THE OFFICE AS WE KNEW IT NO LONGER EXISTS
THE OFFICE OF TODAY IS A GRID OF FACES ON ZOOM
It’s official: The office has migrated online. The tools that we use for working and communing are now a network of apps and clouds. While it was once an abstract notion for most, working from home is the new normal. During the pandemic, WFH has proved successful as an infrastructural exercise, with technology as the platform for all social connections, from staff meetings to happy hours. The pandemic has also brought the various meanings of work into sharp relief and reset our understanding of essential and nonessential work, of salaried and gig positions. In the process, it has catapulted new heroes — medical professionals, grocery store cashiers, takeout couriers, mail clerks — into a vastly altered public sphere. In the private sphere, our sudden autonomy is countered by the struggle to carve out spaces of work in our own homes.
