It's a Virtual Virtual World!

"I'm not sure why it isn't working.  I just had it working a few minutes ago!"

"Try clicking on the top right corner where you see the little note like icon..."

"I did, but it won't allow me to type!"

"Oh, you need to go to settings and enable it."

"Oh okay!  Is it in the meeting settings or do I have to go out into the main settings to enable it?"

"Umm... not sure.  Do you want to share your screen?  We can try to work through it together."

"Yeah okay!  Lemme see...  okay here we go.  Can you see my screen?"

"Not yet, it's thinking... oh there it is!  Yes, I can see it now..."

One would probably assume that the above conversation was being had by two adults, presumably during the course of a work meeting or a call with IT.  What if I told you that this was actually an exchange between two 7-year-olds during a Zoom call?  

The technological adroitness exhibited by today's youngest generation never ceases to amaze us senile Gen-Xers, a generation that supposedly was right in the middle of many major advancements such as personal computers, the internet, smartphones etc. and has yet somehow developed a sentiment of antiquity.  The said talent is all the more discernible this year with society almost completely metamorphosing into a virtual world in the wake of COVID, scilicet virtual school, virtual classes, virtual work, virtual play dates, virtual lunches, virtual happy hours, virtual concerts, what have you.  At the beginning of the school year we had felt a bit apprehensive about virtual school, partly because this was Medha's first time in public school but mostly because we were concerned that virtual school might introduce a steep learning curve for her and that it might come in the way of actual school work.  Our apprehensions were however brought to naught within no time.  Medha has not only became a pro at operating her school issued Chromebook (it took her all of two days to become an expert), but has also gained enough wisdom to give us recommendations in allied matters, for e.g. whether to restart Chromecast or merely end and restart the Hotstar app on the iPad, whether to add the Google meet link in the Google classroom header or send it via Whatsapp for music classes, whether to be on gallery view or speaker view during bhajans, whether to use the reverb tool in the Fx panel or right click on the voice track to select preset effects in BandLab (a cloud based digital audio workstation) etc.  

Mira is not far behind either.  She knows exactly how to switch her 'singing' toys on and off; how she discovered that little switch on the stuffed puppy's lumbar region under the velcro of his coat is beyond my grasp.  She even taught me a sophisticated hack to make the puppy resume his singing if he goes silent for some reason; gently tapping his head and then hurling him violently to the floor usually does the trick!  She also understands how do-while loops work evidenced by her ability to create exact conditions for a given toy to play the exact song she wants to hear.  She has even figured out all by herself how humans of yesteryear used to talk using flip-phones; her latest activité de choix is to roam the living room holding an old flip-phone to her cheek, babbling and giggling incessantly into it.  Oh, and she also knows how to end a Facetime call whenever the conversation turn to topics she might not prefer!

The world has now turned into a real-time sci-fi movie.  And frankly, I am not complaining.  Why would I?  After all, scientific advancement is nothing but a natural consequence of human intelligence.  The concept of technological singularity, i.e. the notion that one day robots will rule humans, is, I think, absolute drivel.  To quote sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov - "I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them."