The Deletist

I’ve been navigating my new 100% remote-work environment for a few months. I’m still figuring out a few things, such as when to be on/off video, or where to position my camera. When I should book a meeting instead of reaching out by chat for a quick call. Or how to make it through a day of back-to-back meetings. At least for the last challenge, I’m implementing new guidelines to shorten meeting durations by 5 (or 10 minutes) to allow for some breathing room in between.

However, one new thing is how easy it is for anybody in the meeting to make a recording. I think before everybody was 100% remote, recording meetings didn’t happen. Or at least it didn’t happen frequently. This might have been because in a face-to-face scenario, it wasn’t as easy to record without special equipment. Also, making a recording would have required someone to gain consent. And all of this could have been more complicated if some attendees were remote and joining in through phone or video calling.

Now, recording the meeting is as easy as clicking a button. Instantly the recording starts. Participants give their implied consent by remaining in the meeting. To be fair, nobody has made a recording without first mentioning, or asking if this would be okay with the attendees. A red signal indicates recording so everyone knows.

Since I’m in the business of Records and Information Management, I always have to wonder, what happens to all these recordings? Where are they stored? And more importantly, is anybody going to watch through a 30-60 minute recording of a video to refresh their memory? Sometimes when I do interviews, I like to record them for referring back, or filling in gaps in my notes. These recordings are done with consent and only maintained for a limited period of time. Also, without any indexing done on a recording, it can be challenging to find a specific section. Videos are difficult to search.

All of this to say, just because something is easy to do, doesn’t make it a good practice. Additionally, just because something has a perceived usefulness, doesn’t make it useful. Without following up, or reviewing our practices, we can’t know if making these ad-hoc videos is beneficial. Something I’m sure I will have to assess in the future as someone assigned to clean-up these things.

Over a year into the pandemic, we’re still dealing with a parallel infodemic. The infodemic is the spread of misinformation and disinformation about the pandemic. The misleading, or incorrect, information can be found on social media, TV, newspapers, etc. It can come from professional sources or from regular people.

I blogged about it in Misinformation in the Time of the Pandemic. I made suggestions for improving it in Librarians: The Disinformation Antidote. The infodemic is problematic for many reasons. This pandemic is a scary time for most people. For the last eighteen+ months, we’ve been living our lives according to restrictions, lockdowns, and new protocols. Having up-to-date and accurate information is critical for us to make decisions. Sifting through lots of information, some of which is incorrect, makes this process even more challenging. It’s hard to know who to trust, what to trust, and when to trust. Things change so quickly.

In addition to dealing with all the information (misinformation and disinformation) about the pandemic, we’re also learning about the vaccines. It’s all a lot to take in and absorb. At this point, I’ve known several people who got sick with Covid, and one death. The reality of Covid and the pandemic lives with us, yet we still struggle to get good quality information. Over a year into the pandemic, we’re sifting constantly through a never-ending supply of headlines, sensational stories, lies, truths, inaccuracies, and some trustworthy accurate stuff.

Added to all the misinformation and disinformation are data gaps. There are still some things we just don’t know yet. This is either because the data hasn’t been collected yet or not enough time has passed. For example, how common are breakthrough infections? How easily can someone with a breakthrough infection spread it to someone unvaccinated? How often does a breakthrough infection spread to another vaccinated or unvaccinated person?

In my mind, the infodemic will have more lasting consequences than the actual pandemic. Though it seems that Covid is here to stay, we’ll always be reading, learning, or experiencing it in one form or another. Should the day ever come when we can once again gather, unmasked in large numbers, I wonder how we’ll think about this time. And what resources we will have to rely on.

As more pandemic restrictions lift, we will have to re-learn how to talk, face to face. The other evening I called a friend. She couldn’t talk because she was out, having drinks and dinner at a bar. It all sounded very magical and exotic. I hear about my friends having more of these experiences. Each time, I pause for a moment, to imagine what it will be like to actually have conversations, again, face to face all the time, instead of an occasional treat.

For the last 15+ months I think most of us have been surviving socially on video calls. But it’s not the same thing. I find on video or conference calls, there can be a lot of awkwardness. For example, it’s hard to know when to speak. Sometimes there’s a slight delay so two people are speaking at the same time. Without important non-verbal communication cues, it’s difficult to know when somebody is about to speak. Or even to gage when they’re finished speaking.

The video calls at work also get challenging. I use two monitors. The camera is on my laptop, but if I’m screen sharing, or taking notes, I’m almost always doing that on my second monitor. Consequently, I’m never looking directly into the camera. I just can’t get the angle right for the laptop and the monitor, so that I’m more squarely visible.

Even talking on video, it’s also hard to figure out when to speak sometimes. During work meetings, I often end up raising my hand, otherwise it can be difficult to jump in. Nobody is making direct eye contact with anyone else, or noticing other non-verbal cues that make up the majority of communication. Reading facial expressions is almost impossible when everybody’s face is a tiny little box, sometimes blurry, or distorted because of using a background setting.

I often wonder, when we’re finally allowed to move about freely, will we have lost the art of communicating? Will it be a chapter in future history books how we used to get along by talking with one another, unmasked, in person, and out in the open?

I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what happens. In the meantime, I’m hoping to keep my face-to-face talking skills sharp by having small, outdoor picnic-style lunches with friends while the weather is still nice.