Technology adoption at home

The Covid-19 outbreak has changed almost every aspect of the way we go about our lives. One major enabler in helping humans adapt to the new realities or to the new ‘normal’ has been technology.

Those businesses that were already to an extent location agnostic could easily transition their workers to a ‘work from home’ mode. Others adapted their services or the way the services were delivered to factor in Governmental restrictions and of course increased use of tech.

Because I work in the technology industry, for me personally there was no disruption of work. But it has been interesting how the situation has changed the way my immediate family members were impacted and how they adapted.

My wife’s transition from a face to face to alternate modes (including online) for her counselling sessions was relatively smooth. Technology adoption was never a factor as she has been tech savvy right from the start.

After two months of summer break locked up at home, the kids went back to virtual school. And they both took to it like fish to water. ‘Microsoft Teams’ was the tool of choice selected by the school and both kids became experts at handling it within hours of getting acquainted with it!

My father – though officially retired for several years now – has always been used to being busy since he never retired from his passion. I expected the lock down to be hard on him since he would no longer be able to meet his associates / students and conduct classes anymore. But he adapted fast – he switched to writing a book and as you will read below started ‘teaching tech to a newbie’. His new booklet incidentally was typed out entirely by him in less than a month!

But the person who has had to take a giant leap on the technology front has been my mother.  She had never used a smart phone till now.  

A few weeks into the lock down, her spiritual classes (which had stopped since mid March) went online. WhatsApp groups were created and Google Duo group calls scheduled.  With the help of her tech gurus – my father and me, she was able to chat with others and attend group calls within a week. While this might seem simple to others, for her it was a huge leap forward.   What really helped fast track this was when the kids came back from their vacation. Now she had two patient little ones guiding her to bridge the learning curve!   

These days it is not uncommon to see all six of us glued to our respective IT devices at the same time – going about our ‘work’.

We have seen how a humble microscopic virus has brought humanity to its knees. But if the scenes at my home are anything to go by, humans learnt to adapt fast!