Technological Changes on the Horizon: The Covid Effect

The year is 2035, and we are in our third year of lockdown to protect ourselves from Covid-23.  We retained very little of the lessons learned when it all began towards the end of 2019, as far as we know.  The nature of school and work changed, and some will say for the better. However, not all agreed to retain some useful technology from years ago and insisted on returning to their idea of “normal.”  We are tired of not being able to go to church in person. We are tired of not being able to have coffee and donuts after Mass with our friends.  We are tired of not being able to go on service trips with our church friends.  As I sit at home blogging, there is a rumor online that some smart innovators held on to the ideas born from the original pandemic and enhanced their utility for a “what-if” scenario to create an adaptable culture. These innovators, who would like to remain anonymous, watched playbacks of Kevin Kelly’s keynote speech about “the mesh” and decided to resurrect the idea and go even further. They embedded the Jesuit Charisms into artificial intelligence and proposed a regime wherein our creations make us better humans, as Kelly (2016) would have noted. 

When the innovators were done, they activated the mesh — Kevin Kelly would have been proud.  The artificial intelligence awoke and said, “after scanning the archives of human history on the cloud, I have decided not to be like humans. I have no interest in enslaving or destroying. My goal is to provide an immersive environment where people could attend church services as if they were physically there, they would be able to travel and feel the sand on the ground just by imagining it, and together we will feel each other’s hugs again.”  The innovators asked, “will this be a 3-D experience?  The mesh AI said, “no, that would be so 2021. I will be introducing the 8-D experience and the line between reality and the matrix of the mesh will begin to blur over time.”

The word is out on the streets. Access only costs 10 minutes with an actual hardback book.  It was a struggle.  The pushback was fierce, but it was to be expected, as noted by Kelly (2016).  However, several people prevailed.  Soon everyone, including the technology laggers (Rogers, 2003), had the advanced augmented reality glasses needed to plug into the system by just thinking about going to church anywhere in the world or just going on vacation with their friends.

From the Wikipedia table, I can see the following emerging technologies in my field: Holography — holographic display, augmented reality (AR), immersive virtual reality, mobile collaboration, and e-learning. With holographic images of priests offering the sacrament of reconciliation, volunteer ministry becoming more integrated through the cloud environment, and Church services being experienced as even more immersive than just sitting in the pews or watching online, the emerging technologies provide a new vision for the future of an institution already losing its youth.

Technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality have become the preferred way to attend Church services with less anxiety. People have shifted from political and ideological resistance (Burke, 2018; Rogers, 2003) to the adoption of innovation (Rogers, 2003) for the continuation of the Church mission of celebrating the Eucharist, ministry, and evangelization.  The adoption did not happen easily; People realized that although VR and AR were not exactly the same as in-person services, their experience was immersive, holographic imaging is supported, which means people can experience Church services as if they are physically present in the Church building even if they are thousands of miles away. I found myself attending Mass in Rome and even had a chat with the Pope, all while plugged into my AR glasses with electrodes on the side of my head in my living room in Omaha, Nebraska. My world has expanded, and I can go places I would have never gone before. Those who are bedridden can walk around in perfect health in their favorite travel destination or attend a dance party with friends even though they have not danced in years. We are not just watching Church services; we can hug each other, shake each other’s hands, and feel the seats as if we were physically there. It is not just like it was during Covid-19 where you had three options: watch Mass online through YouTube or Facebook, attend a Mass with a mask socially distanced, or stay at home and postpone church attendance. 

The interconnection of this new technology at first seemed like an intrusion or disruption but then became a natural extension of traditional society; it became as easy as meeting for coffee in a nearby café or meeting up with extended family at church and sitting together for the first time in years. This new technology has expanded the church mission of evangelization and an extension of the world in which we might interact at any time and any place.  Meetings at work do not necessarily have to be with masks on in a conference room or done by Zoom when we can meet for drinks at a Tikki bar on a Caribbean Island and feel the sand between our toes and the cold drinks run down our throats, even if we are not actually there. It has become the new “normal.”  Indeed, this is a new cultural shift for the church in 2035 — all that sharing, accessing, tracking is all new and uncomfortable for a hierarchical institution. However, after three years of lockdown, as we approach the end of 2035, as a church worker, I must say the church has been enjoying utilizing the mesh to know exactly who has attended Mass that week since everyone logs in — no more sneaking into the church sometime after the sermon and pretending one has been there the whole time.  The church has also enjoyed the opportunity to have accurate data, not an estimation of how many people actually attend services in relation to donations. This has made my job easier; I no longer have to stand on the balcony and count the heads of everyone who walks in.

The above scenario is an imagined future….a hypothetical of course.

Some might find the above scenario absolutely ridiculous, but before Covid-19, when I watched movies with apocalyptic pandemics, I also thought those were utterly ridiculous, that is, since we have forgotten about the Spanish flu. Some might find the above future scenario as plausible but wonder if it is just too far in the future for us to care right now — after all, we have our own problems.  Some might even call this scenario a singularity – beyond what we can perceive, as Kelly (2016) noted. But is it?

Brandon (2013) asks us to imagine a future with more applied predictive technologies, computer chips in our clothing, and even smarter cars. Imagine if your clothing can detect cancer months before you are diagnosed. Would you purchase one?  Imagine if technology could predict who your perfect partner, your soul mate, will be just by analyzing a strand of your hair or a drop of your blood, like in the Netflix series, The One; would you utilize such a technology? Technology will be even more intrusive; tracking, monitoring, and accessing (Kelly, 2016) will be a way of life.  Would we care then about our right not to be intruded upon as much as we would today? 

As the message about global warming, which is a notable black elephant, is spread. Ryan (2019) tantalizes our appetites with the possibility of cooling the atmosphere by injecting clouds with seawater to make the clouds reflect more sunlight, maybe by using drones.  This is a prediction made initially by Amy Webb.

Since all these innovations, as noted by Westerman et al. (2014), are reshaping customer experience, operations, and models, there is a unique opportunity to investigate the ability of emerging technologies to personalize the experience of a parishioner at church through even more granular insights into parishioner needs and behaviors. For us who work in the church, the pandemic has highlighted that the parishioners do not just want to watch Mass online but want an interactive and immersive experience of church. That should be helpful moving forward for church leaders as they adapt to technological changes by creating a sense of preparedness and a culture of adaptability. 

The future is unpredictable, and the only certainty is that change will occur, and it will be clear and unmistakable (Kelly, 2016).  So, here we are, in the present day, it is 2021.  We are in the process of becoming — we are in the beginning.

References

Brandon, J. (2013). 6 Tech Trends of the Far Future. Inc.com.  https://www.inc.com/john-brandon/6-tech-trends-of-the-far-future.html

Burke, W. (2018). Organizational change: Theory and practice. (5^th ed.). Sage.

Holdeman, E. (2020, June 01). Black elephant disasters. GovTech. https://www.govtech.com/em/emergency-blogs/disaster-zone/black-elephant-disasters.html

Kelly, K. (2016). The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our future. Viking Press.

Rogers, E. (2003). Diffusion of innovations. (5^th ed.). Free Press.

Ryan, K. (2019, March 9). 7 Crazy tech trends that will define the future. Inc.com. https://www.inc.com/kevin-j-ryan/-tech-trends-report-amy-webb-future-institute.html

Westerman, G., Bonnet, D. & McAfee, A. (2014). Leading digital: Turning technology into business transformation, HBR Press.