candidates perform with our own eyes and judge cognitive ability, physical vigor, and most importantly stances on the issues affecting the future of the country
• The sudden and unapologetic emergence of social media giants as censors based on “fact checkers” — i.e. recently-minted liberal arts graduates whose trigger fingers have power to eliminate the viewpoints of medical doctors, academic experts and informed political figures
• “Online education.” This is my industry now, and frankly it’s an oxymoron. What is happening in my online classes is the presentation of content and the enforcement of deadlines, but it is no substitute for face-to-face instruction. No matter how much Zoom you do, it’s not a face-to-face conversational engagement such as you find in a classroom.

There’s plenty more we could delve into: social and political and racial unrest, thought police, religious suppression, you name it. But I’m writing myself angrier already. I’ll stop here.

Back to the original question: what would we have done without technology in recent months? My view is that we would have done virtually everything we do better, more meaningfully and humanly. As in every other pandemic ever endured, we would have kept going. Instead of breaking apart into factions, maybe we would have pulled together and supported one another.

Death from COVID is a terrible fate, but death from something is an inevitability for every one of us. This devolution we’re living through right now? This fracturing of national comity and faith in all of our institutions? This is a result of the prolonged isolation enabled by technology. And it’s a fate worse than death.

That’s my preliminary answer. Whether it’s good or bad is ultimately a question only time can answer.