By: Josh Son

“It produces 500 nits of brightness for spectacular highlights and bright whites, while delivering deep blacks thanks to the precise photo alignment of liquid crystal molecules. And the P3 wide color gamut enables brilliant, true-to-life images and video,” boasts Apple of its 16” MacBook Pro’s Retina Display, a quote indicative of the rhetoric that such companies use to convince consumers that their products achieve a more accurate reproduction of reality than their competitors. In the past few months, technology’s pursuit of “immersive” experiences has become even more relevant, as our homes have become multi-purpose spaces in which we live, work, worship, and exercise.

While we have been afraid to open our doors, our screens have provided virtual ones to alter our sense of place. Going from classroom to bar in a few clicks has made me question how we use technology to communicate, and to what extent what we see on our screens is really true-to-life.

This realization dawned on me after reading a tweet by YouTuber Marques Brownlee, who wrote, “Fun fact: YouTube no longer clarifies 720p as HD. Only 1080p and up now. I completely agree.” With just a simple change in their code, YouTube decided for the world that video at 720p is not “high definition” anymore. And a YouTuber with 11 million subscribers confirmed it. Does that make 720p “less real?” Does video-chatting in high definition bring us closer to the people on the other side? 

My answer is no. 

No. For no matter how sharp the image or how expansive the screen, we are still alone in a living room. We still awkwardly crane our necks in bed. We still try to replicate a three-dimensional experience on a two-dimensional surface which engages, at best, three of our five senses. 

And we know it’s not the same. We reflect this understanding with jokes about wearing formal tops with casual bottoms on video calls. Reality has forced us to decide how “lifelike” we want our online lives to be, forced us to direct and star in a performance of ourselves whenever we turn on a front-facing camera.

People have come up with ingenious attempts to replicate the interactions we used to have,  like changing their Zoom backgrounds to pictures of their favorite bars and sending love letters via drone across the street. In a world full of outreach, I have chosen to withdraw.

As much as it has provided a rare view of a treasured friend’s face, technology for me has only served to bring into stark relief that which cannot be captured at any resolution. 

The awkward bumping of knees when seated on the floor in a group. 

The smell of a meal prepared in good company.

The moment when doubt turns into joyous recognition when you spot a friend on the street. 

The act of showing your care with a small favor.  

The comfort that comes with leaning on a friend on a couch as 12 a.m. creeps towards 1. 

While some consider it a reprieve, socializing through video only reminds me that the distance between the people on the screen and me cannot be measured in miles. Every lag emphasizes that we’re not actually together. So more often than not, I find myself declining invitations to group hangouts and putting off calls with friends. Not because I’m not lonely, but having to confront the different facets of that distance would only make me feel more so. 

Faced with this and the inundation of news detailing the virus’ seemingly inexorable spread across the country, I have bought into technology’s ability to take me where I have never been. I have watched four seasons of the British reality television show, Love Island. I have put tens of hours into playing “Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” and have plugged my Nintendo Switch into a TV as I found its built-in screen “wasn’t big enough,” and ironically, the Switch outputs video at a higher resolution than the screen itself shows. 

This is not a template for surviving quarantine; I might even be a little jealous of my friends who seem move more seamlessly in and out of Zoom calls. Nor is it a cry for help, as I think we all will endure the unique challenges that this pandemic brings in our own ways, and as best we can. It is simply  an acknowledgment of what we all already know - that the people we love are so much more than a screen can capture. I, for one, cannot wait until we can experience that again. 

Josh Son is a second year (‘21) MIA student in the Economic and Political Development concentration.