cover image: my last undergrad late night chicken over rice on low steps with friends, 3/17/2020 at 3:05AM

recently I've been spending time thinking about the more social/meta aspects of all this AI progress - the industrialization of knowledge work, human creativity and meaning, and what it means to live in the 21st century (and future generations). i'm working on some writing on this topic - more to come soon!

history rhymes, and we've seen society react and adapt to the industrial revolution. this past weekend, I was digging through the archives of my college google drive and found a bunch of gems. i tweeted this one particular midterm question from probably my favorite class in college, social theory (marx, durkheim, weber):

Spencer 🧃

@spenciefy

machines of loving grace got me reading my old college sociology notes

One of my final college assignments in my Social Networks class was to write a letter to myself in 2022. I completely forgot I wrote this, so I had fun this past weekend re-discovering this and seeing what I got right and wrong about future predictions in 2025. Here it is presented without edits:

May 10, 2020

Hello, Future Spencer in 2022.

I hope you’re staying safe and sane! I’m writing to you from my childhood home in California on Mother’s Day. For the first time since shelter-in-place started here, we went out for a short family hike at the local county park. We brought masks and went at 7 am hoping that the early hour would give us more physical distance. It almost felt like things were normal until we’d hear oncoming hikers and scramble to pull our masks over our faces. Honestly, it felt a little more performative than protective at times.

Anyways, I hope you’re back in beautiful springtime New York City now. Do you remember how coronavirus changed the daily pleasantries we exchange? It’s funny that I started this semester in Social Networks class thinking about conversation topics through the lens of “common surface area”. Forget talking about the weather: at once, the entire world is collectively experiencing a global pandemic.

Like a vast grey cloud overhead, it looms over every aspect of life. Life is starkly different now from two months ago. I’ve more or less adapted to the new normal of living at home with my family, relying on video calls and online board games as the primary form of social life, and maintaining my new habit of running almost daily. I wonder what will have changed and what will have remained by the time you’re reading this.

Here are my modest predictions for what post-coronavirus life will be like in 2022.

My first macro prediction: certain parts of professional life can be digitized, but everything else will revert to IRL.

We will have realized that some types of work can be done online, but the core of social fabric relies on in-person connection. Coronavirus accelerated the adoption of digital tools as everyone sought to replicate social life on the internet. Nearly overnight, enterprise video conferencing platform Zoom became everyone’s third place – the meeting room, classroom, living room, group fitness gym, coffee shop, and even happy hour meeting spot. We’re currently running one of history’s largest human experiments - what happens when we all stay home and live our lives completely online? There are a few predictions circling around the internet on how our current use of digital platforms to fulfill social needs will lead to a new era where connecting with others online is the new norm.

I believe that the current experiment of life online has shown that despite its increased convenience, we are craving the stimulation and presence of in-person interaction. In the immediate aftermath of the pandemic (2021-2022), we will appreciate the kinds of real-life social interactions that we took for granted. The real-life third places of coffee shops, restaurants, bars, and gyms will reemerge as the daily glue that binds social life together, perhaps in a different form.

The question that I ask regarding this great online life experiment is on “lossiness”: how much is lost in compressing some aspect of life to be online? White-collar office work in industries like financial services and technology don’t seem to lose much in productivity going online. This is being proven by the success of work from home in keeping operations running. Remote work and work from home will be on the rise, perhaps at the expense of office social life.

This could lead to a Weberian rationalization of work, where the spontaneity of office culture and socializing is replaced by calendar invites and endless emails. In the healthcare industry, types of work that can be done remotely will continue as the recent move to telemedicine is here to stay. On the other hand, how much is lost in moving K-12 and college education online? The shortcomings of remote learning reveal that many aspects of education cannot be conducted in the current iteration of a remote classroom.

It’s possible that this is a software problem (Zoom wasn’t designed for education), and that we’ll see nascent entrepreneurs working on a better remote classroom. My guess is the classroom of the future will incorporate more technology, perhaps in a blended classroom model. The forced adoption of certain technology in the classroom has the potential for being a positive development in personalized learning, but if not done well can decrease the quality of learning. And again, how much is lost in moving social life online? Virtual happy hours and game nights are the best we can do right now, but I doubt they will meaningfully continue post-shelter-in-place and physical distancing. The exception is online native games like Roblox and Fortnite, which has a massive online community.

My prediction here is wholly my personal opinion developed from my experience during the past two months. To paint a better picture of how I’ve been feeling, I picked out two field notes I wrote for this class while in quarantine.

April 6, 2020, three weeks after leaving Columbia:

I’ve been trying to stay in touch with friends by doing different activities over Zoom or Facetime. I’ve played lots of online board games, baked cookies simultaneously, and completed many online workouts with friends. I personally found online workouts over Zoom quite fun, even though nothing about the activity really requires group presence. There’s no physical difference whether I follow a workout video on my own or with friends.
But psychologically, knowing that other people are following the same activity as me makes a huge difference. After we complete a workout, we all know what each of us just went through and there’s an increased sense of presence. It’s nice to mix up the routine of sitting in front of a laptop/phone and just talking. During these shelter-in-place times, doing the same activity at the same time has been a great option for me to stay in touch with my friends.

And just one week later, April 16, 2020:

In-person social interaction just can't be replaced by online social interaction. While there is an advantage of being able to talk to anyone around the world, I’m realizing more and more how much I crave the subtle nuances of the presence that “real life” has.
The online world is 2-dimensional, and the real world is at least 4-dimensional. There’s physical space, sound, and time. All the subtleties of eye contact, nodding, handshakes, and hugs make a huge difference. It’s about being able to focus entirely on what is in front of your eyes. I think in-person social interaction is the core of what it means to be human. One result of this pandemic will be how we view being physically present with others, and how much we have taken it for granted

It’s funny to look back on what I was thinking about as I was adapting to my home living situation. Everything changed so fast that it didn’t feel like a huge shock. Life went on, and decisions had to be made.

I wonder what key memories I’ll remember about these few months in 2022. Everything is still fresh right now. I remember the war room meeting hours before our flight to Costa Rica for spring break, doing a comprehensive Pro/Con analysis (the best Pro we could come up with was “it’s Costa Rica”), and then making a game-time call to cancel the trip.

I remember the screenshots of rumors of an imminent NYC lockdown spreading from group chat to group chat like wildfire (“BUY GROCERIES NOW!”). I remember reading Prezbo’s email about having to move out in three days, and then a whirlwind of 72 hours: booking a flight home, making storage reservations, packing up all my belongings, waiting in line to buy a gown for grad pictures, playing Settlers of Catan one last time in EC, eating my last late-night chicken over rice on Low Steps, and finally, an eerie last flight home. I think only in retrospect will I realize how formative of an experience this will have been.

When I was in high school, I watched a well-made documentary on the lead up to and aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Learning about collective trauma from the crisis left a major impression on me. I was only 10 years old in 2008, so I wondered what it would be like to live through such a time. When I left for college in 2016, a common conversation topic between my roommate and I was predicting when the next recession and crisis would be.

A few months into freshman year, Trump was elected and the days that followed felt surreal. We thought that was it, everything was going to get worse. But hey, we thought, the best time for a recession would be while we were still in college. At least we wouldn’t have to graduate into a recession! As it turned out, the next few years would be booming times, but in 2020 I’d graduate into a recession. I just wonder how the future documentaries on the 2020 coronavirus pandemic will be like.

I spent some time trying to come up with a second macro prediction related to how my generation’s worldview will have changed from this pandemic. As the first global crisis that we have collectively experienced, my hope is that the experience will mobilize individuals to be prepared for the future. But individualistic short-term thinking may prove to be the stronger force, as time passes and we forget what happened.

Here are small predictions for fun, some related to coronavirus, some not:

Despite all your best efforts, your new quarantine running habit will not have lasted beyond 2021
The “in-person” graduation celebration that Columbia promised will not have happened, or only a small group of people (<200) will participate
You will still try to be different in what you do
Which will always make you a bit confused about what you want to do with your life
You will be hosting dinner parties
You will be thinking about moving out of New York
Masks will become a status and fashion symbol in NYC clubs (like they are/were in China and Korea)
China will have even more influence in the world
The US and China will clash (Thucydides trap)
Computer science will be oversaturated
Young graduates of elite schools will still be playing career status games
People will be spending more time outside in parks
Handshake etiquette will be a wave, not an elbow bump

Some last words from Spencer in 2020: stay safe, sane, and don’t take daily life for granted. Spend quality time with the people around you, go on adventures while you can, and remember to work on meaningful problems in the world.

T-8 Days to College Graduation,

Spencer

PS. Some links to look back on:

Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How.

The coronavirus butterfly effect: Six predictions for a new world order

All the things COVID-19 will change forever, according to 30 top experts

How The COVID-19 Pandemic Will Change the Way We Live

a letter to myself from 2020