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Comment and Technology

It's time to retreat from the tyranny of lockdown tech

People in lockdown are no longer trying to use technology to get their old lives back and that's a good thing, says Annalee Newitz

By Annalee Newitz

6 May 2020

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Box, fort, same thing

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WE’VE been living in quarantine for almost two months in San Francisco, and lockdown tech is starting to drive us bonkers. We were initially full of hope that the internet would save us – but now all we want to do is go outside and run around. Unfortunately, “outside” will never be the same.

When we were only a week or two into this, things felt extremely weird, but those of us who still had jobs could do them. We had Zoom. We had Skype. Kids had Google Classroom. Amazon had masked workers to dispatch…

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