Googling, Ubering and Xeroxing: How Zooming became a verb in six months

In the early days of Coronavirus starting last March, Zoom helped students and colleagues extend working relationships as we moved our lives online. But as September brings new classes and new jobs, is Zoom up to the task? Center director Jeffrey Cole explores the challenges.

By Jeffrey Cole

As March began, few people had ever heard of Zoom, and many had never been part of a video conference. Six months later Zoom has become a verb, and Zooming has become a part of daily life.

The moment Zoom became a verb

There are only a few examples of corporate names becoming a part of our daily idiom and a verb in such a short period of time. That honor comes not necessarily to the first or best mover in a new technology (there have been other video conference tools for a while like Skype, WebEx, and Microsoft Teams) but to the innovator that first rises to wide public consciousness.

Other examples that come to mind are Xerox, Uber, and–most verby–Google. Only one of these dates back more than 20 years.

In the 1970s, as Xerox became the most widely known copier company, we didn’t make copies on the office photocopier, we Xeroxed things on whatever machine it happened to be (Canon, Kodak, Minolta).

About a decade ago we started Ubering home regardless of whether we used that company or Lyft. And, we don’t look up someone we just met on a search engine, we Google them. In an alternate universe, we might be “Bing-ing,” “Yahooing,” or even Jeevesing.

Now, in the fall of 2020 we are Zooming regardless of what system we actually use. Invitations begin with “Let’s Zoom.” Just the mention of Zoom can bring forth excitement at the prospect of seeing and interacting with friends and colleagues on important (or trivial) issues as we are isolated at home. On the other hand, Zoom fatigue is real: the same mention also can also unleash frustration at the constant barrage of Zoom sessions, sometimes for entire work days with no end in sight.

As work, learning, buying, and entertainment outside the home was disrupted, Zoom was ready with the technology we needed at the right time and for that it has reaped great benefits: its stock has gone up 300% in the past six months.

However, the benefits of Zoom are only available to those who have broadband at adequate speeds. While 93.5% of Americans have access to broadband, that means that over 21 million are left out. Even those 93.5% may not have enough bandwidth to accommodate two parents working online, two kids going to school and a fifth person watching Netflix: all at the same time and on the same connection.

In some households, arguments break out over whose broadband needs are most important (perhaps for the first time kids argued for the importance of going to class), and rules had to be established based on household priorities.

During COVID-19, we have learned that the broadband coming into our homes is a lifeline as essential as electricity, water, or gas. Finland understood this early: on July 1, 2010, it made access to broadband a legal right for every citizen. Expect to see significant government and industry efforts in the next year to ensure that those without broadband get access so that everyone has enough bandwidth to meet what are now basic information and communication needs at home.

After six months of constant Zooming and alternating between intense love and great hatred for videoconferencing, a number of critical, but so far unresolved, issues have arisen.

Here are two of them:

Does Zoom make it harder to build new relationships?

In March, and with only a few days notice, we moved our work and school lives online. We had to make sure we had the necessary devices and cameras as well as bandwidth, and that we knew what to do. We learned quickly about real and virtual backgrounds, camera placement and lighting, and how to dress and groom for Zoom.

There are only a few examples of corporate names becoming a part of our daily idiom and a verb in such a short period of time. That honor comes not necessarily to the first or best mover in a new technology (there have been other video conference tools for a while like Skype, WebEx, and Microsoft Teams) but to the innovator that first rises to wide public consciousness.

Other examples that come to mind are Xerox, Uber, and–most verby–Google. Only one of these dates back more than 20 years.

Some aspects of Zoom came easy when we brought already existing relationships from class and work into a new environment: Zoom. In the middle of a school year or term, teachers already knew their students and had developed learning relationships. There was a comfort level and a shorthand having already spent weeks in the classroom together.

Likewise, work colleagues brought history to meetings. Although there were a lot of hiccups, things worked pretty well in the first few months, so long as you had internet access and your job or school made Zoom possible.

As we begin a new school year, and as many people are starting new jobs, all this is changing.

Many students and teachers are meeting each other for the first time on Zoom. There is no pre-existing relationship, only that which can be developed through a screen.

Already, there are signs that learning online this Fall is not working well. There is no relationship to build on, and Zoom only offers the opportunity to interact formally. Today, there is no lingering after class for a quick question because the classroom vanishes when the Zoom session ends. Students and teachers need to work to have non-classroom meetings, and this work makes it more difficult to establish relationships that foster learning.

In business, as companies hire new employees in the pandemic, they too come into the mix with no experience chatting at the water cooler or in the cafeteria. Sales and business development leaders, trying to create new business, report that it is difficult to build a trusting bond, to ask relative strangers to spend or invest significant sums of money, without a pre-existing relationship.

Our Coronavirus Disruption Project suggests that as much as a third of business travel may disappear forever as companies learn that business can be conducted through Zoom. The same may be true of many conferences where people are maintaining or deepening existing business relationships.

On the other hand, what may survive are business people traveling to build new relationships: the kind that come through handshakes, coffee, meals, and late-night cocktails. The bonds that require significant trust simply may not be able to begin in a Zoom session.

Learning, too, is likely to return–and quickly–to in-the-classroom, face-to-face teaching as soon as teachers, students and parents feel confident that doing so is safe.

Will Zooming democratize classes and meetings?

In a classroom, the prepared students can sit in the front, be easily seen by the teacher and, at times, monopolize the conversation. The unprepared students can hide in the back, keep their heads down to avoid eye contact, and hope to be invisible. So too can colleagues try to stand out or blend in during work meetings.

The best students and colleagues know how to use the environment to make a strong impression.

All this disappears on the level playing field that is Zoom. Everyone appears in the same, equally sized box. There is no front to command attention and no corner to hide in. Everyone is equal, not that every participant wants to be. The best students and workers do not stand out as easily as they do in the face-to-face environment, and the less prepared find it much harder to disappear.

The people who love this new democracy are those who used to call-in to face-to-face meetings. As a traveler, I frequently found myself calling in where it is difficult not to be isolated as the guy calling in when everybody else is physically in the same room–the guy who has to fight to get the attention of the room and usually only gets a chance to chime in at the end of the discussion.

The Nightline effect

On Zoom, everyone is equal. Ted Koppel of ABC’s Nightline used to hold teleconferences with his two or three guests who could be anywhere in the world. Sometime a guest would come into the studio for the interview hoping to sit next to Koppel to get more of his attention and perhaps a subliminal message of endorsement.

Koppel, the smartest interviewer on television, would have none of it. If you came in, he placed you in a studio near his so that on camera you were on equal footing with all his other guests.

This is what Zoom does. Everyone is equal. Neither the best students nor the less prepared like this. The best know how to make face-to-face environments work for them; the others just want to make it through unscathed.

In the six months since Coronavirus changed the world, Zoom has become part of our culture and language. We have already learned a few of the ways it has affected learning, work, and relationships.

There is more disruption to come and we will be there to track it.
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Jeffrey Cole is the founder and director of The Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg.

 

 

See all columns from the center.

September 23, 2020