I really do hope that this COVID-19 event does make us rethink everything, and part of that has got to be a reconsideration of what we can and cannot do digitally.
Generally, I’d say we could do a lot more digitally, and while there are reasonable questions about whether digital activity is environmentally clean, there are clear advantages when it comes to things like saving on travelling time and energy for meetings and conferences.
I am currently attending a digital conference for the first time, and I have to say the flying time and hotel costs are brilliant. However there are some things that we cannot yet do digitally, and the happenstance interactions and embodied awareness experiences are severely missing from the digital experience.
This paper covers some of the ways in which digital experience fails to recapture lived experience, somewhat inevitably. I think its time has certainly come, as an argument, and i guess I’m just saying that if we really want to do something like live music, or a conference, well as a digital experience, we need to make sure that we are addressing some of the aspects of cult value, iteration, and interaction that digital tech often leaves behind.
Don’t get me wrong, I think doing things digitally offers up huge opportunities but we ought not neglect our humanity, our connections and our need for true public engagement and recognition in the process.