Covid and Complexity

As we hit five years from when the world shut down, lots of discussions on how Covid has changed society. What about academia and computer science?

It's a challenging question to ask as Covid is not the only major change in the last five years. We've seen wars in Ukraine and Gaza and a huge political changes around the world. We've had major technological changes as well, most notably the rise of machine learning, particularly large-language models. 

But Covid changed us quickly, moving immediately to online teaching, meetings and conferences. Both my children move in with us for six-months. Crowded but it was great to spend time together. 

Most of us have moved on from Covid, though a small number still take it seriously, avoiding crowded areas, wearing masks, not eating indoors at restaurants, even still isolating. We need to all respect everyone's individual risk decisions when it comes to the disease. And we should never forget the many we've lost to the disease. 

We saw many attempts at virtual and later hybrid conferences but none worked particularly well, despite some valiant efforts. There's just a limit to how long you can be engaged staring at a screen. The best we have now are recorded talks with a watch party, and a separate in-person meeting. Not just for Covid, but because international travel has become more difficult for many.

By necessity we saw a vast improvement in online collaboration tools, at least until Google killed Jamboard. With papers generally available online, there is very little you can do in your office you can't do at home. So we see less people come into work every day, faculty, students and staff. Collaborating with someone across an ocean is almost as easy as collaborating with someone at your university. I find new faculty feel less need to choose a university for its resources and colleagues than for its location.

Personally I try to avoid virtual meetings as much as I can, which is not nearly enough. I have a student I work with at another university in Chicago who prefers to make the long trek here to talk research than meet on zoom, as we are much more productive that way. Others seem to prefer and even thrive on online meetings. Each to their own. 

The students have suffered the worst from Covid especially those who lost a year or more of in-class pre-college education. We see some incoming students struggling more both from a knowledge background but also a social one, with many just watching their lectures online or not fully engaging if they come in person. It will take a whole generation before we fully recover as a society from that disease.