2020 in Review | Can we talk?

||| BY STEVE BERNHEIM, theORCASONIAN REPORTER |||

In 1964 my mother took me to the World’s Fair in New York. I drove a car along a track at the Ford or Hertz pavilion, glided by the dancing marionettes of It’s a Small World, and gazed briefly upon the Videophone from the Bell Telephone Company. Now, more than half a century later, can we not say some of us yet struggle to master this technology?

As in so many aspects of our material and moral lives, COVID has focused our attention, but not improved our position. This year, I’ve downloaded apps for Zoom, FaceTime, TeamViewer, Skype, and Teams. But when I choose to communicate, I still prefer the ‘phone, the kind Bell invented in the 1870s.

The Planning Commission in 2020 faced communication challenges after COVID foreclosed in-person public meetings. Planning Department staff, Commission members, and members of the public struggled to attend meetings “virtually” and the average time for Planning Commission meetings
stretched from two or three hours per monthly meeting to more than four, not including hours of breaks and delays due to technical difficulties. More than once meetings paused while kitchen dishes rattled or those on line made conversation in the background.

Green Acres premiered on television in 1965 and Oliver Douglas climbed up his telephone pole to access a party line to connect his calls. Then and now, in good times and bad, humor can be found on screen.