Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):
AFAICT all that's happened is that neurotypical people -- who benefit from being able to see facial expressions and hear voice inflection -- were forced to try it, and realized it's not so bad.
Point taken. It's also been comical to see some local perpetual computer novices going through a more cheerful analogue of Kübler-Ross's stages, concerning videoconferencing. As they suddenly realise that intoning endlessly 'I couldn't possibly do that' and all solve their silly little microphone and speaker problems _once_, it slowly dawns on them that they now have a basic skill they can use for the rest of their lives, too. I've pointed out to some, with only mildly malicious intent, that the world has now changed and online meetings are going to be a fixture even after they're no longer obligatory. Naturally, the force of confirmation bias is strong in these padawans, so I heard instant denials. ('Nah, nobody's going to keep doing this.') Three steps forward, 2.9 steps back.
PS: obligatory caution that Zoom is not just sousveillance evil, they are also "my first TLS library" level bad at security.
(serious mode) https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/04/security_and_pr_1.html
(snark mode) https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/06/zoom-wont-encrypt-calls-so-they-can-sell-yo...
Already both included in the Dept. of Web-Search Juice infobox on the front page of http://linuxmafia.com/ , FWIW. (That started out as the 'Dept. of Google Juice', until one day when I was particularly annoyed at the second-most nosy corporation.)
FYI, this is the lofi Debian-specific world clock I've used since about 2014:
alias u_sleeping_bro_p='zdump America/{Los_Angeles,Mexico_City,New_York,Sao_Paulo} Europe/{London,Berlin,Moscow} Asia/Calcutta PRC Japan Australia/{Perth,Melbourne}'
$ u_sleeping_bro_p America/Los_Angeles Tue Aug 11 02:02:43 2020 PDT America/Mexico_City Tue Aug 11 04:02:43 2020 CDT America/New_York Tue Aug 11 05:02:43 2020 EDT America/Sao_Paulo Tue Aug 11 06:02:43 2020 -03 Europe/London Tue Aug 11 10:02:43 2020 BST Europe/Berlin Tue Aug 11 11:02:43 2020 CEST Europe/Moscow Tue Aug 11 12:02:43 2020 MSK Asia/Calcutta Tue Aug 11 14:32:43 2020 IST PRC Tue Aug 11 17:02:43 2020 CST Japan Tue Aug 11 18:02:43 2020 JST Australia/Perth Tue Aug 11 17:02:43 2020 AWST Australia/Melbourne Tue Aug 11 19:02:43 2020 AEST
Aces, Trent! Swiped. Tusen takk.
FWIW I've been using https://meet.ji.si/$(xkcdpass) a few times for customers who won't just let me have SSH access, because their suggestions (Zoom and MS Teams) were Too Hard.
It was too heavyweight for 10-year-old chromebook, but apart from that, it Worked Fine.
I actually used it, about a month ago, to 'meet' my biological mother -- a rare and cheering case of technology facilitating a human connection.