John Borthwick on Whether the Current Crisis Represents the Death of Analog

The coronavirus pandemic is dramatically disrupting not only our daily lives but society itself. This show features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the deeper economic, political, and technological consequences of the pandemic. It’s our new daily podcast trying to make longterm sense out of the chaos of today’s global crisis.

On today’s episode, John Borthwick, influential author and documentarian, discusses how the current crisis is changing the very structure of life in the United States.

From the episode:

John Borthwick: All of these barriers that we’ve had in our culture and our behavior—economic barriers and legal barriers—from going totally digital, now those are just being shattered.

Andrew Keen: Do you think in 50 years, when historians look back at this moment, they will see it as really the beginning of the dominance of digital.

John Borthwick: Yeah, I think that just like digital, we have now been thrown into the water like the proverbial frog. The water is digital, and that is what we’re living in. So when you think about it, the most obvious thing is telecommunicating and remote work, and you know that as everybody has moved into a completely remote work. But it’s also telemedicine. It’s also education. It’s also media. It’s like every piece of the world has been thrown into this water, and it ain’t going back. When this is over and we can sort of revert to some sense of normalcy and actually see people and go out and socialize it, it’s going to change again. And it will change. I wouldn’t say back. It will change forward, but it won’t go back to what it was. Right. It will never be the same again.

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