Prompt 105, Part of the Isolation Journals.

Dystopias are certainly everywhere in the fictitious sphere, but I find utopias to be so bland, and almost more desolate. There’s got to be something to give us drive and ambition in the world. There’s got to be a catch to living in pure harmony.

Eden, Shangri-La, Arcadia…we can’t mimic any of their perfections. Still, it’s true that once our society returns to normal after this wave of disease wanes, it will morph.

I imagine this society will be less focused on everyone making their own individual travel arrangements. We may warm up to carpooling, wish to add more frequent routes to our bus and train cars, because when everyone is squashed in uncomfortably to the highest capacity possible, more germs can spread. If we allow passengers more personal space, they will be happier and healthier. People can’t always afford to get raw red fingers from gripping onto a floppy rubber handle one or two feet above them. They extend their wingspan at points they must relax in order to motivate themselves for their next work day. Because they have to grip so hard to stay balanced on the cart, they cannot do anything else. They could try using their unoccupied hand, but sometimes two are better than one. Just when you think you are at a safe spot in the route where the vehicle will be stopped for enough time to drink coffee, check your wristwatch,  get something out of your bag, apply balm —whoosh— the cart zooms forward.

People will know that things make noise. Life happens and disturbances are inevitable. We’ll still control our surroundings, but not give as much grief to others if things go awry.

Further, our future can establish egalitarian privileges. I’ve mentioned before that my mother and her father both worked in telecom for many decades. For the majority of my grandfather’s tenure, there was only one telecom company: Bell System, founded by telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell. My mother was in the peak of her career in 1982 when Bell broke into “baby Bells,” hyper-regionalized independent companies. There was the New England Telephone Company here, then New England merged with New York’s company to form Nynex, then Nynex merged with the mid-Atlantic company and took on their name, Bell Atlantic, then Bell Atlantic merged with GTE Corporation to form Verizon. At that point, it was a giant even in its infancy as it was no longer regional, but covered a multitude of areas across the US. But because it had a hand almost everywhere, all metropolitans were prioritized. Rural and desolate areas still existed, but because the phone companies had a lot more area to play with, they neglected them.

There have been efforts to address the connectivity gap through grants sponsored by the USDA and other services, and a professor at my university worked on one of these initiatives.  But still, they are sparse. Now that we’ve entered a time when digital readiness is essential to keep the world functioning, I will hope rural areas, ghettos, and projects will be afforded more attention towards accessing landlines, good mobile reception, DSL, and high-speed internet (maybe even fiber optics, though that’s not really likely so soon since even privileged cities such as mine cannot afford the costs of routing such cable systems. It has an entire different wiring than most telecom chords and contains delicate glass shards that conduct solar pulses to transmit signals). Before, Ford, Toyota, and Chrysler groomed rural folks to purchase heavy-duty pickup trucks to travel miles upon miles to and from work. The pickup portion to work the land and move things across distances. With social distancing still around, even in country life driving has lessened. Thus, there will be more demand for these dwellers to have better connections.