In an article written by Klein called ‘Screen New Deal’, she explores how Silicon Valley’s pre-existing agenda before the coronavirus pandemic imagined a world which replaced many of our personal bodily experiences by “inserting technology in the middle of them”.
Klein explains how, for the few spaces where tech was not already mediating our relationships, that there was a plan to bring technology into these situations. For instance, there were plans on how tech companies could replace in-person teaching with virtual learning, something which has become a key feature of life for many during the pandemic.
Now, in a post-COVID world, all of this has been rebranded as a way of replacing what has been diagnosed as the ‘problem’ which is the problem of touch. However, as Klein identifies, what we have missed most on a personal level during the pandemic is touch.
In a recent interview, Klein explained how this emphasises our need “to expand the menu of options about how we live with COVID, because we do not have a vaccine; it is not about to arrive. Even if there is a breakthrough, it’s going to be many, many months, possibly years before it can be rolled out at the scale we would need it.”
This now poses the question, as Klein points out, of how are we going to live with the coronavirus?
Klein asks: “Are we going to accept pre-COVID “normal”, only much diminished, without the relationships that sustain us? Are we going to allow our kids to have all of their learning mediated by technology? Or are we going to invest in people?”
She adds: “Instead of pouring all of our money into a Screen New Deal and trying to solve problems in a way that diminishes our quality of life, why do we not go on a teacher-hiring spree? Why do we not have twice as many teachers with half-the-size classrooms and figure out a way to do outdoor education?”
Klien ends by stating that: “There are so many ways we can think about responding to this crisis that does not accept this idea that we have to return to the pre-COVID status quo, only worse, only with more surveillance, more screens and less human contact.”
