IT SEEMED SO DESPERATE when Governor Cuomo signed the executive order early in the spring authorizing municipal governments to conduct their meetings online. And so weird. The technology was available… kind of. So run your village, your town, your city and county on Zoom.
Online meetings were a sideshow at the outset of the deluge of facts and fake facts and changing facts about the pandemic. But despite the initial confusion and weak security that attracted hackers to work their disruptive mischief (just ask the Hudson Board of Education), government and we, the governed , are adapting.
That process will change our language and our sense of time. In the near future, will anyone “go” to a meeting and where citizens sit side-by-side? Would anybody “attend” the hearings on budgets or new local laws? And where would you go if not to some “virtual” space? The key players participate as images; they “Zoom” to the forum digitally from home or some undisclosed location. Does it matter whether anyone is where they say they are? Maybe with prisoners. Read more…