Will Zoom Kill the Office?
“Film is art, TV is furniture, theater is life.”
We used to say this seriously when I was studying acting in NY in my twenties. The experience of performing in front of a live audience is singular. When you are young and commit to becoming an actor, it is easy to become obsessive. The fact is that the employment prospects for an actor are smaller than those for a champion Olympic athlete. But the raw pleasure of being on stage is so powerful that many will pursue the goal for a lifetime without ever supporting themselves professionally.
There is something primal about people gathering to share an experience that we must consider as we re-imagine how we are going to work together in a post COVID-19 world. There are precedents that tell us that technology can potentially come close, but never entirely replace sharing space and time.
When the moving picture was invented there was an uproar in the theater community. What would become of the live theater? What was going to happen to the people that worked in that industry? Instead of a new play being toured around the country, movies would replace the need for the actors to travel — and have a livelihood.
But the theater did not die. It co-existed with film. People continued to gather to experience live human beings tell a story, but they also went to the movies and collectively experienced films.
Attending a performance is a communal experience. You sense the reactions of your fellow audience members. You may laugh more, or gasp in surprise in concert with your others. You become a pack animal and ride the emotional wave together.
So, what about TV? Could it kill the theater and the cinema? Forget picture quality, commercials and subject quality, the experience of the home TV/home theater lacks the quality of the communal experience. You may be watching a program at the same time as 50M people, but you are not near them. Think about watching the super bowl. People gather to experience the event in bars and living rooms. If you live in a city there is a thrill to hear your neighbor’s cheer from their house. It heightens the experience.
Let us add the personal computer and mobile devices to the discussion. With a personal computer you are interacting individually with the medium. You are alone at the keyboard even if you are participating in a Zoom or other on-line meeting. There are some elements are of the communal experience. But you do not have all the sensory clues that you would sitting in the same room as the other participant. It is an incomplete solution.
The global pandemic has eliminated our option to gather at the live theater, the movies, or the office. We are using Zoom, email, the phone, and other means to get our work done as best we can. And many of us are debating the need for the office as we used to experience it. The history of various disruptive entertainment technologies suggests that there will always be a place for meeting in real time and space.
People have a primary need to gather.
The other thing to consider is that of the potential for sparking creativity. There are many great books that demonstrate that innovation and creativity are more likely in a situation where there is an opportunity for people with different perspectives, backgrounds, and objective to get together in real time and space. Some of the best are listed below.
It would be a mistake to conclude that Zoom and working from home can completely replace the workspace. But there are other questions to be asked:
- How can we rethink the workplace to make the most of physical interaction?
- How can we mitigate the limitations of on-line virtual work experience and use it as one part of a strategy of our new work experience?
- How do we get the benefit of the ‘office’ experience and keep most of the benefit of the flexibility of working from home?
Also see Cal Newport’s article: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/can-remote-work-be-fixed for an excellent take on this topic.
Books about innovation
Medici Effect: What You Can Learn from Elephants and Epidemics
Frans Johansson
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace
General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell
