The most important feature of the 21st century was “change”. This change was positive, forward-looking, constructive and exciting. The 2000s not only placed technological innovations at the service of humanity, they also made possible the development of new scientific methods in different disciplines. Each one of us stood before a window that opened, at the touch of a key, onto every line of history, every moment of cultural life and, by way of documentation and analysis, an infinite world of data. While we could find no words for the pleasure of reaching scientific data so easily through the one-key wisdom of this window, which we could not even have dreamed of before, our desktop computers landed on our laps. When, with the window on our laps, we attained happiness 1.0, we were updated to “Happiness Is You 2.0” through the freedom of the electronic mail dropping into our phones. The technological possibilities of the information age had begun to change social structures at the root; with the emergence of global labels racing against the speed of the internet, of career ladders and of the concept of the office tower, the society working unlimited hours had, in the “Global Happiness 5.0” update, attained a new way of life.
We were working all the time, but the updated happiness with its ten hundred million bubbles was now ours… With the metamorphosis brought on by the radical changes in the world’s production systems and in the technological base on which they rest, we were living through the process of transition to the information society. Yet very few people even knew the name given to our age; half of those very few addressed the age by its name, while the rest stayed with what they knew and carried on with the ‘oh, never mind’ version! Right beside the information age came a second, supporting name: “Informatics”. In fact the foundation of all this lay in the network society, the peace of an age that bound us tightly to one another… This age, whose peace we were enjoying, kept changing its name at speed, kept adding and deleting. Despite this rapid change, very few followed the name of the new age, and for half of them nothing changed at all. Until the crowned ball of a pandemic struck our window.
It was this ball that first flattened our world, which is a globe like itself. Then it shut all the people of the world under a bell jar at the same moment. In fact, before the arrival of this ball with its crown of thorns, we, world leaders included, had been given quite a scolding by the Swedish Greta, then only 16 years old. This frowning girl, trying to protect the outside world from us, defined humanity as the enemy of “nature”.
The other hero of our new normal under the bell jar was “Prof. Yuval Noah Harari”. WhatsApp groups and all the rest of social media were trying to understand Harari. The whole world, staying at home, had now started anthropology lessons. The lessons flowed like water and moved ahead fast.
Those who heard Harari’s words ‘The world’s greatest problem is no longer hunger, disease and war!’ set about making bread, pickles, jam and tomato paste. It was as if the anxiety over Covid the Nineteenth grew by turning into the fear of hunger.
And when the author, who states that the world’s greatest problem today is hunger, said “We now die from eating too much, not from hunger; more people now die of old age than of infection; and we die from suicide, not from war”, by the time we realised that we had not understood his previous warning at all, it was already too late and what was done was done. For we, who were Homo Sapiens, had now turned, as the evolved Homo Covidus, into creatures that will give future generations a good deal to think about. That is, an intermediate transition before Robo Sapiens. We might also call it something like a short-term SaFieN A+ species…
The world of Covid the Nineteenth: remote ONLINE school and attending board meetings while doing the ironing. The isolated life at home under the bell jar; under magical and magnificent headings, from philosophy to history, from politics (especially the USA and China) to science, the happiness of knowledge across the whole world of economics, where analyses of the future were being made, sped past the 100.0 update and climbed rapidly to higher levels. Whereas before we had been living unaware of everything from the name of our age to our way of life, we all suddenly became strategists of the most expert kind. While swimming in this pool of knowledge all day long, with Harari’s news that ‘We will be ruled by rich people with superior cognitive abilities’ we leapt to a higher field of expertise in neurolink and neuroscience and made yet another rapid transition, as HOMO COVIDUS!
As the new species that passed from SaFieNs-hood to COVIDUS, whose illnesses too had undergone a metamorphosis even without meeting Corona, we had reached the first days of 2021. With the reddened, sagging and darkened rings under our eyes, diagnosed as digital eye strain; the excess kilos added to our stress, which was rising for lack of contact with people… The vitamin D deficiency caused by the lack of sun and fresh air, the hair falling out… The low-frequency electromagnetic field, and, alongside skin diseases, diseases of the cardiovascular system and the gastrointestinal system… When it comes to a large amount of work that means a permanent presence at the monitor, certain musculoskeletal problems, rapid fatigue and, in the second case, low endurance… As for the complex of weak-hand ailments, the experts have said that prolonged use of the keyboard and constant strain on the hand may cause carpal tunnel syndrome to develop.
(Anyone who wishes may find a profile by the name of DIGITAL SUSAN on the pages opened for ‘the history of a strange century’, prepared for future generations and for those closely interested in the intermediate transitional species HOMO COVIDUS.)
Every age has its own crises and, along with them, its own illnesses. These crises are generally a result of the general attitudes of the people of that age. Interest and curiosity shifting in one direction and gathering there, behaviour likewise developing along that line, virtue being lost as a result of the lack of moderation… The acceptance of every level of excess as society’s normal: a strange story of humankind, which is able to devise every possible way of failing to find the middle!
Keywords: At Home Technological WhatsApp
Translated from the Turkish original.