According to the Pew Research Center, after the coronavirus outbreak, approximately 51% of employed adults transitioned to remote working. Sudden demand for new ways to conduct meetings virtually accelerated the videoconferencing market, giving rise to technologies such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. Remote working technologies thrived in the social spaces where COVID-19 had necessitated shifting from in-person to virtual interaction.
However, with the recent shift back to in-person meetings, this puts videoconferencing technologies in an interesting place.
We have seen many schools and workplaces open up. Furthermore, CDC’s U.S. COVID Data Tracker shows that the daily number of COVID-19 cases dropped rapidly in just the span of three months from nearly 800,000 in January 2022 to approximately 30,000 in March 2022 [1]. In March, Princeton University retracted its mask mandate and adjusted its COVID-19 testing policy for booster-vaccinated students, staff, and faculty to test once monthly [2]. We see this turning point as a welcome change but also as a moment of uncertainty in the videoconferencing market, and, hence, as an opportune time to look back at the remote work technologies we have become so used to and discuss their ramifications. Specifically, we explore controversies surrounding videoconferencing technologies, how social factors shaped their development (focusing on Zoom), as well as how videoconferencing technologies have affected the social landscape.
The rise, lock-in, and impact of Zoom is both social and technical in nature.
