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In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

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Re: In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

#71
post #58
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t find Zoom to be an acceptable alternative to in-person meetings. I don’t like the lack of separation between work space and home space (especially since my spouse also works). I miss having support staff available in person.

In all fairness, you're making the assumption that the people you're meeting with are normally in the same location. Very few people I meet with are in the same office and/or they're often traveling or otherwise not physically present. So even if I came into the office every day, I would have a few serendipitous encounters but most meetings would still be over video link.

I have a good example of this.

Right before all of this I went to Austin to sit in a room with people from that office for a day for us to figure out how we want to continue using a service internally. We could have done it over zoom, but I'm 100% sure we would have been a lot less effective.

Zoom looses the ability for people to just argue and hash stuff out. There is less back and forth. IT's not the same

Re: In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

#72

I know this isn't the popular opinion, but aren't we blowing the virus out of proportion a bit? Don't something like 20-25% of all New Yorkers already have antibodies? Doesn't that show the virus isn't that dangerous? The body count would be in the millions by now.

With all respect, I find this perspective incomprehensible, astonishing, deeply depressing. My take, as a NYer, as someone working on a COVID project, as someone who so far has been lucky to only know of one serious hospitalization in my extended circle- it is exceptionally dangerous. I use the phrase "Russian Roulette" and I stand by that. 1% of likely-infected New Yorkers have died. Probably at least 80% of the NYC…

A++ post, almost got me!

Re: In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

#73
post #9
post #4

This seems like the biggest social transition since the always-connected cellphone/smartphone.

I don't understand why people are assuming this instead of the easier explanation of that (1) things will eventually bounce back and (2) somebody born in 1-2 generations will have no idea what the pandemic was like. As precedent, I cite the 1918 flu. In 1918 people were getting arrested for not wearing masks. The following decade was called "The Roaring '20s," and I don't presume it roared because of all the social d…

> As precedent, I cite the 1918 flu. In 1918 people were getting arrested for not wearing masks. The following decade was called "The Roaring '20s," and I don't presume it roared because of all the social distancing and masks. All of us reading were born later, and if we heard about the 1918 flu, maybe in a history class as I remember, most of us probably reacted with ... "what? what's so bad about a flu?"

You can't compare pandemics — nothing happens in a vacuum. It's 2020. The Spanish flu was shroud by WWI. The Roaring 20s was a post-war boom, meanwhile we haven't even fought the upcoming Sino war. Most haven't experienced such economic hardship in their lives. Globalisation was a pipe dream a century ago, it's now the backbone of every developed economy.

Re: In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

#74

Remote everything sucks and I will stop doing it all as soon as possible. Humans need stories, and stories take place in sets. Seeing the entirety of your life through a window on your computer is not a life.

This description immediately called to mind Rear Window for me, which largely takes place in a single apartment and is widely considered a classic film.

But ironic pedantry aside, I do agree people need to get out. Even as a homebody I find myself getting grumpy if I don't get out for some sun and fresh air once in a while.

Re: In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

#75
post #68
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly, as far as the previous pandemics go this one is fairly mild, have you heard of the Hong Kong flu of 1968? Killed over a million people, we haven't even heard of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu we won't forget this virus for long time, but not because of the damage it does, but because of the damage we did to ourselves

They had a vaccine for that 4 months after the outbreak.

From the WSJ article that fact is sourced from: "A vaccine was developed relatively quickly—researchers had learned from the other two 20th-century influenza pandemics, the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the Asian flu of 1957—but wasn’t widely available before the disease had reached its second peak in most countries." So basically, there was a vaccine much faster than we could expect one for this coronavirus, but it was still too late to help much. (See https://archive.is/5pYqk for the full text of the article, which is quite interesting.)

Re: In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

#76
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we need to figure out why the initial lessons are better in person than remote. It could be that small changes are needed in camera placement, or screens or something we haven't thought of. For many instruments you outline, it is how the bow or the instrument is held, this might be better online with the right tools, esp if you had multicamera pose estimation, it might not even need a teacher the majority of the…

I would thing a large portion of it is actually sound. The microphone in a laptop is just not very good, and then even if the instructor has expensive studio monitors its going to get super compressed. On top of the bad acoustics in whatever random room they are in, and background noise. And while a multi camera setup would certainly be awesome, and help with positioning of hands and instrument, its just not really a…

The aggressive sound processing (mainly echo cancellation and noise reduction) doesn't help either. Works great for speach legibility, not so well for music.

Re: In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

#78
post #33

This is very strange to read from here in New Zealand, where life is fairly close to getting back to normal. I don't see any reason why our basic lifestyles should be permanently changed by this virus. As bad as things feel now, we will eventually get on top of the epidemic and in a few short years this period will be a distant memory. I'm not saying there won't be permanent changes - I believe this is a catalyst tha…

> I don't see any reason why we should be more afraid of Coronavirus in 10 years than we are of Polio today Perhaps not this same Coronavirus, but make no mistake, our pre-lockdown lifestyle is fragile. Giving billions of people unfettered access to move between any two points on the planet in under 24 hours is a recipe for another swift pandemic.

Sit home masked, medicated, monitored and vaccinated, never go for a walk, never travel, avoid physical contact, work remotely, report hourly, wash your hands every 15 minutes with hard antiseptics, following the prescribed pattern. Wear protective gloves. Obey. Self-censor and suppress any thought of dissent. Vane into the wind without a squeak. Never ask questions. Automate. Get automated. Be more effective. Be more tolerant. Be happier. Let the planet breathe freely. Let the universal love and unity flow through your self-isolated mind. Seal your windows and doors and install military-grade filters, as viruses and pandemics are here to stay forever. Dedicate your CPU cycles to transhumanism@home, mine tokens of Eternal Digital Life and you'll transcend this miserable human body! But once at the Network, don't forget to self-isolate again at your personal memory block, as unfettered propagation of pure thought between corporate servers in under a few milliseconds is a recipe for another swift pandemic. Be responsible, don't make the Network fragile.

Re: In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

#80
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that would be different if you lived in a place big enough for a dedicated office?

It sure would make it better, and this WFH shit has made me start to looming for a larger place that can do this. But this doesn't scale for everyone- they either can't afford a larger place or the area can't support it. The big thing for me is going some place else allows for a shifting of mindset. I don't want my therapist's office to be the same place where I work which is the same place I get doctors appointments

There may be other solutions. What if instead of spending an hour commuting to the therapist, you spend half an hour ritually preparing your room for therapy? Hanging a curtain, switchin the lighting color, etc. What if you had a VR-CAVE-like projection system and you downloaded a "wallpaper" from your therapist for use in your session?
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