The pandemic effect on technology

[phenomlab]

I came across this news article this morning

https://news.sky.com/story/e3-cancelled-gamings-most-famous-event-killed-off-for-good-13028802

This really is the end of an era, and it’s abundantly clear that the pandemic had a large part to play in its demise. From the article:

It comes after plans for its return earlier this year were scrapped, with the likes of PlayStation maker Sony and Assassin’s Creed developer Ubisoft among the companies that planned to skip it.

When big players such as Sony and Ubisoft do not plan on attending, the writing is on the wall. During the pandemic, various organisations were forced to adopt new ways of promoting their products, with live streams becoming the new normal - and by order of magnitude, a much cheaper alternative that has the same impact.

This clearly demonstrates that technology is continually evolving, and there doesn’t seem to be any signs of a return to previous pre-pandemic forms on multiple fronts. Just look at how the work from home model has dramatically changed, with virtually every organisation having some form or remote working program they never considered before.

Along the same lines, companies that were relatively minor before the pandemic have enjoyed a meteoric rise since being in a unique position to fill the void created by the pandemic. Out of the many is Zoom - take a look at the revenue graph below for an example

Source - https://www.businessofapps.com/data/zoom-statistics/

At the peak of pandemic. Zoom reported 200m connections per day, and whilst that figure may have dropped of late, Zoom is still considered the #1 video conferencing tool and used in day-to-day life to facilitate meetings across the globe - even for people sitting in the same office space.

However you look at it, most of these pandemic “rising stars” are now here to stay and considered part of everyday life.