Here a Zoom there a Zoom everywhere a Zoom Zoom—except when I needed it—or so it seemed during the first year when I was supposed to turn up at a monthly international board meeting and got lost in the ether every other meeting. Note here: i had to choose between limbo and ether and I chose ether because it’s larger, vaguer and without any purpose whatsoever, except maybe to a falllng astronaut-not falling-floating; there is no up or down. I’m nitpicking. I’ll be back, in attendance at a Zoom meeting once/if I I get there.
There are two central problems to a Zoom meeting. One is power, or lack of; the other is energy, or lack of. I learned the hard way to charge up my laptop to 100 percent and hope people didn’t talk too much before it blacked out. Both of us did—blacked out—several meetings back. I fell asleep first and when I came to, the screen was as blank as my mind. It takes time to do that. I’ve tried sitting up in a hard chair (dining room chair) with the laptop plugged into a nearby wall outlet. But then I give up: back and seat to stiff too stay up any longer. And the tireder i get, the more my brain turns to mush. I’ve done some informal interviews about Zoom meetings, to get other people’s reactions. One said it was hard to doodle on Zoom. People see what you’re doing. I heard that a few days before someone was caught masturbating ( won’t mention the name - a public person). It must have been a very boring meeting.
It is also impossible to have a few minutes of whispered (irrelevant) conversation with a colleague attending the meeting, wherever they are. No such thing as whispering, either on mike or off. You have to “unmute” yourself to talk, but that makes you audible to the virtual group and then you can’t whisper. Mute is a terrible verb. It makes me think of Disney’s version of the Little Mermaid, Anderson’s heroine who was in love with a human prince. Her voice was taken from her, a hostage to her desire to seem human. In my day mute was more commonly used as an adjective and unmute did not exist; Now, with Zoom, you are expected to “unmute yourself” in order to talk to the meeting. (That’s sort of like masturbation, isn’t it?)