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In reality a Zoom meeting is really a telephone call with many people on the same line. With faces.

by John Raddall

Something to think about over the weekend.

Let's assume that evolution is the journey from molecule to amoeba to mankind and is a measure of the emergent journey of intelligence and consciousness.

Let's also accept two arguments regarding evolution. At the macro level we have the Darwinian model of survival of the fittest. It's all about straight competition in the physical and real world. Most organisations and nations operate in this space.

The second evolutionary argument is more subtle and complex and says that species evolve together in a dynamic dance of co-operation, connectivity and non-linearity. All of which combine to generate evolving global intelligence and consciousness. This process has been operating for millions of years. A modern corporate example is Amazon. A corporate behemoth that won the Darwinian competition but survives only due to the co-operation of the rest of us sitting on our sofas eating takeaway pizzas and watching movies on Netflix.

Now let's test the new Zoom culture and its potential impact on our cultural evolution.

In reality a Zoom meeting is really a telephone call with many people on the same line. With faces. Communication is, by necessity, linear, either random or controlled. So good for a lecture or sharing information but bad for non-linear, intelligence evolving connectivity in the real world of Darwinian survival and the world of complex co-operation and co-evolution.

My view? We must never think that people's faces on a screen can supersede natural non-linear evolution. The more we connect on screen and the less we interact in the real world, the more the social impact of Covid19 has the long term potential to create a less intelligent homo sapiens.