A new predictive report from digital firm Cognizant imagines how every aspect of life will look by 2025.
It’s safe to say most aspects of life will be quite different after the global coronavirus pandemic ends. A new report, “After the Virus” from digital firm Cognizant, looks at just how different things will be, from national politics to socioeconomics, work, business, and well, life in general. It addresses questions like will everyone work from home? Will global supply chains withstand breakdowns? Will we ever shake hands again or sit next to a stranger on a 15-hour flight?
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The report chronicles potential events in the year 2025 and takes a fictional look back on the changes that occurred in the days, months, and years following the pandemic of 2020.
Online’s big bang
“After COVID-19, everything that could move online did move online … and became cheaper, faster, and higher quality in the process,” wrote Ben Pring, vice president and director of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work and the report’s author. Although by early 2020 we thought technology was big, “IT had only really scratched the surface,”http://www.techrepublic.com/” Pring wrote. “The virus ended all that.”
Huge infrastructure investments that could scale elastically to handle millions of remote employees and customers reliably paid off, the report noted. “Legacy kludges of technical-debt-ridden patchworks of systems were deemed poison.”
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The pandemic also spurred remote, augmented reality-based in-the-moment troubleshooting for everything from grocery supply chains undertaking massive restocking efforts to remote caregivers interacting with seniors or a client with a disability, the report predicts.
At hospitals, “constraints of geography and brick-and-mortar physical visits diminished,”http://www.techrepublic.com/” the report said. Diagnostics, intelligent routing to specialists, and triaging at home became commonplace, relieving beleaguered doctors and nurses in the wake of the virus.
But there were downsides too. “Some have been seduced by virtual worlds they never want to leave,”http://www.techrepublic.com/” the report said. “Like whiskey, too much of a good thing sometimes becomes a bad thing, and society increasingly prioritized digital detox to give addled brains a break.”
Everyone’s home is their castle
Houses are now built with dedicated office spaces that include soundproofing, connectivity, and 3D printers. “The key to home-office success became the ability to build and nurture deep, trust-based connections with peers, clients, partners, and anyone in the connected world to get work done.”
With work from home now firmly established, “it would be foolhardy to assume we’ll ever go back to the old ways of working,”http://www.techrepublic.com/” the report said.
Business travel loses its cool
In the blink of an eye, business travel went from a high-status activity to an embarrassment, the report said. “The virus delivered a cosmic message that our travel behavior needed to change, the report said. “The post-virus hiatus forced us all to re-examine our flying habits.”
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For example, was it essential to travel halfway around the world for a two-day meeting?
Governments “nudged things along by progressively taxing flights, ratcheting up the cost for each subsequent flight taken by a person throughout the year.” Businesses launched innovative work policies with extra time of