By Kashvi Mehta

From lockdown to circuit breaker, the past few months have been a challenging time for all of us. The inability to meet friends and being forced to stay confined within the four walls of our  house has been incredibly frustrating at times. Nevertheless, in these times of hardship we have all, whether knowingly or unknowingly, found a trustworthy, reliable and unwavering friend in technology. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, technologies are playing a pivotal role in keeping our society functional. Whether it is reducing the spread of the coronavirus while helping businesses stay open, or providing a platform for educational institutions, technology has come to our aid time and time again. 

Technology as an in-person entertainment alternative has been extremely successful in engaging us. The online streaming of concerts, online gaming options and virtual tours for almost everything, have made our stay at home extremely enjoyable. While our dependable streaming sites Netflix, Prime Video, HBO and YouTube further intensified their connection with us, an unsung hero rose to the occasion to give us more ways to procrastinate completing our work. Tik Tok! TikTok is a social media app that allows users to create, promote, and react to short-form music video content. The app gained popularity due to its simple preface, shoot a short video, add music, make someone smile. While the app was already popular with young users, the lock down helped adults learn how to use it and eventually enjoy it. The custom ‘for you’ page, showed them exactly what they wanted to see: exercise videos, cooking videos or even just comedy videos. Sports streaming websites were also a major hit with sports fanatics. With restrictions on our human interactions, we all found comfort in virtually interacting with the people we love. Whether that was our grandparents in India, or our next-door neighbours. Equipped with an unswerving Wi-Fi connection and a smart device, facetime, zoom and skype 

Schools and offices also turned to online platforms to virtually conduct classes and meetings. Zoom, Skype and Teams were extremely efficient in having face to face interactions virtually. Not only did children of all ages learn how to use these platforms, they learnt how to complete all learning based tasks online and submit them, through home-based learning. Touch screen laptops and tablets replaced the traditional white boards and creativity doubled as we were forced to come up with new excuses as to why we didn’t do our homework. Big companies realised they could save money by conducting meetings online instead of flying out people. Smaller businesses like restaurants adapted and offered delivery services instead of dining in. Many used an app or a website to make the entire selection and payment process easier. Zalora, Lazada, Amazon, Redmart, were successful in making our online shopping experiences almost as easy as our in person ones. Digital payments enabled us to make online purchases and payments of goods, services and even utility payments, faster. Everybody was equipped with PayLah! and PayNow, and contactless payment was highly effective in stopping the spread of coronavirus, by replacing cash and offering a safer alternative. 

Living in Singapore, we should be exceptionally grateful that we got to witness how a smart nation handled a pandemic. The government circulated daily messages on social media services like WhatsApp, regarding the current pandemic stricken population. This informed us about the new number of cases, imported as well as locally transmitted, and the total number of cases in the community. We also had SafeEntry QR codes at every mall, hospital, restaurant, school and office. This was especially effective in tracking the spread of coronavirus. The Trace Together app, and the trace together token made this process even easier. With nations coming together to find a cure for this disease, technological developments have increased greatly and there is no doubt 2021 will bring with it a cure for this pandemic. 

“…technological developments have increased greatly and there is no doubt 2021 will bring with it a cure for this pandemic.”

At first acclimatizing to this ‘new normal’ was challenging and even exasperating at times. However, eventually, with technology making it possible to do everything from home, it didn’t seem so bad at all. I strongly believe that technology has made our society more resilient in the face of a pandemic and thus, other threats. Not only are we prepared to go back into lockdown if necessary, we are prepared for any other nationwide threat. This entire pandemic has also made  us realise how easily things can be done virtually and has definitely forced us to re-evaluate our traditional habits.